Pumping before LO is born?

[Jezzielin]

Right now I am pregnant with my second baby and already producing some milk. I've never really hooked up the pump to see if it was anything substantial but I was wondering if anyone had ever pumped before the baby was born?

I'm afraid that if that was even possible I would already have pumped out the colostrum for my newborn and would be producing only regular milk by the time he was born.

Any thoughts?

 

[Jessica_MTY]

nipple stimulation can apparently cause contractions so might cause preterm labour so i wouldnt try it without checking with your doctor/midwife

 

[Celesse]

You just make more colostrum until the post birth hormone changes (massive drop in progesterone) tells your boobs to start making mature milk.

I'm breastfeeding through pregnancy for a second time so my boobs get emptied 2-3times a day. At around 18 weeks in my second pregnancy and 10 weeks this time the milk as more or less dried up, but I continued to dry nurse. In my second pregnancy it came back as colostrum at 24 weeks. DD continued to nurse 2-3 times a day up until birth getting just small amounts of colostrum. After the birth milk came in as normal around day 3.

Nipple stimulation can indeed cause contractions, bloody painful ones!! But they were never enough to put me in labour.

 

[pooch]

it's good to know how the pump works before giving birth but like someone said above it could cause you to go into labor early...that being said i was 38 or 39 weeks with DD and was desperate to give birth and hooked myself up a couple days in a row, but then i got paranoid.
i'm still BF'ing but don't think i have much milk left. my doctor told me to stop; not because of contractions but because of the energy it uses to produce the milk...which IMO doesn't really make sense because if your body would stop growing the baby don't you think you wouldn't be able to BF? Whatever.

 

[BrandiCanucks]

Don't pump before birth. It can wait until birth. You're not going to get engorged at this point and baby needs colostrum. Their tummies are also very small at birth so storing colostrum isn't necessary. They don't take much.

FYI, about nipple stim inducing labour, it happened to me. I pumped the night before my youngest child was born, and went into labour 3 hours later and she was born just under 5 hours after that.