told my milk might dry up? have to use formula?

[Raven24]

i saw my midwife and told her i had changed from breast feeding to expressing and giving by a bottle and she said tht is fine and great cuz he is still getting breast milk but she said to be aware of the fact tht expressing doesnt stimulate the breast like a suckling baby would and tht my milk could dry up??
i was quite surprised as i didnt know this could happen
so i guess my question is has this happened to anyone and how did you deal with it and how was the change over ot formula milk>
thanks

 

[angelmummy]

hi there,
i started expressing when my little man was 5 weeks old and to be honest i wish i had not started expressing as yes i did notice very quickly that my milk supply seemed to go down and where as at first i could express enough for 3 feeds and then he fed from me for the others, after a week and a half later i could barely get enough for 1 feed a day. so to be honest i regretted expressing, so please be sure that is what you definitely want to do as it is hard to go back. I think its right that expressing is not same as baby sucking. Unless, you can find time to express every hour to two all day and night.

mind you when it did dry up and i put him on formula, then hungry baby milk, he was quite happy and is 14lb now at 10 weeks and sleeps from 9 pm till bout 5 am so he was quite happy.]

i found when i expressed that it was quite watery and never seemed to satisfy him as much have breast milk from bottle and he always wanted feeding on the breast about an hour later. they say if you exprss milk in morning then feed that milk to them in morning and if you express at night give that milk at night as breast milk has different properites in it at diff times of day.

hope that helps a bit, i am a bit sad i stopped so soon as i fed my other son for 6 months but this time circumstances were against me!!

marie x

 

[Hiding]

I've been expressing 3 times a day for weeks now and get enough to feed my son all night long (he wakes 3x and drinks about 120-140ml for two of those feeds and about 80ml for the last one (I'm quite milky!!). I havent noticed a drop in supply at all really and am pleased I manage to express so much as I was previously fully expressing but it was literally wearing me out. I'm glad to still be able to give LO at least some of my milk

 

[Marleysgirl]

I'm an exclusive expresser, as my baby was in SCBU for 11 weeks and we got into that habit. My milk started dwindling just at the point when he came home, but I'm now on Domperidone and fenugreek, and that's put the production rate back up. The only thing I'd say to you is to warn you that expressing&bottling is incredibly time-consuming, I only manage it because my OH does most of the feeding.

 

[Kte]

I did this for a short period of time and my milk did dry up BUT I didn't really express regularly enough in hindsight. It was never at set times either. Maybe if you had an expressing routine and did it more regularly your milk will stay for longer. I was told to do it once at night, once during the night and then again in the morning but I kept on being lazy and sometimes missing the middle of the night expressing. I believe that and not expressing during the day too was part of my downfall. I used a hand pump too and I think to make things easier I should have used an electric one.