Little Maverick will be one month old tomorrow. It seems insane to me that he has already been out of my belly for that long! I have been very fortunate to be able to see him at least once a week (much more the first few weeks) due to 1. his parents being awesome and wanted us to visit and 2. I have been able to hand express and pump for him since his birth and provide his sole source of food.
I had always planned to pump for them since we started this process but was always a little scared that my supply wouldn't be very good due to just pumping. This is somewhat crazy since I had a a great supply with Kendall and an over supply with Charlie - but exclusively pumping can be a whole different world. Sometime the body doesn't respond the same to a pump as it would when a baby is nursing plus it takes A LOT of commitment, especially at the beginning. But it was very important to me to be able to feed my belly buddy and, honestly, vanity played a part in my desire. Nursing or pumping right after delivery helps the uterus contract back down to pre-baby size and burns a ton of extra calories, which has been a factor in my weight loss with my own kids (despite my teenage boy sized hunger).
One of the first things I did after delivery was hand express colostrum - the first form of milk which contains extra antibodies. The nurse helped me the first few times and I was able to get 1ML right off the bat, which is apparently really great. We would drip the milk into a little cup then collect it into a syringe which made feeding it to Mav nice and easy. Since it takes up to a week for a women's milk to come in I was determined to collect as much colostrum as I could since we would be getting discharged from the hospital and it wouldn't be as easy as walking the syringe across the hall. Every two hours around the clock I would pump for 20 minutes to try and stimulate milk production, then hand express for around 5 minutes on each side, get the milk in the syringe, clean all my pump parts and attempt to sleep for an hour before I had to do it all over again. I did this for the first week as my milk came in and tried to get ahead of his eating as much as I could. I was a complete zombie, almost MORE tired than having a newborn since at least you can doze while holding/nursing your baby, but it was well worth it. After the week I was able to drop the hand expressing, for a few days anyways, and was pumping more than he could drink in a day. I spaced out my night pumpings to every 3 hours which gave me a little more sleep. Unfortunately I developed milk blisters and felt like I was on my way to getting mastitis so I had to add back in hand expressing, hot compresses and epson salt soaks before and after each pump session. Oh yea, and I was back to work. Thankfully all those things helped and I am currently going 3 hour stretches during the day between pumps, and 4-4.5 at night (hooray for only having to get up once!). I have an over supply like I did with Charlie so going much longer isn't in the cards for me just yet, but I'm thinking by 2 months I can extend my pumps to 4 hours during the day and go throughout the night without having to get up.
You'll see below in the pictures, but at this point I'm pumping an average of 80.5oz a day - about 560oz. a week. Based on my pumping app's calculations, I will have enough milk for him pumped for him for the ENTIRE YEAR by July 27th!! And that date goes down every time I update the freezer stash - which is about 13- 6oz. bags a day. My IP's have been using only fresh milk at this point so the freezer stash is getting a bit out of control already. They bought a chest freezer and thankfully we have a spare freezer as well but it won't be long before we'll both be out of storage space! I'd love to donate milk again and we may not have a choice in the matter :)
Obviously having a low/no milk supply is really frustration and upsetting. I really do empathize and my heart hurts for those that work so hard to nurse their baby and it just isn't in the cards for them. But over supply is no joke - if I were to cut out pumps I'm most likely end up with clogged ducts, mastitis and possibly staph infections. Plus I'm currently in pain more often than not and living by a clock. Hence why I'm keeping to the constant pumping schedule even though I'm clearly light years ahead of his eating. It's all worth feeding that little nugget! Now, time for me to pump again...
I had always planned to pump for them since we started this process but was always a little scared that my supply wouldn't be very good due to just pumping. This is somewhat crazy since I had a a great supply with Kendall and an over supply with Charlie - but exclusively pumping can be a whole different world. Sometime the body doesn't respond the same to a pump as it would when a baby is nursing plus it takes A LOT of commitment, especially at the beginning. But it was very important to me to be able to feed my belly buddy and, honestly, vanity played a part in my desire. Nursing or pumping right after delivery helps the uterus contract back down to pre-baby size and burns a ton of extra calories, which has been a factor in my weight loss with my own kids (despite my teenage boy sized hunger).
One of the first things I did after delivery was hand express colostrum - the first form of milk which contains extra antibodies. The nurse helped me the first few times and I was able to get 1ML right off the bat, which is apparently really great. We would drip the milk into a little cup then collect it into a syringe which made feeding it to Mav nice and easy. Since it takes up to a week for a women's milk to come in I was determined to collect as much colostrum as I could since we would be getting discharged from the hospital and it wouldn't be as easy as walking the syringe across the hall. Every two hours around the clock I would pump for 20 minutes to try and stimulate milk production, then hand express for around 5 minutes on each side, get the milk in the syringe, clean all my pump parts and attempt to sleep for an hour before I had to do it all over again. I did this for the first week as my milk came in and tried to get ahead of his eating as much as I could. I was a complete zombie, almost MORE tired than having a newborn since at least you can doze while holding/nursing your baby, but it was well worth it. After the week I was able to drop the hand expressing, for a few days anyways, and was pumping more than he could drink in a day. I spaced out my night pumpings to every 3 hours which gave me a little more sleep. Unfortunately I developed milk blisters and felt like I was on my way to getting mastitis so I had to add back in hand expressing, hot compresses and epson salt soaks before and after each pump session. Oh yea, and I was back to work. Thankfully all those things helped and I am currently going 3 hour stretches during the day between pumps, and 4-4.5 at night (hooray for only having to get up once!). I have an over supply like I did with Charlie so going much longer isn't in the cards for me just yet, but I'm thinking by 2 months I can extend my pumps to 4 hours during the day and go throughout the night without having to get up.
You'll see below in the pictures, but at this point I'm pumping an average of 80.5oz a day - about 560oz. a week. Based on my pumping app's calculations, I will have enough milk for him pumped for him for the ENTIRE YEAR by July 27th!! And that date goes down every time I update the freezer stash - which is about 13- 6oz. bags a day. My IP's have been using only fresh milk at this point so the freezer stash is getting a bit out of control already. They bought a chest freezer and thankfully we have a spare freezer as well but it won't be long before we'll both be out of storage space! I'd love to donate milk again and we may not have a choice in the matter :)
Obviously having a low/no milk supply is really frustration and upsetting. I really do empathize and my heart hurts for those that work so hard to nurse their baby and it just isn't in the cards for them. But over supply is no joke - if I were to cut out pumps I'm most likely end up with clogged ducts, mastitis and possibly staph infections. Plus I'm currently in pain more often than not and living by a clock. Hence why I'm keeping to the constant pumping schedule even though I'm clearly light years ahead of his eating. It's all worth feeding that little nugget! Now, time for me to pump again...
Getting 1ML of colostrum the first day after delivery
By days 2 & 3 I moved up to 3ML syringes and began to fill multiples at one time
The moving up to teeny bottles - isn't it crazy how yellow the colostrum is? They say it lasts for about 6 days before "real" milk comes in
By day 5 or 6 my milk was definetly well on it's way in and I was able to graduate to 5oz bottles
A few days later I could breathe easy that Maverick would have no shortage of food
Moving on up to 8oz bottles at night. This was the night I set my alarm for pm instead of am and ended up going 5.5 hours in between pumps. I had to stop pumping early because I overfilled the bottles and the milk was getting too close to being sucked up in the hoses. This is about 18.5oz.
576ish oz. in our freezer and growing. I'm not sure how much we've dumped on the IP's at this point.
I started tracking milk production after the first week. So in just over 3 weeks I have pumped for 3 days and 5 hours of my life and produced 13.4 gallons of milk!
This estimate is based on what the average baby eats throughout the first year of life. A years worth of milk in just over 4 months is pretty bananas!
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