Expressing

I am sorry, but I no longer think there is any logic to breastfeeding and milk production

When it comes to expressing they say pump more and you will produce more. I say pump more and you will land up with a despondent mom who has spent the last 20 minutes not relaxing as she should have been, with only 20 ml of milk to show for it.

If your kid is anything like mine, she drinks double what I could express. I would come home after an afternoon meeting and time away from her...pump...and get minimal milk. The only way I retained my sanity was to feed her once I got home (goodbye whatever milk was left) and then wait for the night...

Babies in general eat less at night (though they like to wake you up all the time to feed!), so I would feed her off of one boob and "keep" the other boob. Then in the morning it was rock hard with milk and I would quickly get 150 ml.

I had to carefully time this morning pump so thatI still had enough milk to get her back to sleep for her mid morning nap
and as she got older she realised I was "stealing" her milk. She would get very upset and insist on feeding while I pumped (quite an arm full). So I had to make sure she was in a mood to entertain herself while I didn't these morning pumps.

I don't know how I would have done any of this if I had a 8-5 job. I really think the only way to survive as a working mom is breastfeed during maternity leave and then go on to formula.

Another common recommendation with breastfeeding is the more you drain a breast the more it fills up again...my "saving a boob" during a night goes against this logic but it is the only way I have found. I am just not patient enough to pump only 20 ml in 20 min, 5 times a day. Who had that sort of time?