Pump then feed

Can you not give him whatever you’ve just pumped instead of feeding him? If you’re emptying your breasts when you express (pumping till nothing comes out/it slows to a drip) then baby likely won’t be completely filled up from nursing straight away

@Becca I try to express for his night feeds which he has in a bottle so my partner can help, he has 5oz bottles but if I don’t have enough breast milk it means topping up with formula so I try to express in the day for the night time.. I don’t know if I’m just making everything harder for myself.. it doesn’t happen all the time but I only get 1-2oz of milk when I express so it takes a while to build up the supply :/

Your breasts will never be empty of milk. They're like rivers not lakes, it's being constantly made. As your baby is now older and your supply is regulating too you're going to be making more on demand rather than storing big quantities. Keep feeding on demand

Pump between 1-5am? You’ll get the most out of it and because the hormones are high you’ll fully replenish milk quickly

Have you tried power pumping? That helped increase my supply to cut out formula when I combi fed my first baby. It takes a week or so to start seeing results but it does work after some consistency and I managed to cut out all formula after a month of power pumping and then just maintained my supply from there. I used to nurse baby, rest for 10 mins, then express for 10 mins, rest for 10 mins, then express again for 10mins. Did this for four weeks as often as I could x

@Julia I haven’t seen much of a difference when I have tried this, apart from feeling the extra lack of sleep, my LO sleeps from 1am until 10am, usually wakes around 8am for a feed but does back to sleep right after

@Becca I have before but I was impatient and gave up too quickly by the sound of it.. I didn’t see results in the first few days and felt it didn’t work but I will try again and stick with it longer, hopefully I will see a difference this time, thanks for the advice x

Hmm could do a power pump at that time then, couple of days and you should be able to express more as it’s supply and demand. Your body will learn to make more at that time. I didn’t express a crazy amount but then my baby started to sleep for longer stretches and now I get around 4 ounces after feeding her when she wakes up in the morning. But I did cluster feed her and power pumped between 1-5am for a little while

@Becca would this still increase and consolidate supply from 8 weeks?

I am having the same struggle as you, if I don’t pump immediately after but say 30-40 mins later and if he wakes up prematurely from his nap, I feel like I am putting him on emptier or slower flow boobs and it ends up being a vicious cycle

@Zeynep what you’ll get out when you pump, or what seems like a small/slow amount isn’t = to what the baby will take directly from the boob. I can try pump and get nothing but then he’ll be completely satisfied after being on the boob, because they’re more efficient at drawing out milk than a pump is. I personally can pump till I feel empty, and put him straight on the boob and he feeds till he’s more than happy. Like Charley says, your boobs are rivers not lakes, you don’t have to wait for them to fill up, you’re constantly making milk and the fullness should ease after 8ish weeks xx

@Chloe ahh I wish my boy was like that. Not sure if another factor is at play but every time I put him on after a pumping session, he’s so fussy and cries 🥲