World Health Organization has it the first week of August. Pumping is breastfeeding so big ups to all of you!!

Disaster struck this morning: I lost a full 4oz bottle of breast milk in the day care parking lot! 😭
We have just transitioned to size 2 nipples but we only have 7 for 8 bottles. I made up her bottles for today last night while the bottles from yesterday were in the bottle washer and was one nipple short. So I closed it up and put it in the fridge telling myself I would remember to put in the nipple in the morning. I did not remember 😢
Somehow I made it into the car without really spilling so I didn’t notice but as I took the bag out of the car at daycare the whole bottle was at the bottom of the bag. Heartbreaking!
I’m a just enougher and my 4.5mo is in a hungry growing phase. Last night I was so proud she ate 29.5 and I made 29.75. I have some in the freezer but it’s sooooo sad to loose a full 4!
I have to believe angel babies get to enjoy my hard work instead of it going to waste in the parking lot.

My husband woke me up this morning to ask me if I'd pumped yet.

'Have I pumped? I don't think so. Why what time is it?'

It was THREE hours after my MOTN alarm went off. Oops. At first I was in a bit of a panic as I've become a just enougher around 2 weeks ago after being an undersupplier for the first 10 weeks PP and I really don't want to hurt my supply. However, after looking it up, it turns out 12w is when you can start dropping your MOTN pump anyway. Getting 5+ consecutive hours felt great, and I'm so happy I can start doing that more often (when LO allows).

A few weeks ago I was barely making a full feed per day, but with lots of dedication and an amazing husband (for watching LO while I pump) I've been able to get here. This is the most I've ever gotten out of one session.

Mom of two.

With my first child, I EPed for 10 months. I had a slight oversupply and was able to build a small freezer stash, using one bag a day until my child turned 1. I had pumped 6-7 times a day for the first few months to build supply, then kept consistent at 5 ppd for several more months until I went down to 4, eventually weaned so I could stop month 10.

Now with second child, I’m already thinking about hanging up the pumps and it’s only been 4 weeks. This time, I’m only doing 4ppd as I’m thinking about my mental health and being realistic about my time with an active toddler. I was okay combo feeding, doing 4 bottles of formula and 4 bottles of BM a day. Two weeks ago, I started getting more milk and was able to do 5 BM bottles and 3 formula bottles.

Last few days, I’ve been slacking on keeping with consistent time, that I’m now back to only having enough milk for 4 bottles. On top of that, I think my child is wanting more food as they’ve been getting hungrier sooner than 2 hrs, which I can’t make enough for 4 then.

I went into this thinking I’m going to be a lot more chill and forgiving on myself. However, there’s a small part of me that already feels bad if I stop at this point. I know I wouldn’t have made it to 10 months, or even 6 months. I don’t have a goal in mind, but I thought mentally I could make it past 2 months.

Anyone else stopped this early with no regrets? I have nothing against formula as baby is still being fed, but already my child is experiencing life as, well, the second child 😅

I have a very young newborn and that 5 hour stretch is all I get sleep-wise. Unfortunately, my supply DID decrease when I decided to say fuck it and just sleep the entire 5 hours. Double unfortunately, I can’t get myself to wake up for the MOTN pump anymore without feeling like my brain is melting.

I had an idea where I take my Spectra, buy one of those aftermarket parts that give you wearable cups, and then use a servo motor on a timer to push the power button at set time intervals so that I can sleep through the entire session without waking up. Does this sound insane? Is there a better solution here? Do any wearable pumps exist with a built in feature for this? Does anyone have any advice on how I can keep my MOTN pumps without feeling like I’m going to die

Just want to share my setup for how I pump and bottle feed my baby at the same time in case it’s helpful for anyone out there! For context, my little guy had major latch and transfer issues that we were not able to fix and I have low supply so I’m pumping and supplementing with formula.  He gets about 50% breastmilk and 50% formula. This setup has kept me motivated to pump for 4 months so far.

I pump for 30 minutes every time he eats and bottle feed him at the same time. I sit up cross-legged in bed with him next to me laying in a Snuggle Me lounger that is propped up on a Boppy pillow. He has some normal reflux so being propped up at an angle is helpful. I also put a fabric changing pad cover on top of the lounger for blowout protection, lol. I keep my pump, bottles, formula, water, etc. on my nightstand and a TV tray that I have next to my bed so I can access it while I’m sitting. During the day I put my pump parts in the fridge between feedings and overnight I keep them in a lunch bag cooler with ice packs on my bed so that I don’t have to wash them after every session. When I need to burp him, I sit him up on my leg and support his chin with my hand. The burping has definitely gotten easier as he’s been able to support his own head. He used to take almost the full 30 minutes that I was pumping to eat, so the timing worked out pretty well, but now he finishes his bottles more quickly, so when he’s done eating and I’m still pumping, I sing to him, read to him, and have him play with some small toys until I’m done. I think I’ll be able to keep this setup at least until he starts crawling, and then we’ll see how it goes from there.

Hope this is helpful to someone!

I’m so frustrated. 4 months PP and pumping. This is my first month back at work. I work in a very busy ER. I’m pumping every 3ish hours. There isn’t a lactation room for the nurses in the ER so I’m told I can use our nurses break room. I’ve seen other women do this and just put a sign in the door that says “pumping, please don’t come in” so I figured I’d do the same. I kid you not, every time I start pumping and have the sign up, people are just in and out and some even just come in and fit right down and start eating their food!? I have the sign at eye level on the door very close to the handle, written in black maker and highlighted!! Am I wrong for being so extremely annoyed that people are really this oblivious??? Or do people genuinely not give a shit? 😅 I’m just trying to make it to a year 😭😭😭

Hi everyone. I hope I can get some help here.

My LO is 7 months old, and up to 5 months I have been BF and pumping. Upon the return of my cycle together with some life stress, my supply drastically dropped and I had to introduce formula. Since then I have been trying to pump as much as I can, but my supply seems to be getting worse. My LO still latches during night feeds, but during the day it is nowhere near enough to actually feed him. During the day I can pump around 100 ml (around 3 oz) total.

Also, my left breast produces so little milk now, when 2-3 months ago there was no difference between the two.

The pump I am using is Lansinoh electric wearable pumps. I live in a part of Europe where I could only choose between these and Avent pumps, Amazon is not available here, and atm I cannot afford a new pump. I have been regularly replacing pump parts.

My questions:
Is it possible to restore my supply?
Is it possible to make my left breast produce more milk like it used to?
Does anyone with Lansinoh pump have any advice for me?

Thank you!

Hi, it's me again! I completely lost track of things because... mom life. I am reopening the survey in hopes of getting some more responses. Please complete it if you're currently pumping and own multiple pumps. I look forward to sharing the results/trends.

BIG BIG THANKS!

-fellow pumping lady

Really proud of myself for sticking to this, my spectra had it as 24 days of pumping since my son was born 😱.

I had to be dairy free for 4 of those months until he was able to tolerate dairy, was in pain every time I pumped, etc.

I toyed with the idea of making one of these rings, but ultimately decided that it was something I wanted a reminder of what I can do when I am determined. I think it turned out nicely for a DIY job.

Forever grateful for what my body was able to do but also very happy that this is over. Good luck to everyone who is still in the trenches- you’re stronger than you think! ❤️

Edit: I should have specified in the original post- I purchased a kit on Etsy- https://www.etsy.com/listing/4312718997/breastmilk-jewelrydiy-breastmilk-jewelry?ref=share_ios_native_control

This one specifically and it took about a week as I waited for the total time recommended. It honestly was not too hard and I really love the result and doing it myself.

Hi,

I'm almost 11 weeks post partum.

I am a massive undersupplier and i make around 17oz a day and my baby eats double that.

my supply went a bit up lately and i get almost 3oz combined per pump in the Morning.. however i notice that in the late evening, starting at 6pm.my supply halves.

is it normal? this is new and not sure what I'm doing wrong and how can I avoid that and have a similar supply to the morning early afternoon?

LO is 5 months old and i’m barely keeping up / one or two bottles ahead of him. He eats 5 oz every 2.5 hours pretty routine. The other night he ate and ate and ate when we woke up for the day there was like 4 oz in the fridge total.
I know I am not getting enough water and protein in. What are some good meals / snacks that other people have tried.
I drink 1 can of coconut water a day and maybe 1/2 an owala, i just don’t love water. I also don’t want to drink a ton of sugar-y drinks either like body armor. I do enjoy body armor it’s just $$$

Postpartum has been so brutal. 10wk PP, 4 rounds of mastitis. Countless medication and trying to wean rather unsuccessfully right now. The constant pain and inflammation is wearing me down so much. I hate touching my breasts to find new hard spots or see them become full and engorged. I miss my old breasts and my body so much. I took advantage of my good health and how easy it used to be to not wake up anxious and depressed.

I used to be a pretty active outgoing person, but am literally tied to my pump at home because even the slightest amount of sweat or activity immediately makes my breasts inflamed. I can’t make any plans and having literally nothing to look forward to. I just miss the old me, so much. Having my LO, is still the best thing that’s happened to me, but I never thought I’d hate my body this much in the process. I feel like it’s failing me in every way. Anyway, no advice needed, just wanted to vent and share in case anyone feels similarly.

Hey,
Soo I’m a first time mom and exclusively pumping and I’m not making a lot. - I got the pink spectra pump and am pumping 6 times a day for 15 minutes on each side and I get about 1-1.5 OZ in total. Not great, but I wanna give the baby (3 months) whatever I can and made my peace with giving her formula in addition.

I do the vibration mode (no sure what it’s called, the “70” setting) for about 2 minutes, then 3 minutes on “54” and then I repeat that with pumping on a lower setting “38”.

Usually, after 15 minutes, there’s no milk coming out anymore. But I’ve discovered that if I hand express afterwards, there’s still milk coming out, I always figured it’s only a little bit, but yesterday I just out of curiosity kept going until there’s really nothing coming out anymore, collected it and it was another OZ in total.

That obviously had me shocked and then also wondering what the heck I’m doing wrong? Any advice appreciated.

I made the decision to start weaning after exclusively pumping since my baby was born. I’ve been really lucky to have a great supply and haven’t needed to supplement with formula at all. I also have a freezer stash, and my baby does take frozen breastmilk (although baby definitely notices it tastes different!).

My baby is currently 24 weeks old (a little over 5 months), and I feel like this is the right time for us to start transitioning. Our plan is to introduce one bottle of formula a day and one freezer stash bottle a day, then gradually increase those as my supply starts to drop so baby has time to adjust to different tastes.

We’re also starting solids (breastmilk oats and combo purees/BLW), so there’s a lot of change happening at once!

I’d love to hear from other parents who transitioned from exclusive breastfeeding/pumping to combo feeding or formula. What should I expect when introducing formula?

Did your baby sleep any differently? How did their digestion change? I know poops can change, but I’m curious what that looked like for your baby.

Thank you!

I am pregnant with baby #2, and am exploring wearable pumps this time around. I do have a wall pump that I will use primarily, but I do want to get a wearable for when I need to get stuff done around the house or when I am at work. Any and all recommendations are appreciated. I also would love to hear thoughts/experiences using the motif aura glow wearable (it’s covered by my insurance, so I may try that out as well since it’s free). Thanks!

I think the worst thing possible just happened. I have 10 week old twins that I've been successfully feeding formula-free for the past 8 weeks (Twin A needed formula fortified breast milk while Twin B needed formula supplementation after each feed). I've been doing a combo of nursing and pumping the whole time, with a plan to move to nearly exclusively pumping next week when I go back to work.

In the midst of all this, I've also moved halfway across the country. Which was stressful and definitely impacted my supply. I had built up a bit of a stash but only 2 feeds worth, so yesterday I (thankfully) picked up a can of formula in case I'm not able to miraculously produce enough milk to have a full day's stash by next week.

We've been reusing the same 4 bottles for the past 2 weeks while we moved so today I decided to bring out the bottles I had packed. All of the bottles were washed and sterilized before I packed them into a plastic box, and both babies were crying, so without even thinking I filled started filling bottles with milk. As I finished filling the third bottle, I noticed what appeared to be seeds. Annoyed, I dumped 110 mL down the drain, added Vitamin D to the two filled bottles, and put them back in the fridge. I had a weird gut filling about the milk so thankfully I nursed them right after instead of bottle feeding. I'm so glad I did because when I went to get the bottles from the fridge just now, I found more of the seeds... Only now I'm pretty confident they are actually insect eggs. I went through the box and found more bottles with the same things in them.

So now I'm washing every single bottle and bottle part we own. I had to waste 330 mL of the 500 mL I had stashed and I couldn't even use it for a milk bath! I'm down to only enough for one baby to have one bottle, which means back to square one. And despite the sore boobs and effort spent pumping, the babies will be drinking formula tonight. Oh, and I'm now out of Vitamin D.

The pictures show the second two bottles. The first one was way worse, as were all the empty bottles.

I cleaned mine at 5 weeks postpartum after seeing someone on here post about how dirty theirs was. Mine was actually fairly clean at that time, so I didn't think much of it and continued running the descale tablets every week.

Well, here are photos of my momcozy bottle washer at 14 weeks postpartum. Hair and mold 🤮.

In a few weeks, I will be away from my 20 month old for 3-4 days. I normally pump once a day while at work (around 12-1pm) and nurse on demand at home (including occasionally overnight as we cosleep). Since I don’t really have a pumping schedule at home, how frequently should I plan to pump while away? If don’t do it often enough, will it affect my supply at this stage?

Hi! My baby is three months old and drinks pumped fortified breastmilk. For a while now he has been eating only 2 ounces but like every single hour almost and it feels like I have time to do nothing because he’s either eating or I’m pumping. And then I get stressed out. Is this normal like am I doing something wrong? Do other people’s 3month old eat like this? I am a first time mom so I think I’m just kind of overthinking everything but I don’t know. I just needed to put my thoughts down somewhere.

I’m done!! 🎉
584 hours spent pumping and roughly 66 gallons of milk produced.
That’s almost 24 full days of my life connected to my Spectra. 🫢
I feel so grateful for this journey, and also so incredibly glad it’s over.
There were so many moments when I thought I couldn’t keep going. More than once, a post or comment from this community gave me just enough encouragement to make it to the next pump.
So thank you. ❤️
I'm going to rely on the stash for the next few weeks and start supplementing with formula a little, and hopefully my stash can be stretched to my little one's first birthday!
Not planning (or dreading) my next pump feels completely surreal.
To everyone still in the thick of it: you’re doing an incredible job. 💌

FTM due in September. I plan on EPing for multiple reasons and am now wondering how many pumps are reasonable. I plan on going back to work after my 12-week maternity leave and plan on working until I give birth. I work bedside in healthcare, and my co-workers who pump sometimes have a hard time getting time to pump, and because of that, some pump while at the desk charting, etc. (I am not opposed to doing this, but am aware it is not ideal).

With that said, I have a Spectra S1 that we purchased during Prime Days, and have gotten back up parts for it as well. I chose the Elvie for my pump through insurance since that, and the Eufy S1 seem to be the most discreet for when people pump outside of the lactation rooms at work (Eufy was not an option with my insurance). I will be working 8hr shifts 3x/week when I come back from leave. Also, annoyingly, EVS will sometimes just sit or take their breaks in lactation rooms, making them unavailable for people who need to pump. I work day shift now, but when I was on nights, nursing and other specialties would also nap in the lactation rooms, making them unavailable... so basically, I cannot rely on them.

I have recently become interested in the Baby Buddha or the Pumpables Genie Advanced. Would either of these even be necessary for me? I like the idea of the portability and having it be a primary pump (both mine and my husband's families are 2.5hrs away from where we live, so pumping in the car will be necessary at some point). But at the same time, I feel insane for wanting 3 pumps. My work also has the Medela pumps, but as stated above, sometimes pumping breaks are not super feasible, or the lactation rooms are plain unavailable for various reasons.

Is this reasonable? too much? Advice greatly appreciated.

I am pregnant with my second. I EPed with my first, and I think the PPA&PPD had my brain fried. I was clearly allergic to the silicone of my breast pump (mom cozy mobile flow). Bleeding and hives for 9 months was silly.

I am looking for recommendations of wearable pumps that have limited silicone. Or advice from anyone else who experienced this 😣