Breastfeeding and the Working Mom

Lets talk about boobs! Only sort of, lets talk about breastfeeding!

As a new mother it was really important to me to breastfeed my baby. But things do not go as planned. My little girl was born 5 weeks early and it took about 4.5 days for my milk to come in, and I wasn't getting much if anything of the colostrum (the thicker stuff that comes out first). So those first days of her life she was getting formula through a feeding tube in the NICU.

Once she got the sucking thing down the NICU was bottle feeding her at night when I wasn't there and they wanted me to add some formula to my breast milk to give her some more calories...so we were still bottle feeding her. Trying to do bottle and breast was just confusing her so we went straight to bottle feeding her breast milk. I didn't really have a problem with this.

Then she started eating more and I wasn't producing more! It hurt my heart that I could not provide for my little one. But you do what you gotta do and now she is getting formula and and whatever breast milk I can provide for her. My lactation nurse told me to up my pumping from 6 times a day to 8 but I did not see an increase in amount so I went back to 6. I feel like breastfeeding/pumping is sort of like a catch 22 - they say you need to pump every 2-3 hours to keep good flow but that you also need to get good sleep. Um, how can I get good sleep if I have to wake up twice a night to pump?!

{Medela Backpack}

To help boost my milk production I took gaia HERBS Fenugreek Seed supplements and Go-Lacta's Malunggay. I felt like both of these really help! I also tried the Milky product you can buy online or at Destination Maternity and in my opinion it was disgusting! And I didn't feel like it helped much (and they were expensive).

Pumping at work was good, my company has a Mother's Room where I can go do my thing and store my milk. And it broke up my day which is nice. However, I feel like for me it just became too much work for not enough milk. I was pumping 5-6 times a day for only about 10oz of milk when my daughter is putting down about 28oz a day. So I decided to slowly stop, it took about a week.

I got my Medela pump through my insurance (saving me about $300) and the extra things I keep in my breastpump bag are:
- Hands free pumping bra; Simple Wishes
- Wash basin (I took one of the little tubs they gave me at the hospital)
- Small bottle of dish soap
- Hand sanatizer
- Cleaning wipes
- Lanolin cream, sample size