How soon can I express?
- Thread starter Kimmyj_b
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Baby Bean
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You can express straight away but you might want to wait a few weeks so baby learns how to latch properly to the breast as sometimes they can get confused and lazy if a bottle or dummy is introduced too soon before they're established. Trust your instincts tho as you'll find they are usually right! Good luck x
xYou're not likely to until the baby comes.
I would wait a few weeks to start expressing regularly to be honest. You need to have a good supply in place for your baby and that gets established by responding specifically to his or her needs. It's hard as you seem to be doing all the work but your other half can get involved by waking with you and handing the baby over to you in the night as well.
I had a hard time getting established and when I started adding expressing into the mix of things I started to produce too much. Sometimes I would have the opposite problem and I would just finish expressing when baby would wake up and I would have to feed from a weak breast, rendering it all useless anyway.
Some people combi feed successfully and some people express successfully but I wasn't one of the latter. There's nothing to say you can't be successful with it but milk supply is quite a delicate thing in the early weeks. It's all very well wanting your other half to do the night feeds with expressed milk but you still have to wake up to express during the night anyway otherwise your supply diminishes. It rendered it redundant with me and I can see it putting people off breastfeeding completely. I found eventually I got into a good rhythm of waking twice nightly to feed my baby back to sleep and that helped a lot with reducing engorgement etc. I now have milk whenever my baby needs it and I hardly ever leak anymore. That only happened once I stopped using the pump and interfering with it. My husband gets up to change the baby, hand him over to me while I feed lying down and then again to put him back down. He's involved and I couldn't do it without him. It is hard, and it is restricting but it is how I've managed to breastfeed for five months exclusively. Baby has never had an ear infection, colic, reflux or even wind and he reliably feeds to sleep every single night. He's not a crier either. Milk always settles him.
Google why African babies don't cry. It's an article that's really sustained me through breastfeeding and doing it without any top ups or emergency supplies of frozen milk. It also taught me how to respond to my baby. That's essential for a healthy milk supply. You interfere with it, that's when you start to doubt yourself.
Good luck.
I would wait a few weeks to start expressing regularly to be honest. You need to have a good supply in place for your baby and that gets established by responding specifically to his or her needs. It's hard as you seem to be doing all the work but your other half can get involved by waking with you and handing the baby over to you in the night as well.
I had a hard time getting established and when I started adding expressing into the mix of things I started to produce too much. Sometimes I would have the opposite problem and I would just finish expressing when baby would wake up and I would have to feed from a weak breast, rendering it all useless anyway.
Some people combi feed successfully and some people express successfully but I wasn't one of the latter. There's nothing to say you can't be successful with it but milk supply is quite a delicate thing in the early weeks. It's all very well wanting your other half to do the night feeds with expressed milk but you still have to wake up to express during the night anyway otherwise your supply diminishes. It rendered it redundant with me and I can see it putting people off breastfeeding completely. I found eventually I got into a good rhythm of waking twice nightly to feed my baby back to sleep and that helped a lot with reducing engorgement etc. I now have milk whenever my baby needs it and I hardly ever leak anymore. That only happened once I stopped using the pump and interfering with it. My husband gets up to change the baby, hand him over to me while I feed lying down and then again to put him back down. He's involved and I couldn't do it without him. It is hard, and it is restricting but it is how I've managed to breastfeed for five months exclusively. Baby has never had an ear infection, colic, reflux or even wind and he reliably feeds to sleep every single night. He's not a crier either. Milk always settles him.
Google why African babies don't cry. It's an article that's really sustained me through breastfeeding and doing it without any top ups or emergency supplies of frozen milk. It also taught me how to respond to my baby. That's essential for a healthy milk supply. You interfere with it, that's when you start to doubt yourself.
Good luck.
