When V was young, I used to write a lot more stuff here that was vaguely intended for an audience of intending parents, based largely on all the parenting and somewhat-parenting blogs I was devouring in the 2000s for the same reason. (See our advice tag for a bit of older stuff that’s still public.)
These days I skip that a fair bit, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, most of the intending parents I know of who read this now have children, and have no particular use for my advice. Either they ignored it, it worked, or it didn’t work; I think a mixture of options one and three. Second, I have no advice on parenting four year olds. Don’t look at me. I was (am) OK with babies, but kids are hard.
But once more unto the breach eh? I’d just like to note Sarah’s and L’s advice about getting a pump bra (or making one, I know) so that I wouldn’t have to spend twenty minutes hunching over and clutching my pump to my chest three times a day every work day. (Hunching because I want the milk to flow down, and my nipples point up.) I’m on day one with the Simple Wishes bra (L: your advice was good, but I am so uncrafty and lacking in even basic supplies that by the time I got around to following it, I’d not be pumping any more) and it’s working well. Very flexible sizing too, as far as I can tell. I only regret that when I chose “pink” from the store they meant “pale pink like pale skin”, not “pink like fuchsia” which was what I was hoping for. PINK LIKE FUCHSIA PLEASE.
So there you go. If you’re going to be pumping multiple times a day, at least, if you’re going to be using an electric pump, my advice is to get a pump bra and go hands-free. This advice is brought to you transitively by people who advised me thus a few weeks ago.
I’ve generally been having a harder time pumping for A than I did for V. I think a few things are going on:
- It’s boring hunching over a pump for ages every work day, which is what I am hoping this bra will sort out for me. So far so good.
- I learned in the last month or so from pumping for V that I didn’t actually need to pump three times a day lest I explode (get mastitis), so I’ve neglected to pump three times a day for A even though she actually needs me to pump at least that much to supply enough bottles while she’s still exclusively breast-milk-fed. Mastitis was so motivating.
- I don’t think my supply is what it was when I was last pumping in 2010, probably because I’ve been lactating for a good long while now and I’m very demand driven. I remember with V being able to pump 250mL at a time, three times a day, quite regularly (which was far more than he actually drank, I ended up with about two months of milk frozen for him). My record with A is about 160mL, and 120mL is common, which is less than she drinks each feed (I visit the childcare centre at least once every work day to nurse her directly).
- On reflection, he was only exclusively breast-milk-fed at daycare for about six or eight weeks, because he wasn’t as young when he started there. So they were able to use solids to fill his belly much sooner after he started than A’s carers have been able to. (He didn’t really reliably eat solids in my presence for many months, but on his childcare days he ate there.)
In other news, she and I depart for the United States in about eighteen hours. So, expect stories.