Breast feeding vs expressing

I have the Isis Manual and have tried the electric Isis one. I really like them.

For the other question I am not too sure. Perhaps you should talk to your midwife because having baby on the breast may help bring your milk in easier.

i would definately say give it a go, that way once you have an established supply you can express and on the countdown to going back to work, start dropping one feed a week during work hours, and instead express.. Some women find it hard to let down to the pump, esepcailly so if they have not yet done so by having baby feed so they know the feeling. plus, by bf first off it means that when you ARE home, you can just BF.

I studied so would BF whenever i could going at lunch times etc to feed and in breaks between classes, but when on placement, i would pump, and Ayja would have bottles.. after a few it got a bit much and i was running myself into the ground so switched to formula for the bottles when needed, but still BF whever i was with her.

The other thing you can look into, is see if there is a daycare that is close by to your work.. many mums go at lunch breaks to feed babies and baby has bottle for any feeds needed in between, cuts down work, and fills in your lunch hour when you are most likely sitting around thinking "i wonder how baby is?"

Generally, medella pumps are great.. from experience these are the ones most hospitals have and use and mums that i work with find them good, you can hire electric medella ones but if it's a long term thing then i'd suggest buying, you can get the mini electrics, or hand pumps, because hiring can cost alot and you'd pay less just to buy.

In saying that, i used hhhm, i can't remember the brand, i think it was pur, hand pump.. when i was studying and it was fine for me. i think with hand ones, try and make sure that you get one that is one-hand operated, cos sometimes you need that extra hand to keep everything steady and sitting right, lol.

lol... Have a heap of info on this because as part of my training i developed a booklet for mothers returning to work and studying and wanting to contiue bfing. lol

Edited by mum2paris

lets see - you have to put the machine on to pump the milk out, then store the milk, then re heat it when feeding the baby, and hope you pump out enough, wash and sterilise bottles and pump as opposed to open up shirt and attach baby... the breast pump may say it helps build up milk supply but at the end of the day it is only a machine and wouldnt do as good a job as the real deal.

breastfeeding can be hard, but not always, some women find it really easy and have no problems. you wont know till you try it tho.

but you can still give the occasional feed - like at night and on weekends. i dont think that doing both to start with will do any harm. nic01 seemed to have the right idea - she said she does both.

At the moment I am breast feeding and expressinbg in the mornings and evenings. I will be going back to work, but only for two days a week. Personally i find expressing a pain, but I still want bubs to have breastmilk when I am away. We introduced the bottle at 3 weeks ( I wanted to introduce at about a week, but too many other things to worry about!) and that has been working well. We give bubs a bottle a day of expressed breast milk to keep him used to it. Its quite nice, as hubby can give bubs the last bottle at night which gets him invloved and also give me an early night! I have avent hand pump, which is good but I am thinking I should have got an electric one now!

I think mixing & matching the bottle & breast is fine as long as your bub is happy to take both. Personally, I find breastfeeding a lot easier than expressing. Like Emma said - to keep your milk supply up with expressing you really need to express every time baby has a feed. That means that if you're giving a bottle in the middle of the night, you'll need to express at the same time which can make for a very tired mum!!
The only thing I enjoy about expressing is it means I get 20 minutes or so of 'time out' at work when I can't do anything else!

if you wanted, you could possibly express after each feed from early on - but keep in mind that it will dramatically increase your supply as you will be stimulating more than baby feeding.. ie baby will stimulate as much milk as it needs then expressing on top of that will make more.. so as long as you keep it up it would be ok, but if you were to miss a time, or stop suddenly.. you risk lots of pain, engorgement and possibly infection from blocked ducts.

I mean in the grand scheme, some babies do get the nipple confusion and others dont and you can't say which will and which won't, but from what i have seen so far at work, it tends to be those that introduce the bottle then do the only bottle one feed and only breast the next etc.. if you want to try a bottle, give a little bit of a breastfeed to stop baby being frantic first, then try half way through.. cos introducing some weird foreign thing when baby is already starving will make it hella pissed off with you. lol that way you can still givce both.. but bear in mind you'll have to express afterwards to take off what baby didn't feed from you... other wise supply will drop. argh it's all so complicated who thought motherhood was so fricken complicated.

doing both.. ie bottles during day/while you are at work and then bf when you are with baby and during weekends.. does and has worked for lots of mummies.. i think that's the reason i kept feeding Ayja for so long.. that and after feeling so let down by the badd experience i had with Paris.. i had ayja who fed well.. so kept with it for 14 mths just cos i probably was trying to make up for not having that the first time.. and i was too damn lazy to get up at night and make bottles - still am.. i wake mike and he gets her up, brings her to our bed and makes her a bottle.. i just have to stay awake till she's finished and put her back to bed.lolol

Edited by mum2paris

Letting the baby suckle builds up your milk supply really really well.  The trouble with expressing to build it up is that you don't know how much to express, and can end up with too much milk (hmmm, not comfy).  I found breastfeeding hard work for the first 2 weeks, but after that, it hasn't been uncomfortable at all.  I'd suggest trying to breastfeed and give it long enough to get through that initial 'yuk' phase (which after giving birth, you can definantly handle  ), and after then you could be right as rain!  I know some women get trouble with sore nipples or infections after that initial phase, but none of us know if that's going to happen until we give it a go.  Anyway, it's a personal choice and I'm not trying to push my opinion (based only on my little tiny bit of experience) on you - just wanted to share what I've learned.  And I've learned that breastfeeding is much easier, for me anyway.  Expressing has it's place, but it's just so much more work, and heating milk with one hand while a baby screams in the middle of the night isn't great fun, neither was sitting there at 2am with a breastpump afterwards while Ella slept away and the bags under my eyes got darker and darker!  Also, Ella had no trouble taking a bottle the few times I've given her one.  And I suppose again, that's one of those things you don't know if it'll work with your baby until you try it.  So much guesswork!! 

I'm still using a hospital grade Medela electric that I hired and it is so effective.

Sienna is having the Avent bottles and Mercedes is using the Nuk anti-colic ones and neither of them seem to have nipple teat confusion.