Pumping, 8 months, less milk?

Posted by crj 20 yrs ago

Hi

I am not worried about my milk supply when baby drinks, I am worried about not being able to pump what I used to.

I know that after 6 months or so the baby is a more efficient eater, and my boobs are more efficient milk makers (mooooo), so they don't feel full and when baby sucks they produce milk. Which is all great.

I pump every day in the morning, I used to get 150-200 ml.

Now I only get about 100ml.

We use this milk to mix with 'solids' and the random bottle (not many).

In addition, I had to go to a meeting and missed a feed today, so when I got home (an hour after feeding time) I pumped. I got less than 40ml.

Advise please:

1. Has anyone else experienced a reduction in pumping volume after 7 months (or when your noticed your body and baby becoming more efficient)?

2. Willthis resolve itself, or does pumping just 'dry up' eventually, even though breast feeding continues?

Thanks

hkchoichoi 20 yrs ago

Hi CRJ -

going through similar issues - although my baby is a month younger. I used to pump one breast in the AM - and get around 100-120ml and now, one breast (this is before my daughter feeds) i'm getting around 60-80. I remember it happening last time with my first daughter as well. I even do a 10:30 PM pump even though my daugther doesn't take milk at that time just to keep my supply up and get more milk for stored up for future. (I burned through a LOT this summer.) I'm trying to get it back up to around 100ml per breast by drinking the Korean seaweed soup, but doesn't seem to be happening. I guess it's just slowly starting to taper off.

crj 20 yrs ago

HKCC-

Thanks so much for the post.

Good to learn it is not just me.

Terrible to learn you have this problem too.

So how do women work pump and breast feed if the pumping reduces so much?

crj 20 yrs ago

Waffle - the feed you had to 'drop' did you replace it with formula? or frozen milk from freezer?

hkchoichoi 20 yrs ago

from now on, your little one will be taking more in solids anyways. So it's not THAT big of a concern. I think for my next child , I'm going to try and pump more when I have it (like in the early days) instead of thinking that I will always have enough production to bank it for the future.

My sister in law did it - but her milk supply fell off as well. But she also explained to me that by the time it did, she had enough milked banked in the freezer and her daughter was taking in solids and so by 11 months, she didn't have to pump anymore.

crj 20 yrs ago

I have some in the freezer, we are using 'june' now. I think I have enough cubes for meals, but they are going twice as fast. Before, I was pumping the same amount I was using daily - so it was status quo in the freezer.

I thought this is great, I will b/f until one year, then still have 3 months supply in freezer to give a sippy cup of BM every day... I guess not?

At this rate, I might not have enough to last the entire 1st year :(

But now, I use 2-3 times what I pump daily, and that is without bottle feeds. So while before we were always using the 3 month old milk, I will finish June and July in September... And with the small amount I am pumping, I am probably going to be at the point where there is nothing in the freezer by October, and I will have to pump 3-4 days to get one bottle!

With work picking up, they want me in the office more which would mean more bottle feeds and running through my supply too fast...

Yikes, nobody warned me about this!!

hkchoichoi 20 yrs ago

I pump twice a day - get about 120 mls total - and my daughter takes 240-250 mls at a feed. SO I feel your pain. You're lucky you're only on June - I'm burning through august - but now i'll have to bottle feed less now that the schedule has gotten better for me.

Just know that you will start using less as your baby eats more. You can start mixing foods with different veggie purees vs. just breastmilk now that he is getting used to textures and tastes. (avocado mixed with a carrot puree instead of your breastmilk.) save the breastmilk for the important bottle. Oatmeal/rice cereal with a summer squash puree or even the winter squash puree is also nice. Can do some runny fruit puree with it as well since you mention on another post he likes it thick and chunky.

And keep pumping. Even if he drops his amount during his feeds, you can try pumping to keep it up more. After one year, he's going to be down to one feed a day (usually at night before bed) and so you won't have to resort to your freezer supply and you can just give it to him directly.

crj 20 yrs ago

Thanks HKCC!

Great your schedule is working better. It's hard isn't it? (I mean everything!)

For breakfast I use about 5-6 breast milk cubes, yogurt, 4-5 mango or papaya cubes and mixed whole grain to make his thick cereal.

For lunch and dinner he gets 2 bm cubes with about 5-7 veggie cubes as well as tofu or egg yolk.

For dessert of each meal he gets yogurt and fruit. So it is only really the breakfast that has a lot of bm cubes. I'll try to cut back a bit and use more fruit and yogurt with breakfast.

It's all about calories for our baby- he is so darn active and won't get back to the 10%- so we need to feed feed feed him calories! (or tie him down so he stops burning them so quickly!)

For me, if I could BF every meal, and just use the cubes for meals, I would be fine.

I am worried b/c of work and that they want me in the office more (they are also pushing me for business trips, but I keep saying no).

Anyway, good to know the 6/7 month 'drop' in pumping supply is normal, and I just have to deal with it rather than stress out too much.

Perthites 20 yrs ago

I am also going thru the same problem. I am expressing full time and need to give bubs 4 bottles a day> I could usually manage to make up about 240ml out of my 4 pumps but now i'm luck if i can get 3 240mls bottles I have started to go to my frozen supply. Bubs is now drinking less as she is on solids but i am about to go home for 2 weeks and not sure what i can do as my frozen supply will be here and i'll be there! I'm going to call the airline to see if they will keep some on dry ice for me but if they can't i might have no chice but to go onto formula. I suppose i should get some formula from here so bubs will always be on the same brand. I'm a little concerned to say the least.

crj 20 yrs ago

I carried frozen bm on the plane. I had a 'freezer 2 go' bag, and asked the airline for dry ice, which they replaced half way through for us. They also put the bag in a cool or freezer compartment for us. It lasted from HK to UK!! We were amazed.

Fridge To Go we bought at Horizon Plaza at BBQ Galore... oh, but you are in Singapore, so check their website to see where it is sold.

It is a soft frame cooler bag but inside each wall is an ice pack- so you put it in your freezer at home, and it freezes... then stays cold quite a good amount of time. you might need more than one for your trip.

http://www.fridge-to-go.com/

I must say this thread, although very helpful, is so depressing!! I can't believe it we are all trying to do our best and breast feed our babies, but seem to face uphill battles all the time.

For Perthites, it is that she has to feed expressed breast milk

For HKCC and myself it is our work schedules interfering with breast feeding

For Waffle, she had to drop a feed before she planned to

*sigh*

Ok, rant over, thanks again for the knowledge that this happens to everyone... and we do not stay cows forever :)

Perthites 20 yrs ago

Well i rang the airline and they told me they couldn't accomadate me by keeping my frozen milk frozen which was disappointing. It's only a 7 hour flight but maybe i will try calling again tomorrow maybe i will get a different person who will be more sympathetic to my plight. They also told me they there will be no bassent for the return day flight which will be interesting as our bubs 7mths gets bored VERY quickly.

crj 20 yrs ago

Oh, they didn't tell me previously, the head air attendant arranged it when we boarded... they were very nice about it indeed.

We have done this on 4 flights now, all accomodated us without a problem.

But this was before 10 August, so maybe rules are stricter now and you will have to taste everything before they let you board with it?

Perthites 20 yrs ago

Crj,Waffle,HHCC how much BM does your baby have each day and how old are they?

hkchoichoi 20 yrs ago

Baby is almost 7 months. (in 10 days.)

Began weaning on August 11. (6 months old.)

Still feeds four times a day - 7:30 AM, 11:00 AM, 2:30 PM and 6:30 PM. Generally all are breast fed, but if she takes a bottle she takes 240 ml, but my helper seems to think she could take more. A couple of times she has taken 250ml when I just had breastmilk and some extra flowed into there.

I'm about to start her third meal next week. So she'll have three smallish meals but continue with the four breastfeeds. I plan to have her drop one of them in the next month or so, following her lead. My first daughter just naturally dropped one - I never forced her to. I'm hoping to do the same with my second.

Perthites 20 yrs ago

wow HHCC your four feeds are pretty close to mine. and she was taking 240mls but since moving onto 3 meals a day is taking anything from 180mls to 240mls. the first botles she usuall drinks 240mls. i have no idea if she is moving towards dropping one of her feeds and if she did which one it would be. I started feeding her 3 meals as she began waking up VERY early after my hubby left for work 5.30am -6am. i thought she couldn't put herself back to sleep beacuse she was hungry but feeding her at dinner and breaky has only made a little difference. Still i'm not complaining she sleeps thru and the extra meals have got her thru to about 6.30-7am. But my BM has dropped right off i'm lucky to get out 200mls. I pump in the morning (after 9hrs) and use to get 180 from one and 160 from the other breast and now i get 140 and 110.

HHCC what signs do you expect to see from Emily that tell you she is ready to drop a feed. Do you expect she'll just refuse when it's offered or maybe that she'll slowly drink less at a particular feed.

hkchoichoi 20 yrs ago

I remember that the first feed Emily dropped was her 2:30 feed. One day she barely took any so the next day I just didn't give her any. It was also convenient for me (so maybe I pushed it) as I often had students start coming from that time, so not having to prepare a bottle was really good. But I just reread Gina Ford and the first feed she drops is the LUNCH feed. After the baby has a full lunch with protein - then that lunch feed gets dropped and she still has the 2:30 breastfeed. I might try it that way as it makes more sense in terms of the spacing of it all.

In terms of your baby waking - is her room close to where your husband gets ready? The noises in the early morning could disturb her if it's a serious issue. My two girls sleep together, right next to where their father gets ready for work and they sleep with the door open. At first it used to cause them to stir but now they seem to sleep through it. At any rate, they are up at 7:00 but can happily play in the dark for about 15 minutes before Emily comes looking for me. (i'm usually trying to get the last ounces out of one of my boobs.)

Right now I already feel that Isabella is slowly starting to draw back from her lunch feed. She has her bfeed and then her meal and at 11:15 she still wasn't that hungry and so only breastfed for about 8 minutes. She took her nap as usual and woke up at 2:30 and definitely took more at this feed. So maybe she's getting ready to drop it and once I offer her the meal (from Monday) she'll not want as much.

How much food are you giving each of your meals? Right now Isabella is at around 4 TB a meal. I'll keep it at that for a while longer, although I'll add another meal. I'm trying to keep her on the breast as much as possible and so we'll see.

I could only get out 65 mls out of one breast this morning. it was pathetic. I sat there massaging, rubbing and doing all sorts of antics to get more. I'm drinking so much water I'm peeing more than I was before I was pregnant. My grandmother recommended pomegranate juice - which is really big here right now in Korea. i'm going to try drinking some of that as well. But the constant peeing! YIKES!

Perthites 20 yrs ago

HKCC, I was followig the wholesome baby foods menu so ceral and a fruit for breaky, cereal/grain and a veg or friut for lunch and fruit for dinner. I found the dinner wasn't enough so upped it to two serves. I suppose i'm could be giving her more serves per meal but i was worried she wouldn't drink her milk and that is suppose to be the most important meal still. She left quite a lot of milk this morning out of a 240ml bottle she left about 100 but i used about 20mls in her cereal.

This morning after 9hrs i managed to pump out 270mls. It was a very slow process and i'm just so surprised by the dramatic drop in supply. I have some nursing mothers tea so i might try that again. I have been a little stressed the last couple of weeks and my period is due so i thought that was what it was but then i saw this thread! It's just quite an emotional thing though hard to discribe to hubby, well i am still managing to provide BM for my daughter so i am reminding myself that this is what matters right now and not to get ahead of myself worrying i can't provide it at all.

SIMPLYTHEBEST My pumping sessions vary depending on how long it's been i try to pump every 5 hrs during my waking day. I pump for a minimum 15mins but probably about 20 and lately as my supply has dropped off i have been taking longer. I alwasy pump till i can't get any more milk out. I also stop frequently massage a little and start again as the suction generats more milk to come out.

:-)) 20 yrs ago

crj, don't be too depressed about diminishing stock in the freezer. You have done amazingly well to create such a stockpile in the first place. Regardless of how fast it diminishes, it will enable your baby to have the goodness of her mother's milk for longer than she would have done otherwise.

One thing that DEFINITELY reduces the amount you can pump is WORRY about how little you are pumping. So try to think positive about what you are providing for your baby. Look at info (such as on the LLL website) which shows all the benefits of mother's milk, so you can keep that in mind when trying to express. And try to breastfeed directly as much as possible when you are not at work (or have your helper bring your baby to you for a visit sometimes), to keep your supply up.

firsttimemom 20 yrs ago

Aiyaaah. Looks like I can look forward to this same problem when bubs reaches 6 months!!

When I pump from one breast only I get far far less than when I pump from both, even if I've just fed from one. So now I pump from both all the time.

I'm going to try the icecube thing, because we've had to discard too much milk when he doesnt go through the whole 4.5 oz I've saved in each packet. How do you store your milk in cubes after they've formed? In a sterlised bag? and how do you take them out afterwards without compromising the sterility? and can you tell how many ml/oz is one milk cube?

Thanks!

Perthites 20 yrs ago

yes we count every day with our daughter as such a blessing...just can't believe how lucky we are.

Firsttimemum

I never thought to store my milk in ice cube trays i always put it straight into a freezer bag. Now she is drinking so little i just manipulate the daily's expressed milk to smaller amounts i usually gve her more than i think she needs as although some gets wasted ( and i do HATE to waste it) I don't want to be going back a forward to the freezer if she needs more for that particular feed.

crj 20 yrs ago

Perthites -

Baby is almost 8 months old.

He was 3.5 Kilos when born, and is now just 7 kilos.

We are still on 6x breast feeds a day. We really want to drop the 10pm feed, but because he is still below the 10%, the Midwife has advised us to keep it.

I don't know exactly how much he eats - it varies from under 10 minutes of fast and furious sucking, to the rare 25-30 minutes of laxy slow sucking.

We give bottles very rarely, and he does not take to them well. Usually only 100-150.

But he does take to his solids well most of the time chowing down about 175-200 ml of solids per meal (3 meals a day).

FTM

Pumping, I always double pump, it is more efficient in terms of milk production for some reason.

Freezer cubes and bags:

We use freezer ice cube trays with lids. They fit into our steraliser, which is handy! We use them to make milk cubes and food cubes. Each cube is about 20-25ml.

The pros of the bag method:

very easy to freeze, defrost and transport.

The cons of the bag method:

must remember to put amount on the outside (the amounts on the bag never seem to be accurate)

Expensive, you use a lot of bags every week if you store your milk in 20-50ml amounts.

the pros of the cube method:

very easy to mix right amount of food cubes with milk cubes for a meal

the cons of the cube method:

more work - make cubes, put into double zip lock bags, mark bag with date and contents.

steralise trays, repeat.

The cubes don't always 'fit' into the bottle or container - so I need to sometimes use a large bottle, even for a small amount of milk, or two small containers to defrost one meal.

I spend a lot of time on 'cube management'

La Leche Leauge says:

Refrigerated or frozen milk may be stored in:

hard-sided plastic or glass containers with well-fitting tops freezer milk bags that are designed for storing human milk.

On another site I found:

"...You could also pour the milk into ice cube trays that have been thoroughly cleaned in hot water, let them freeze until hard, store them in freezer bags, then count up the amount of cubes needed to make a full bottle."

So they key issue seems to be that the container can be steralised and has a tight fitting lid.

I found these two products via google:

Breast Milk Storage Freezer Trays

http://www.breastmilk.com/breast_milk_storage_freezer_trays.htm

and

Baby Cubes

http://www.juvenilesolutions.com/feeding_baby.html

If the trays have lids that seal and are made for baby food, they are similar to the above and can be used for breast milk.

I found something at Citysuuper in HK that was a single row ice cube tray with a tight fitting lid, and bought six. I then saw them much cheaper at the Japan Home Store type of shop!

I think the key is, if you are using bags to store milk, store it in smaller amounts, so you can use what you need and quickly defrost more if needed.

Matilda 20 yrs ago

Many things can influence milk volume depending on the time of day, when the baby last fed, how many feeds per day, maternal fatigue levels etc. When baby's commence solid foods they may take less breastmilk sometimes resulting in less volume.

If your baby is breastfeeding less often, or you are pumping less frequently, these can be responsbile for less milk.

Increase the number of breastfeeds per day and/or expressing and supply should return. Ensure you are adequately rested and taking a balanced diet with regular healthy snacks.

Well Baby Clinic 2849 1500

Matilda International Hospital

Hong Kong

http://www.matilda.org

katyjanew 20 yrs ago

Hi Crj,

I've just replied to your other thread...

I was wondering if perhaps you stopped pumping to add with breakfast, you would have more milk for your breastfeeds during the day, which could get you down to 5 larger feeds per day.

I'm in Melbourne, and my Maternal and Child Health clinic suggest that a small amount of full cream cow's milk at this age is not a problem at all (unless alergies exist). I just use cows milk to add to my 8month son's breakky, and do the 5 breastfeeds. What do you think? That would also reduce the time you spend on the pumping/storing fiasco. Perhaps you could use the time to paint your toenails!! Sorry for being cheeky, but I know that when I get stressed out it affects my milk supply. I know I feel better if I take 5 or ten minutes to relax every now and then.

What do you think??

crj 20 yrs ago

Hi KatyJaneW

Thanks so much for this reply and your other really helpful reply.

I actually have decided to stop pumping. Getting so little it just wasn't worth it.

We are still doing the 6x breast feeds per day, and I am cutting down the breast milk in each solids meal.

Once the milk store in the freezer is gone, we'll take the next step... which will probably have to be formula for one feed, but I am hoping to last until he is almost 10 months old without doing that.

Thanks again!

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