Hi everyone welcome back to my parenting way my name is Katie and today i'm going to talk to you
about pumping breast milk when you're exclusively
breastfeeding but you don't want to cause an oversupply of breast milk.
So i know this is quite a niche topic but i was in this exact position for both my children i
had this huge oversupply of milk but i really wanted to pump to be able to get a good supply
of breast milk in the fridge or the freezer for my husband or any other family member to be able
to feed my children but the problem is every time i pumped i knew that it would cause an overload
of breast milk which would then disturb my milk supply and it disturbed my baby feeding and it
caused all sorts of problems so there's lots of information out there on how to include pumping
to actually increase your milk supply and this is really useful if you have a reduced milk supply
but if you're exclusively breastfeeding and you already have an oversupply of milk the
prospect of adding pumping to this can be quite daunting so this video is going to be talking
about how you can include pumping in exclusively breastfeeding but without causing that over supply
So an oversupply of breast milk can have its own problems it can cause your breasts to become
enlarged and engorged which means that it's really difficult for the baby
to latch properly it can possibly cause mastitis because of blocked
milk ducts and finally just to top it all off your baby can get really colicky symptoms and
really gassy symptoms from the oversupply of full milk and the sugars in the milk
So ideally you want to establish any kind of pumping routine after six weeks of exclusively
breastfeeding and this is to make sure that you are regulating your milk supply
whilst your baby is growing even then though your baby will still go through growth spurts
where they will be feeding more often and therefore that will naturally affect your supply
so this is something to be wary of when you're combining it with pumping as well
So yes pumping on top of exclusively breastfeeding will increase your milk supply
especially if you do it quite soon after breastfeeding your baby your breast milk
works quite cleverly on a supply and demand situation so if you start pumping as well as
feeding your baby your body will automatically start making more milk because it thinks
it requires more so then you'll notice your milk starting to increase obviously
if you've got an oversupply of milk already this is something you want to avoid so it's
really difficult to try and combine pumping already if you're exclusively breastfeeding
So I personally had the Medela Swing Flex 2-phase breast pump single breast pump so I only had the
one pump that i would go from breast to breast and this could be used either by attaching it directly
to the mains or you could put some batteries in it and you'll be able to walk around and
do other stuff whilst pumping however it did mean that you had to hold the pump
to the breast um and so it meant that you were pretty sort of stuck and sat around
with pumping um which is difficult when you've already got children and a little baby to
look after on top of exclusively breastfeeding however this was a great little pump and it was
it was great for me for what i wanted it to do obviously if you need a stronger pump or if you
need a double pump because you feed from both breasts then you would probably benefit from
having a double pump because it will take up less time rather than go from one boob to the other
so no using a breast pump isn't as effective as breastfeeding because your body automatically
produces produces oxytocin the love hormone when you're holding your baby and also the mechanism
the sucking mechanism of the baby is naturally much stronger than a pump which is a bit more
robotic um and it's just not as strong so obviously to be able to get
enough milk you want to do things like making sure that you get a pump that works well for
you and also little things like if your baby is nearby and you can see your baby and hear
your baby that can produce the oxytocin that can then increase your milk supply
So i'm talking obviously a lot about increasing your milk supply and making sure you get the right
milk supply but what happens when you have an oversupply of milk and you want to have more milk
stored up on top of you exclusively breastfeeding so this is how i did it firstly i only ever
block fed my baby from one breast and this is the best thing that worked for me
because i will had an oversupply of milk i found that switching from one breast to another meant
that my baby would constantly only ever get full milk or the watery four milk at the beginning
and never get to the hind milk because my body was just over supplying therefore by block feeding
from one breast it meant that that best could be completely drained and i helped find it regulated
my breast milk supply a lot better than feeding from both breasts so for me personally i wanted
to have a stock of a supply of milk and i only really wanted one bottle's worth of milk and the
reason why is because i wanted to make sure my baby was able to take the bottle without a fight
you know as they got older i wanted to be able to for my baby to be able to take the bottle and
without any issues so we started the bottle quite early on even though i was exclusive exclusively
breastfeeding and i wanted my husband to be able to give that bottle to my babies so what i ended
up doing is i wanted to make a one bottle supply but to make that one bottle supply would have
meant that i would have had to have pumped on top of my normal breastfeeding routine which wouldn't
have then caused an oversupply of milk so what i found the most useful thing to do is actually
pump within 15 to 30 minutes from feeding from one particular breast and i would only ever pump one
ounce of milk from that same breast i would then do this four or five times over a couple of days
15 to 30 minutes after feeding from a breast i would pump one ounce and after that four or
five sessions of pumping i would combine the milk to make a one four to five ounce bottle of breast
milk once i had that four to five ounce but bottle my husband would then give that bottle to my baby
when i was out of the room and the baby would take the bottle and i would then pump
that session worth of breast milk afterwards and this was to basically remove the milk
from my breast that the baby would normally drink from but because they drank from the bottle
obviously i need to pump that session this will then create a four to five ounce bottle that will
then be the start of another feed and this is how we then combined this in our breastfeeding routine
is that i would exclusively breastfeed throughout the day in the evening my husband would then feed
my son in this case the 45 ounce bottle and then i would breast pump after to remove the milk from
my breasts that was making up for that feed i hope that makes sense if obviously you wanted to build
up a bigger supply you can then continue to do this same system so once you've got that initial
bottle and then you replace the feed that's fine if you're only ever using one bottle's worth but
if you want a bigger stash because say you wanted to go away for a few days or you end up going back
to work early or anything like that you can then combine the same system to then create more milk
so for example again you then breast pump within 15 to 30 minutes after you're breastfeeding your
baby just remove one ounce of breast milk from your breast and then store that one ounce once
you've got several pouches of one ounce you can combine them to make one bottle and then store it
obviously look out for signs that you are creating an oversupply of milk such as over-engorgement
making sure that your baby can latch properly to remove as much milk from the breast as possible
and also any kind of lumps that develop in your breast that could be blocked milk ducts and
keep an eye out on these little signs to suggest that you might be creating an oversupply of milk
if this is the case or if your baby's going through a bit of a growth spurt and you're
just trying to regulate your breast milk again it might be worth just laying off the pumping
and then exclusively breastfeeding again until your milk supply regulates and just obviously
look at your baby making sure that they don't have colicky symptoms or big explosive poos
or gassiness and these are all little signs that your your baby might be taking on too
much for milk and therefore not getting to the hindmilk listen to your body and see
what your baby's needs are and that way you can combine pumping safely and knowing that
both you and your baby are happy i hope you found this useful please if you've got any questions or
any comments you'd like to make please leave them below i'll also leave in my comments
some charities and some advice forums that i have found really useful when i've got this
huge oversupply of milk please hit the like button if you've enjoyed this video hit the
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