Is Exclusively Pumping Worth it?
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Anonymous
| I did it with my first child for 8 months. Wish I had done it for three and then stopped. Would have enjoyed those early months more. You don’t get them back. |
Anonymous
| Thank you to everyone who posted. I am not the OP but I’m a new mom who BF and supplements with formula. I feel so much guilt about not pumping and not trying to supplement with breastmilk instead of formula, but I hate pumping so so so so so much and I don’t produce a lot at the pump. This thread makes me feel better that I’m making the right choice to just give formula instead of trying to pump. |
Anonymous
| I vote absolutely not worth it. I cannot even imagine the mental and physical drain of attaching yourself to the pump constantly. I would personally switch to formula immediately in this situation. And I say this as someone who exclusively BFed my first for 15 months. |
Anonymous
| Absolutely worth it. benefits were great for my child and while it may seem overwhelming, if you just pump for the next day, time flies and soon enough you’ve pumped for a year. |
Anonymous
| OP here. I have decided to pump until I go back to work until I go back to work. I will go back at 4 months and decide then if I want to still pump. We are supplementing with formula. The pumping hasn’t been that bad and the baby is eating well from the bottle. |
Anonymous
| The one benefit over nursing is you know how much your baby eats in a day. It’s also easier when you do go back to work or need to supplement. |
Anonymous
|
I didn’t mind pumping for my first (2nd was BFed); it always triggered a bit of euphoria for me.
That said, I wish I had pumped less and bonded with my first-born baby more. The breast-is-best got to me and it was really hard to not feel guilty. We ended up moving to hypoallergenic formula and away from BM, and my baby did so much better. But I *still* felt guilty and pumped for another 6mos after that to donate milk to a local milk bank. My entirely breastfed baby is the one with all the allergies now; my formula baby now has no allergies. |
Anonymous
| I had a very early preemie, and could never get nursing to work after a three month NICU stay. I ended up exclusively pumping for 12 months. It was a lot of work, especially because I had a toddler at home too, and looking back I don’t think it was worth it. |
Anonymous
| I had to EP with my second and only made it two months. I don't have great supply and needed to pump 8+ times a day on top of everything else and my amount pumped started to drop. She also had milk and soy protein intolerance causing GI bleeding so I had to cut a lot out of my diet and she still didn't like eating (i'm already vegetarian). When it got close to the time for my maternity leave to end I decided to quit and just use the allergy formula prescribed by her pediatrician. She loved it, gained lots of weight, and slept great. I got to eat cheese and relax. When i went back to work I didn't have to stress about pumping (busy schedule and without a private office or easy access to a lactation room). It was absolutely the best choice for me. |
Anonymous
I posted already that it worked well for me since I had good supply. I wanted to say that I dropped to 4 pumps a day around 4 months and found that my sweet spot in terms of production. You might find that reducing pumps is quite doable. I don’t think at that point I was pumping much more than any other breastfeeding working mom. |
Anonymous
Okay, now super-curious. Why don’t you like Hipp? We used a different brand, but would have been happy to use Hipp as well. |
Anonymous
It’s not all or nothing. You could pump in the mornings and evenings, but not at work. |
Anonymous
This sounds like a good plan. You’ll have to taper off so you don’t get mastitis. By the time you wind down, your baby will be beginning solids. Then you just have a few more months of formula. Our pediatrician was okay with us introducing cow’s milk around 10-11 months at which point my kids were losing interest in milk altogether and were more interested in real foods. I was excited to drop the bottle ASAP by 1 year old. I promise this time will pass more quickly than you realize and you’ll wonder why you spent so much time fretting over BM vs formula! |
Anonymous
OP here. Many reasons. 1. The ingredients that we’re supposedly not that good are in some do those brands too. It seems just because it’s organic people automatically assume it’s better. 2. Safety. I can’t guarantee when the formula was made, now it was stored, and if it was contaminated during shipping. 3. Accessibility. We use Enfamil Neuropro formula and like that we can get it anywhere. |
Anonymous
* the ingredients that were supposedly bad.. |