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[quote=Anonymous]Hugs OP.

My first was a premie (luckily not in NICU) and breast feeding / pumping was SO stressful! My husband begged me multiple times to stop or at least supplement but for some reason I was really convinced it was best. Our pediatrician (a) told us not to allow anyone into our home (she was early and it was cold / flu season) until she'd had her 8 week shots and (b) that I needed to try nursing her and otherwise pump every two hours.  In addition, he and the lactation consultant stressed that we had to sterilize everything between pumping sessions. So I'd get up, try to nurse (she couldn't suckle yet so that didn't really work), pump, either feed her via a syringe or pass of feeding to my husband, and boil water / boil all the parts. I'd sleep for 20-30 mins max at a time and was recovering from severe hemorrhaging from birth.  Our 3rd day home we broke down with my mother in law who basically took emergency leave from her job and came and helped. I eventually nursed (she figured it out around 1 month old), but I feel like any added benefits of doing exclusively breast milk were offset by the negative effects. My lack of sleep really contributed to depression and made it hard to bond with my child initially. She's nine now and I remember our early days as so stressful and unhappy.

When our second was born I told myself we weren't doing that again. It turns out she was full term and a better nurser, but I introduced formula early on. I didn't worry about setting an alarm in the middle of the night to pump if she was sleeping, or rushing home to pump or nurse if the line at the grocery store was longer than I'd anticipated etc. I nursed her mornings and nights and gave her breast milk or a mix of breast milk and formula for her other feedings.

My first nursed to 9 months, with no formula (but was eating solids by then) when I stopped. My second nursed (with formula sometimes and solids) to about 14 months. I was able to go longer because it was a much more pleasant experience. I actually had a LOT of supply (especially with my first) and still found it really hard to manage with a premie.

Huge amounts of water and a hands free bra both help if you want to keep trying to make it work, but I really think you should back off a bit (or entirely!). I personally didn't notice differences in things like health outcomes between my exclusively nursed infant and my non-exclusively nursed infant. (Both had chronic ear infections - which supposedly nursing helps protect against, and both needed ear tubes and removal of adenoids. My exclusively nursed child eventually needed tonsils removed too.)

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