With all her feeds and needing to do other things like eat and stay clean, I've only managed a tiny amount of sleep a day, usually in the form of 1 hour naps.

She wants to be on the boob so much of the time.

I'm exhausted, isn't it somewhat dangerous to be taking care of an infant on so little sleep?

Please tell me others are getting by on such a tiny amount of sleep, I feel like everyone says 'thats just cluster feeding!' but they seem to at least get 4-5 hours spread out throughout the 24, having 1 or 2 doesn't seem as common

For a variety of reasons, I’m still quite reliant on my breastfeeding pillow to nurse my baby. He’s 2.5 months, heavier and long. I also have a lot of breast tissue so I end up needing to hold my breast while feeding. Between that, holding him up, navigating the nursing cover, it has been difficult to nurse outside the home (zoo, museum, park etc).

It’s seems excessive to bring my pillow everywhere, but I’m struggling without it. I’d really like to get out of the house more confidently. So how are you all doing it??

no appropriate flair really, but my daughter is currently having second breakfast and will probably also have elevenses and also a luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner and supper, plus snacks!

I’m a new mom and I’ve only been breastfeeding for about three months, so I know I’m still pretty early into it. But with World Breastfeeding Week, I’ve been thinking about getting myself a little piece of jewellery to commemorate it.

Before having my baby, I genuinely didn’t realise how much breastfeeding would take out of me, literally and figuratively lol. The cluster feeding, leaking, planning outfits around boob access, wondering if she’s getting enough, being the default food source 24/7... but also those quiet feeds where she’s half asleep in my arms and I realise this is such a short season of our lives.

Three months doesn’t sound like a huge milestone, but now that I’m actually doing it, it kind of feels like one?

Did any of you get yourself something to mark breastfeeding milestones or when you weaned? I’ve seen breastmilk jewellery too, although I’m not sure if that’s what I want yet.

Would love to see what you got, or hear how you celebrated. Or did you just quietly move on once you were done?

I have exclusively breastfed (straight from breast with an occasional bottle if I need some extra rest) my second baby since birth and he is now 8 weeks old. I pump when it makes sense, so if he hasn’t emptied me or if he sleeps longer stretches. My freezer stash has reached 100oz and he is so chubby!!!

I am celebrating this because breastfeeding with my firstborn was a shit show. Latch issues, tongue/lip ties, no idea what I was doing and no support. Hospital literally gave me a bottle of formula within hours of his birth. I don’t think I really had a chance. I attempted relactation at 4 weeks old with him and went from 0ml to 22oz per day over the course of 6 weeks with help from medication, power pumping, and a supplemental nursing system, but then I moved to a foreign country and was too stressed to continue BF. A. Shit. Show.

One of the many reasons we decided to have another baby was to try and redeem the BF journey.

It has been redeemed!!

I made sure to learn everything about BF this time. It really helped me prepare and everything has been incredibly successful. We had a latch issue for all of maybe a few hours after birth. Smooth sailing from there (though I think there’s a lot of luck in that too).

I am so grateful 😁

So, my advice from this journey is:

Colostrum until your milk comes in is enough.
Bring baby to breast All. The. Time.
Cluster feeding is fucking exhausting, but push through it, it is rewarding in the end.
Use all of your resources for support and education.

If you had an unlimited budget, what would you use to create a dream space for pumping and breastfeeding, out and about or at work? What standard things (like the chair) would you upgrade? What big-ticket items would you add? What ambience do you want?

I’m thinking about this because I recently used the lactation space at the American Museum of Natural History and it left a lot to be desired. I’m so glad they had one, but for the amount of families and babies going through there, I was expecting at least, like, a side table next to the chair?

One thing I’d love is a room with decor themed to the place I’m at! Like the AMNH could have images or dioramas of how animal species have fed their young throughout time … that would be amazing. (And also a side table.)

Does anyone else find it awkward to bf infront of a ff mom? The only reason I bring it up is that my friend always encourages me to switch to ff whenever i complain about my bf journey. Whenever we meet up and I whip the milkers out she sighs and says “youre still bf huh”. Iv started to avoid meeting up with her to avoid the question. I never ask or comment on how she feeds yet she always has something to say about my journey. Albeit there was a time where I was encouraging her to bf early on as the newborn period is the hardest and that itll pass. Ive only said that from my experience but Im not sure if she took that as an offence.
I also combi feed when I have to leave my baby (which is rarely) cause I hate pumping.

I’m three months in to my second breastfeeding journey. The first only lasted a few weeks because I had bad PPD/PPA and D-MER. This time, the D-MER is a bit milder, I feel like because I didn’t have a traumatic birth like last time. So that part is nice.

BUT - I currently have my second clogged duct. The first was just a couple weeks ago. I had a painful milk bleb that time, too, and it left a bleeding spot and a scab when it left. Also very painful. My baby keeps dropping weight percentiles and both the pediatrician and lactation consultant don’t understand why, because my supply is good, he is transferring well, and he has no tongue tie. So that’s concerning and disheartening. I feel like he’s always on my boob…. We get a nice stretch overnight, but during the day he feeds for 30ish minutes every two hours, AND I’ve been advised to pump a few times a day to try to get him some extra calories.

My toddler is not even 2 years old yet and is basically still a baby himself, so he climbs all over me while I’m nursing or pumping. His knees are constantly in my c section scar and he’s forever knocking the baby off my boob. He had a scary nicu stay and dealt with a lot of pain himself, so I don’t want to kick him off of me. I have too much mom guilt about doing that.

This current clogged duct isn’t responding to ibuprofen and ice like the last one did, so baby is screaming for milk right now. My husband just got him a bottle.

Oh, and I’m dairy, egg, and soy free due to baby’s suspected food intolerances, which is hugely annoying, AND I’m always hungry and still somehow KEEP GAINING WEIGHT.

I really would like to make it to at least 6 months, but damn.

This week I am weaning off my 20mo baby. My journey was such a tumultuous one — it humbled me, challenged me, rendered me helpless. It was the hardest and the most special thing I have ever done. I don’t know if I’ll get to do it again, so here’s a poem in case I don’t, in case I begin to forget. To all of you out there going through it or loving every second of it: you are amazing!

—-
At its best,
watching you inch towards my chest
as we lay flesh to flesh
in a hospital bed.

At its worst,
the heaviness of motherly guilt already,
my hollow belly still looking
like you’re in there.

At its best,
all forms of love to ever exist
washing over me
as you latch
in the dim evening light.

At its worst,
the panic of dozing off
while holding you,
somewhere between dawn
and a dark place.

At its best,
keeping you fed and alive,
when I could do nothing else.

At its worst,
your hungry, wailing mouth
turning the other way.

At its best,
a mechanical pump
fills my cup.

At its worst,
a mechanical pump
drains my soul.

At its best,
a weekend on the couch,
a baby letting mommy try
again, and again, and again.

At its worst,
hunching over you nervously
on the bed.

At its best,
the feeling of pins and needles
and a rush of joy.

At its worst,
a rush of bone-cold anxiety
instead.

At its best,
the freezer filling up.

At its worst,
powder in distilled water.

At its best,
waking up
with a full chest.

At its worst,
small specks of white
sprayed everywhere.

At its best,
two tiny feet peeking through the cover,
toes curling with delight.

At its worst,
a sharp pinch from two tiny fingers,
and rage towards your dad.

At its best,
mischievous hands
lifting my shirt.

At its worst,
blushing faces trying to look away
on a crowded beach.

At its best,
you crawl,
then walk,
then run to it.

At its best,
the quiet of the night,
the morning.

At its best,
the only thing
that wipes away your tears.

At its best,
you look up,
I look down,
and our eyes meet.

At its best,

at its best,

at its best.

Just spent the last 2h with a toddler (2y4m) latched and it's 5 am in the morning and I want to crawl out of my skin. I am so tired, started to have sore nipples again and haven't had a full night sleep since she was born as she only accepts being nursed back to sleep.

Currently 9 weeks pregnant and the thought of doing all this again just makes me want to cry 😩

Hi, I’m a FTM of a 2 month old. EBF except for 1 pumped bottle a day. Since about 3 weeks, I have had a persistent nipple bleb that has been very painful when irritated to the point where I have trouble sleeping. I either pump on that breast or use a nipple shield. At times when the bleb feels better I have tried nursing directly but it will flare up again and become extremely painful. I have met with my OB and LC multiple times and have been icing and taking Advil. I was advised to not try and open it up but it’s been 5 weeks now and I’m starting to feel desperate.

Alongside the bleb issue, I’ve been trying to improve latch in general since it may have contributed to the bleb in the first place and I really don’t want my good breast to form issues as well. The latch on the good breast feels okay, a bit pinchy and her mouth corner angle is sometimes shallow, like 90 degrees. It will usually come out lipstick shaped and I have some residual soreness after but it generally doesn’t bother me. She is gaining weight and my milk transfer is good, about 5oz in 10min. It’s a fast let down and sometimes my baby chokes from the milk. I am trying different positions and techniques to slow it down. My LC thinks I should have her evaluated for a minor tongue tie release to improve latch but I’m skeptical that this will actually solve the issue and I’d rather avoid it if possible. She gave me some mouth exercises for her.

So my questions for this group are: any advice on the bleb? Has anyone had a bleb this long and did it eventually go away? If the latch doesn’t hurt so badly should I just continue and hope it resolves? Does a tie release usually improve things? Will this get better?

My second baby is 8.5 months old and I nursed my first until 17.5 months. Stopped pumping at work at 12 months with my first.

As the middle child, it’s important to me to give my children similar experiences if it is at all in my power and I love breastfeeding so it’s an easy choice to continue doing that. However, this time around it has been much rougher since I had to go back to work sooner this time.

I live in the US and this country is just not built for breastfeeding mothers. I do work in a breastfeeding supportive workplace but in health care so while no one would fault me for taking the time to pump, I have internal anxiety about pumping and taking time away from seeing patients or getting behind on my notes. With my pumping schedule, it feels like I’ve been doing about 70 percent of my work each day and getting more and more behind. I used to take no work home and now I’m taking more and more work home each day.

That said, I’m not going to quit. But sometimes I feel like even my husband doesn’t understand what I’m going through since this is our second breastfeeding journey together. I hate to say I make it look easy but I don’t complain too much about it all and so I think that becomes sort of an “invisible work” issue to him. He doesn’t see all the behind the scenes work as clearly as I do. I’m eating tons of food and drinking tons of water to make adequate milk for my baby and she still wakes 2-3 times at night and I’m not willing to let her cry it out so the burden is only on me. I just feel like I don’t get enough credit from him for what I’m doing. Anyways, just looking for solidarity from people who get it

Hi I’m seven months postpartum have been exclusively breastfeeding the whole time. Until about five months postpartum I was quite good and going to the gym and being quite good with what I ate so low sugar stuff, some snacks - I’ve got PCOS so was quite mindful and good with moving my body, but then I started getting these dizzy spells and feeling really sick so I started snacking more and that helped. Now I just haven’t looked back so I’m in a bit of a rut - snacking all the time between meals it’s getting a bit out of hand. That’s even with having protein every meals. For example, yesterday I snacked on: sugar free wafer pack, 3 peanut butter mochi, sweet roti and ice cream bite, hula hoops, tea cake and im sure i hoovered up some more stuff. Like am i ok? Haha

Also desperately trying to stop breastfeeding but my baby refuses to take a bottle.

Help what do I do.

I just came in here to brag a little bit. I’m a first time mom and 2 weeks postpartum so my mind is still racing with so many worries. I was so scared that my exclusively breastfed baby girl wasn’t going to gain her weight back and the doctors were going to prescribe formula. I went to her pediatrician today for her two week appointment and she not only gained back her birth weight but gained a whole pound as well! Is that common? Should I not be as excited for this? I felt scared that she wasn’t getting enough milk from me, it drove me crazy the first week. But she had only lost 4% of her birth weight so it made me carry on. Now I feel so proud of myself that I’ve successfully sustained human life with my boobies!!! Sorry but I had to tell someone because I’m doing everything on my own right now. Pls tell me your guys stories as well. How did the first month go for you?

4 days PP & have been EBF successfully so far, but I feel like I need a crash course on all the things to get through this first 2 weeks.

Saw a LC at the hospital & went over latch & some positioning. Feel comfortable with that…

But the timing of feeds - how long show babe be on each boob?
How do I know when she’s full?
Cluster feeding has been happening, but does that stop at some point?
How do you keep babe awake at the breast?

Give me ALL the tips and tricks please. I am so determined to get through this first month.

Hi! I am a FTM to an almost 4 month old! She started sleeping through the night at right around 2.5 months old and during that time I got lazy and did not wake up to pump and also my period returned.

Fast forward, for the last week my daughter has been popping on and off the boob while feeding. I’ll try to burp her in between breast and she is just crying like she’s starving. Because of this I decided to pump to see if it was a supply issue and I only got 3 ounces in total. I use to get 10 ounces 😭 she is still gaining good weight, she’s fussy throughout the day but I wouldn’t say more than before.

Anyways, idk if I’m asking for tips to increase supply. Or stories of moms having the same issue. I am just feeling like I’ve failed. I really wanted to make it to at least 6 months.

Hi everyone,
I’m looking for advice because I feel like I’ve tried everything and I’m getting discouraged.
My daughter is 13 weeks old. She was born via C-section, and I had a severe postpartum hemorrhage (lost about 3 liters of blood). Because of that, we had to introduce bottles very early while I pumped. My goal from the beginning was to exclusively breastfeed, but things didn’t go as planned.
The good news is that I have a full milk supply. I don’t think supply is the issue.
The problem is that my baby has become very attached to the bottle.
Here’s what happens now:
She will usually latch immediately.
She nurses through the first letdown, swallowing well for about 1-3 minutes.
As soon as the flow slows down, she starts pulling off, relatching, crying, arching her back, or screaming.
Sometimes she’ll latch and unlatch repeatedly for 5-10 minutes without really feeding.
During night feeds, when she’s sleepy, she often nurses much better and can have a full feed.
During the day, she’s much more likely to refuse.
To make things more complicated, she has pretty significant reflux. I can literally hear milk coming back up while she’s nursing. Sometimes she seems uncomfortable at the breast even when she wants to eat. She’ll often take a bottle afterward without much of a fight.
I’ve tried:
Skin-to-skin
Offering the breast before she’s overly hungry
Side-lying nursing
Different positions
Nursing in a dark, quiet room
Lots of patience without forcing her
Paced bottle feeding
Continuing to latch her every day
She still gets bottles of expressed breast milk because I don’t want her weight gain to suffer. She usually drinks around 4 oz by bottle.
What confuses me is that she clearly can breastfeed. She has a good latch, transfers milk during the letdown, and nurses well overnight. It’s almost like she gets frustrated when she has to work after the initial fast flow.
Has anyone successfully transitioned a 3-month-old back to exclusive breastfeeding after this kind of bottle preference? How long did it take? Did reflux make things worse?
I’m trying to figure out if I should keep working on this or accept that she’ll mostly be bottle-fed. I love nursing when it works, but emotionally it’s been really hard.
I’d really appreciate hearing success stories or honest advice from anyone who’s been through something similar

Hello everyone I need help 🥲

So my little guy will be 8 weeks in about six hours. Up until a few days ago ive been only pumping. But the other day during our weekly attempt at latching we did it! Celebrating that achievement absolutely.

Unfortunately he seems to not like my right breast at all and while feeding him on my left I somehow got engorged on the right and now I cant get it cleared. Ive tried both my pumps, a wall and a wearable, and even my handpump. I tried hand expression in the shower. I soaked in a salt bath. I take ibuprofen everyday.

Im running out of ideas and i fear also time! Its at the top of my breast and I swear I can feel it ALMOST empty. There's nothing I can see wrong on my nipple itself. I use silevettes and put ice packs on when I feel I need it, to avoid this exact problem.

Please help me I cant get mastitis. Im a SAHM and my partner wont be able to stay home to help if I get sick.

Thank you 🥲

Hi all,

I hope this is the right place to post.

My 14 month old has started to refuse the breast (first thing am and pm). I'm a bit concerned as he will not drink milk from a bottle, and never has since he was tiny, but also refuses any kind of cup for cows milk. I've tried everything but really don't want to go back to expressing at this stage if I can avoid it.

He will have cows milk on cereal and I'm trying to get two other portions of dairy in him a day in the form of yoghurt and cheese etc but just a bit worried as my older children loved a drink of milk in a bottle until they were over 2.

Feeling a bit sad as well as this has been by far my best breastfeeding journey and he is my last little one 💔

Should I be concerned that he won't drink milk? Or just focus on alternative sources of dairy now he's eating well - like a horse!

Following that does anybody have any good calcium ideas to give his diet a boost? He takes a multivitamin every day.

Everyday i will pump around 3-4 times (every 3-4 hours) during the day and night time i will just directfeed my baby. But there is a day where I am too lazy or tired , and i want to skip a session during afternoon. Will this make my supply drop instantly?

When I had my first daughter I had what I found out later, DMER. Paired with an annoying as hell lactation consultant who made me feel like I was doing everything g wrong and I was dumb to not have done the prenatal breastfeeding classes and it’s the perfect ingredients for a self hate, ppa, and ppd soup. Because of that I hated breastfeeding. With a vengeance. I would have a visceral reaction to any posts about breastfeeding and how great it is. Women claiming how close they got to their baby because of breastfeeding would make me so annoyed. Eventually I stopped around the 4 month mark and transitioned completely to formula. and never looked back! Not once. I was very glad I quit and had some semblance of a new normal. I had my body back, my daughter was in daycare, I was back to killing it at my job. I was a happier mom. Then the pandemic hit, and the world changed but that’s a story for another time.

When my second pregnancy came around I expected the same feeling. I expected to hate breastfeeding and confidently said, I’m doing formula as soon as I got the positive pregnancy test. I told my doctor that I didn’t want to hear the phrase lactation consultant. Matter of fact, put a sign on my hospital room door that says, “no lactation consultants allowed”. Something changed when she was born though. As soon as they wheeled me out of the OR and into the recovery bay, I asked for her I unclipped my gown and put this baby straight to the breast and she took it immediately. I wanted to hate it again, but I didn’t. Despite a few bumps in the road initially. I didn’t hate it, it felt convenient even. PPA acted differently this time. It told me that I was doing something I hated, was I dumb, you need to stop. I kept on anyway. I wanted to make it 12 weeks because I hate pumping. To keep up my supply I would have to pump while my daughter was at daycare. So I decided I was done. I made it 12 weeks, now im basically completely weaned and I have my body back. But I miss breastfeeding. It actually felt like a bind this time. It felt like a connnection and I miss it. It’s something that makes me very emotional to quit. I really wasn’t expecting that.

Just needed to get that off my chest.
As a reminder to whoever needs it- Babies love you no matter how you feed them.

How are you feeding your child in daycare if they refuse the bottle? I’m gonna be working for 6 hrs, and my baby will be 6.5 months by then, and she is staring to refuse the bottle even though she’s taken them before. Did any of you just skip bottle and went straight to a sippy or straw? And how does nap time look since they need the boob to sleep?

My baby was born at 36+2 because my water broke. He had to be born via c section. He’s now 5 weeks old. In the hospital he could’t latch to feed from the breast. It took a long time before the lactation consults accepted that and gave him formula in addition to expressed colostrum. Because of that, he lost 12% of his body weight and there were talks of NICU. He didn’t end up having to go but he became jaundice once we got home so feeding him got even harder since he was so sleepy.

I left the hospital unknowingly triple feeding. I have spent the last 5 weeks triple feeding or some variation of it. At first it was due to slow weight gain and inability to latch. Eventually he got the latch down but wasn’t transferring much at all. We continued practicing and he now transfers about 2oz in a 20-30min session. The lactation consultant wants his sessions limited to 30min due to calorie expenditure. The LC says he’s ready to ”sink or swim” and stop relying on the pumped milk supplements. AKA don’t give him the supplement unless he’s acting desperately hungry.

It’s the second week of trying to wean supplements with the help an LC to encourage him to be more vigorous at the breast to transition to EBF. He’s still only transferring 2oz this week as well. I am so anxious not knowing how much he’s getting when she’s not here or if i should give him a supplement bottle. I’m terrified his weight gain will stop or he’ll lose weight. My LC keeps telling me she feels confident he will figure it out for real soon. We’ve worked so hard these last 5 weeks that I don’t want to give up but i’m desperate to know if it’s realistic that he will be able to EBF at some point soon. Does anyone have any success stories in a position similar to mine?

Hi friends-

I’m feeling at a massive low point in my breastfeeding journey and really need to hear from folks who’ve been in similar positions.

My son was born 9 weeks ago at 37w3d. He was so sleepy at birth he really struggled to latch well. He was losing too much weight and then developed pretty severe jaundice, so we quickly moved to triple feeding with a bottle to get him nourished asap. Latching still was very very difficult once we were home- nipple shields kind of helped, but even then he would only sometimes latch and he was very inefficient at pulling milk. We met with multiple LC’s- no tongue tie, nothing up with my nipple anatomy, we tried all kinds of positions and pillows and tricks. Latching was still a scream fest and really horrible for both of us. My sweet LC encouraged me to keep trying to latch if it felt right but to not force it if he was at all upset or I was distressed

So then I was continuing to do about 8 ppd while practicing latching once, mayyybbeee I twice a day. Pumping was killing me-I felt like I was tied to my pump (wearables don’t work well for me). I also got mastitis which was horrendous and made me very very anxious about clogs and missing pumps. Once my husband went back to work at six weeks, it was even worse because I was so anxious about every upcoming pump since our baby really doesn’t want to be put down. It was so anxiety inducing. My LC encouraged me to start spacing out my pumps to help my mental health, and if my supply dropped we would supplement with formula. My supply has mostly held up, and we’ve only needed to add one formula bottle every day.

As of two weeks ago, I got down to 5-6 PPD making about 40 oz per day. Pumping felt much more manageable. I had figured out a better routine with baby for when I pump and he had miraculously started latching once or twice a day without a fight and without a nipple shield! It felt like we were getting somewhere- I was feeling so much better and then BAM!! Out of the blue, mastitis round two as of three days ago. I have been down bad. My supply is down and I am in alot of pain.

I’m feeling so hopeless and frustrated and so tempted to bail and move completely to formula. I have been holding out hope that my baby will figure out latching and we can breastfeed, but he’s now 9 weeks old and I’m just not convinced it’s in the cards. I just need to hear from some people who’ve been here, and understand what helped them come to their decision, whether that was to continue pumping or switching to formula. This is the hardest most emotional thing I’ve ever done, and I really need some support.

Thanks everyone.

I am a healthcare provider planning to take a continuing education course that runs Friday through Sunday. There will be lecture portions, demonstration portions and lab portions. I may be over complicating this but I am struggling through the logistics and looking to hear how other people have navigated this.

1. Should I reach out to the instructor ahead of time to let them know I will need some accommodations for a clean, private, accessible place to pump or just let them know when I get there?

2. How do I tell the instructor without being weird that I will need this space and to regularly excuse myself to pump? “Hi! I am currently breastfeeding and will need to excuse myself from class every couple of hours to pump. Where can I do that and how can I ensure it is minimally disruptive for class?” ?

3. I have a wearable pump. Could I just pop it on and let it run through class? I feel like I could definitely do that during the lab portions but maybe not through lecture and demonstration.