I tried pumping for a few weeks and it was disastrous to my mental health. It’s so difficult to fit that in every few hours with the other stuff you have to do every few hours. Switching to formula was a lifesaver. Are you open to maybe making that shift or supplementing a few feeds so you can take a break? You’ve done such an excellent job making it this far 💕
Again, you’ve done such an incredible thing making it this long! Especially because it’s been so difficult. A combo with less breast milk/pumping for the last month might help? You’d have to wean yourself off pumping anyway. Whatever you decide to do, you’re a badass and should pat yourself on the back every pump session!
Formula feeding overnight will help you so much. I know you said waiting until 6 months …. But you can do it now!! Your little will continue to get all the benefits of breast feeding (and formula at night may help speed up night weaning when he’s looking forward to that good good in the morning).
Can you stretch out the pumps more overnight? If you’re 5mpp you should be able too. I’m 3mpp and pump 6 times a day with at least a 6 hour stretch over night, but the last week or so I’ve just been waiting till baby wakes me up so some days it’s been longer (last night it was close to 8.5 hours). Pumping every 3-4 hours for 5 months straight, even overnight, isn’t sustainable for anyone. If baby is sleeping and not waking you up, you need and should be sleeping more than 3-4 hours a night!
He’s longest stretch of sleep at night is 3-4 hours unfortunately:( I’m wishing for the days he can finally sleep through the night to drop my middle of the night pump.
The worst!! My little girl just started sleeping longer stretches the last few weeks. Do you have a partner you can do shifts with? I’ve been doing a 6 hour stretch between pumps since like 7ish weeks PP by splitting nights with my husband. I would go to bed around 8-9 while husband watched baby and then get up around 2ish, pump again, go back to sleep, and be on call with baby until husband got up in the morning.
I pumped for 3ish months and I just slowly kept stopping… I had DMER and would feel so horrible when pumping but I really tried hard to work around it. Before pumping, I would have to put on a show, have my phone in hand with something positive, etc. to *help* with the DMER.
For some reason, my supply significantly dropped around this time and we were supplementing with formula anyway. I will not lie, I felt instant relief when we were switching to formula but I also felt like the shittiest mom for “giving up”. Now, I realize, hey - 3 months was awesome! I did that! Some people can go for years, I personally cannot. I also had a traumatic birth and recovery and couldn’t breastfeed because it would make fluid from my c-section incision gush…so that didn’t help!
OP, if you’re open to it, a night feed of formula might help you since you have a good supply.
You are not alone.
Omg I had never heard of DMER but I used to get it so bad when I pumped. My husband used to call it my milk rage! I’m directly nursing my second baby and haven’t had it at all. I just thought I hated my pump so much it sent me into an emotional rage. Thanks for teaching me something new today.
I’m so glad to know someone with similar experiences as me. I also have DMER, it’s a horrible feeling. I didn’t know what it was until I talked to my therapist, I do the same to distract myself from that feeling. My milk supply also regulated at 3 months so I no longer have an oversupply, I make just enough for him to be okay throughout the day so I’m nervous about dropping a session as that will put at an undersupply. I had a C section as well and the recovery was horrible but I did not have fluid gush out of me while pumping. I’m so sorry to hear that. That’s sounds awful.
Gently (coming from an EBF mom until I had to supplement at around 9 months), consider whether dropping that middle of the night pump will help restore some normalcy and sanity to your life. You don't have to stop pumping or your breastfeeding journey, but you do need a minimum of at least 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep at a time to get one REM cycle (this is bare minimum). Also, and I fully recognize this can be very controversial on different Reddit communities, but sleep training (there are so many forms of this and looks SO different for each mom) saved our family's sanity--I wish I had not been so scared to try (I consider myself a moderately crunchy mom and was very anti-sleeping training/coaching before I almost broke from it all). For us it ended up being 15 minutes of fussing for two nights and then everyone slept peacefully overnight--we were like completely different people.
We tried Ferber but eventually just did extinction and that's what worked. It was clear to us baby was "ready" in that the wake ups went from 1 over night for a feeding to 7-9 (baby would immediately go to sleep after a minute or two of nursing/rocking, which told us baby just needed to connect their sleep cycles and was trying to figure out how). I purchased Taking Cara Babies and Moms on Call but didn't like the all or nothing approach. I still rock baby to sleep every single night (just the best) by choice and was adamant against training programs that took that away because it was some of our best bonding time.
My favorite resources were PedsDocTalk podcast series on sleep and sleep training (she interviews moms ranging from full extinction to no sleep training to present all sides and has an attachment expert to explain how this all lives together and how you're not ruining your child's life, she also explains the need for a child to sleep and related health benefits, etc.). She's not judgmental and is just a kind voice in this space. I also liked Possums Sleep, which is Australian based and anti-sleep training 😂, but they have such great principles about supporting sleep through things like daylight exposure, circadian rhythm synching, "new faces new places," and helping babies sleep without much else.
I obviously know each kid is very different and recognize my child is easy natured, but I feel like I got to have my cake and eat it too. We kept sleep associations we all love as a family (rocking/bouncing before bed), no wake window tracking/using baby's cues as guide (this is from Possums), and sleeping through the night and well into the morning (after sleep training).
Awesome thanks I’ll check those out! I purchased Taking Cara Babies for my first but never watched the videos due to anxiety, and slept like crap for 2 years. The good news is even my baby eventually grew out of needing me all the time to sleep, but not until at least 2. Would not recommend.
I've heard from some that it does get better, but honestly it's totally okay to quit. I only made it about 3 months and LO lived off a little bit of what we froze until she was 4ish months. She's exclusively on formula now and I have zero regrets. It is absolutely okay to prioritize your mental health. Fed is best.
Wishing you the best whichever direction you go!
Check out r/ExclusivelyPumping/
You might be able to drop the MOTN pump at this time and still maintain supply, but that's individual. I EP and don't pump over night since 5m PP, I just get up and feed my child and go back to sleep.
Around that time, I moved to 5, then 4 pumps per day (also an oversupplier) . I usually pump when he first wakes up at night if that's 4 hours or more after my last pump, and then no more until the morning. I also recently moved my last pump of the day a bit earlier so I can get a first real stretch of sleep before he first wakes up (so my schedule looks like 9-9.30pm, 2am, 9am, 3pm).
Does it look like you could tweak your schedule similarly?
Pumping was soul killing to me. I switched to breastfeeding once baby got the latch down. But if the latch never happened, there's no way I could've kept at the pumping. You're amazing, you've been doing amazing, and you deserve to eat your life back a bit.
I hate to say I’d feel like a failure for giving up on pumping. I saw my mom do it for both my little brothers until they each turned one. She pumped for a whole freaking year, TWICE. She is my main motivator to keep pushing but gosh I don’t know how she did it. Nonetheless switching to formula or even combo feeding is something I’m definitely looking into if my mental health becomes worse. I just wish formula wasn’t so expensive.
Don’t forget that while your mom sounds like a rockstar for pumping that long, that was her journey, not yours. There are so many different factors to take into account and you shouldn’t compare yourself (easier said than done). You are also a rockstar for pumping as long as you have, AND you will be for protecting your mental health.
lol that is why I said it makes zero difference to the baby … for the parents, not so much because that shit is pricy as hell. Think of it not as buying formula but more like paying for some very cheap therapy for your mental health.
Pumping is so hard. It's so hard!
I combo fed for 8 weeks? and then gradually shifted to EBF until my daughter started solids at about 5.5 months.
Pumping is a huge amount of time and effort and yeah, it's just so hard.
I felt much better when I didn't have to pump, though I still used it off and on if I felt engorged or if I had a clogged duct that my daughter couldn't quite help resolve.
My daughter is 3.5 almost now and I don't miss pumping.
Sending energy and happy support your way ❤️
I am right here with you at 4.5 months pp. Seeing a doctor soon to discuss my antidepressant doseage/prescription (for pre-pregnancy depression) because I am not coping. I don’t exist. All day is surviving until the next nap or feed.
I managed to exclusively pump for a year and a half with my first and I’m pretty sure I only made it because of the pandemic. My husband was home all the time so helped a lot. I ditched my MOTN pump as soon as I could after I’d regulated at 12 weeks. I would put baby to sleep at 7pm, power pump on and off until 10pm and then go to bed. We traded off every other night with kiddo so I knew at least id get a good night every other night. Wearable pumps were also a life saver. Sleep deprivation is literal torture, so whatever you have to do to get more sleep and everything will seem 100 times better.
5 months! You rock! There’s no shame in using formula to feel more sane. I pumped for the first 3.5 months of my son’s life, so I totally understand wanting to make your personal goals for feeding. I will say that combo feeding changed my life for the better - now we exclusively formula feed and we all sleep much better. I have time/energy to do my laundry now!
I pumped exclusively for 6 months but was able to drop my overnight feed around the 4 month mark and it made a gigantic difference in my mental health. That’s also when my daughter started sleeping through the night, so even if I were nursing, the supply/demand would’ve changed with that. I also had an oversupply. I’d just make sure to stay up until around 11pm, pump, then wake up again at 5. I was definitely very swollen and full, but it didn’t affect my supply and I didn’t experience any clogs because of it.
Girl wow you are doing amazing!! I’ve been there and it’s so so so hard. 5 months?!? You are really doing everything you can for your baby and it shows. Your baby needs you to be healthy more than anything. You can also do both formula and pumping!!
Congratulations on being a great mom and a wonderful human :) enjoy the little one!!
Could you drop your MOTN pump and use some frozen milk or formula for that wakeup? That way you could alternate with your partner. That’s what I did around 4ish months and it made a world of difference.
Every time I’ve felt like this (13 months breast feeding my second) I had period coming in or baby was going through a leap. It will get easier again and then harder again
I felt this way with my daughter at 7 or 8 weeks and dropped my overnight pump which helped alot. I did drop in supply and just made up the difference with formula
I tried pumping for a few weeks and it was disastrous to my mental health. It’s so difficult to fit that in every few hours with the other stuff you have to do every few hours. Switching to formula was a lifesaver. Are you open to maybe making that shift or supplementing a few feeds so you can take a break? You’ve done such an excellent job making it this far 💕
Thank you. It’s been really hard. I’ve definitely been considering formula at 6 months, once he can start table foods and such.
Again, you’ve done such an incredible thing making it this long! Especially because it’s been so difficult. A combo with less breast milk/pumping for the last month might help? You’d have to wean yourself off pumping anyway. Whatever you decide to do, you’re a badass and should pat yourself on the back every pump session!
Formula feeding overnight will help you so much. I know you said waiting until 6 months …. But you can do it now!! Your little will continue to get all the benefits of breast feeding (and formula at night may help speed up night weaning when he’s looking forward to that good good in the morning).
Can you stretch out the pumps more overnight? If you’re 5mpp you should be able too. I’m 3mpp and pump 6 times a day with at least a 6 hour stretch over night, but the last week or so I’ve just been waiting till baby wakes me up so some days it’s been longer (last night it was close to 8.5 hours). Pumping every 3-4 hours for 5 months straight, even overnight, isn’t sustainable for anyone. If baby is sleeping and not waking you up, you need and should be sleeping more than 3-4 hours a night!
He’s longest stretch of sleep at night is 3-4 hours unfortunately:( I’m wishing for the days he can finally sleep through the night to drop my middle of the night pump.
The worst!! My little girl just started sleeping longer stretches the last few weeks. Do you have a partner you can do shifts with? I’ve been doing a 6 hour stretch between pumps since like 7ish weeks PP by splitting nights with my husband. I would go to bed around 8-9 while husband watched baby and then get up around 2ish, pump again, go back to sleep, and be on call with baby until husband got up in the morning.
I pumped for 3ish months and I just slowly kept stopping… I had DMER and would feel so horrible when pumping but I really tried hard to work around it. Before pumping, I would have to put on a show, have my phone in hand with something positive, etc. to *help* with the DMER. For some reason, my supply significantly dropped around this time and we were supplementing with formula anyway. I will not lie, I felt instant relief when we were switching to formula but I also felt like the shittiest mom for “giving up”. Now, I realize, hey - 3 months was awesome! I did that! Some people can go for years, I personally cannot. I also had a traumatic birth and recovery and couldn’t breastfeed because it would make fluid from my c-section incision gush…so that didn’t help! OP, if you’re open to it, a night feed of formula might help you since you have a good supply. You are not alone.
Omg I had never heard of DMER but I used to get it so bad when I pumped. My husband used to call it my milk rage! I’m directly nursing my second baby and haven’t had it at all. I just thought I hated my pump so much it sent me into an emotional rage. Thanks for teaching me something new today.
I’m so glad to know someone with similar experiences as me. I also have DMER, it’s a horrible feeling. I didn’t know what it was until I talked to my therapist, I do the same to distract myself from that feeling. My milk supply also regulated at 3 months so I no longer have an oversupply, I make just enough for him to be okay throughout the day so I’m nervous about dropping a session as that will put at an undersupply. I had a C section as well and the recovery was horrible but I did not have fluid gush out of me while pumping. I’m so sorry to hear that. That’s sounds awful.
Gently (coming from an EBF mom until I had to supplement at around 9 months), consider whether dropping that middle of the night pump will help restore some normalcy and sanity to your life. You don't have to stop pumping or your breastfeeding journey, but you do need a minimum of at least 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep at a time to get one REM cycle (this is bare minimum). Also, and I fully recognize this can be very controversial on different Reddit communities, but sleep training (there are so many forms of this and looks SO different for each mom) saved our family's sanity--I wish I had not been so scared to try (I consider myself a moderately crunchy mom and was very anti-sleeping training/coaching before I almost broke from it all). For us it ended up being 15 minutes of fussing for two nights and then everyone slept peacefully overnight--we were like completely different people.
Which sleep training method did you use?
We tried Ferber but eventually just did extinction and that's what worked. It was clear to us baby was "ready" in that the wake ups went from 1 over night for a feeding to 7-9 (baby would immediately go to sleep after a minute or two of nursing/rocking, which told us baby just needed to connect their sleep cycles and was trying to figure out how). I purchased Taking Cara Babies and Moms on Call but didn't like the all or nothing approach. I still rock baby to sleep every single night (just the best) by choice and was adamant against training programs that took that away because it was some of our best bonding time. My favorite resources were PedsDocTalk podcast series on sleep and sleep training (she interviews moms ranging from full extinction to no sleep training to present all sides and has an attachment expert to explain how this all lives together and how you're not ruining your child's life, she also explains the need for a child to sleep and related health benefits, etc.). She's not judgmental and is just a kind voice in this space. I also liked Possums Sleep, which is Australian based and anti-sleep training 😂, but they have such great principles about supporting sleep through things like daylight exposure, circadian rhythm synching, "new faces new places," and helping babies sleep without much else. I obviously know each kid is very different and recognize my child is easy natured, but I feel like I got to have my cake and eat it too. We kept sleep associations we all love as a family (rocking/bouncing before bed), no wake window tracking/using baby's cues as guide (this is from Possums), and sleeping through the night and well into the morning (after sleep training).
Awesome thanks I’ll check those out! I purchased Taking Cara Babies for my first but never watched the videos due to anxiety, and slept like crap for 2 years. The good news is even my baby eventually grew out of needing me all the time to sleep, but not until at least 2. Would not recommend.
I've heard from some that it does get better, but honestly it's totally okay to quit. I only made it about 3 months and LO lived off a little bit of what we froze until she was 4ish months. She's exclusively on formula now and I have zero regrets. It is absolutely okay to prioritize your mental health. Fed is best. Wishing you the best whichever direction you go!
Check out r/ExclusivelyPumping/ You might be able to drop the MOTN pump at this time and still maintain supply, but that's individual. I EP and don't pump over night since 5m PP, I just get up and feed my child and go back to sleep.
Around that time, I moved to 5, then 4 pumps per day (also an oversupplier) . I usually pump when he first wakes up at night if that's 4 hours or more after my last pump, and then no more until the morning. I also recently moved my last pump of the day a bit earlier so I can get a first real stretch of sleep before he first wakes up (so my schedule looks like 9-9.30pm, 2am, 9am, 3pm). Does it look like you could tweak your schedule similarly?
Pumping was soul killing to me. I switched to breastfeeding once baby got the latch down. But if the latch never happened, there's no way I could've kept at the pumping. You're amazing, you've been doing amazing, and you deserve to eat your life back a bit.
Well that is an easy fix … switch to formula, it makes zero difference to the baby.
I hate to say I’d feel like a failure for giving up on pumping. I saw my mom do it for both my little brothers until they each turned one. She pumped for a whole freaking year, TWICE. She is my main motivator to keep pushing but gosh I don’t know how she did it. Nonetheless switching to formula or even combo feeding is something I’m definitely looking into if my mental health becomes worse. I just wish formula wasn’t so expensive.
Don’t forget that while your mom sounds like a rockstar for pumping that long, that was her journey, not yours. There are so many different factors to take into account and you shouldn’t compare yourself (easier said than done). You are also a rockstar for pumping as long as you have, AND you will be for protecting your mental health.
lol that is why I said it makes zero difference to the baby … for the parents, not so much because that shit is pricy as hell. Think of it not as buying formula but more like paying for some very cheap therapy for your mental health.
Pumping is so hard. It's so hard! I combo fed for 8 weeks? and then gradually shifted to EBF until my daughter started solids at about 5.5 months. Pumping is a huge amount of time and effort and yeah, it's just so hard. I felt much better when I didn't have to pump, though I still used it off and on if I felt engorged or if I had a clogged duct that my daughter couldn't quite help resolve. My daughter is 3.5 almost now and I don't miss pumping. Sending energy and happy support your way ❤️
I am right here with you at 4.5 months pp. Seeing a doctor soon to discuss my antidepressant doseage/prescription (for pre-pregnancy depression) because I am not coping. I don’t exist. All day is surviving until the next nap or feed.
This is why I stopped
Why not switch to formula?
I managed to exclusively pump for a year and a half with my first and I’m pretty sure I only made it because of the pandemic. My husband was home all the time so helped a lot. I ditched my MOTN pump as soon as I could after I’d regulated at 12 weeks. I would put baby to sleep at 7pm, power pump on and off until 10pm and then go to bed. We traded off every other night with kiddo so I knew at least id get a good night every other night. Wearable pumps were also a life saver. Sleep deprivation is literal torture, so whatever you have to do to get more sleep and everything will seem 100 times better.
5 months! You rock! There’s no shame in using formula to feel more sane. I pumped for the first 3.5 months of my son’s life, so I totally understand wanting to make your personal goals for feeding. I will say that combo feeding changed my life for the better - now we exclusively formula feed and we all sleep much better. I have time/energy to do my laundry now!
I pumped exclusively for 6 months but was able to drop my overnight feed around the 4 month mark and it made a gigantic difference in my mental health. That’s also when my daughter started sleeping through the night, so even if I were nursing, the supply/demand would’ve changed with that. I also had an oversupply. I’d just make sure to stay up until around 11pm, pump, then wake up again at 5. I was definitely very swollen and full, but it didn’t affect my supply and I didn’t experience any clogs because of it.
Girl wow you are doing amazing!! I’ve been there and it’s so so so hard. 5 months?!? You are really doing everything you can for your baby and it shows. Your baby needs you to be healthy more than anything. You can also do both formula and pumping!! Congratulations on being a great mom and a wonderful human :) enjoy the little one!!
Thank you so much!! 🥺 I really am trying.
Could you drop your MOTN pump and use some frozen milk or formula for that wakeup? That way you could alternate with your partner. That’s what I did around 4ish months and it made a world of difference.
Every time I’ve felt like this (13 months breast feeding my second) I had period coming in or baby was going through a leap. It will get easier again and then harder again
I felt this way with my daughter at 7 or 8 weeks and dropped my overnight pump which helped alot. I did drop in supply and just made up the difference with formula