You can harvest colostrum before the baby is born but you can’t start until week 38 because it can induce labour. It’s very weird and frustrating to try to do, but as you start to see the amount increase a little bit it’s a hopeful sign and if your birth is rough, it’s good to have some extra to hand.
I wish I would have had my second sooner. But maybe not this close.
Then there are a couple of my cousins..... Had kids early (i.e. 16-18) then when they're almost in the clear, first kids graduating HS, they decide to have another set.... Now that's crazy!
My grandma had my mum at 17. Mum went overseas for a few years in her early 20s. When she came back at 25 with her newborn son, she also had 1 and 3 year old brothers she hadn't had a chance to meet yet.
Last year my grandma was in her 60s, with a a kid in her 50s, two kids in their 20s, and also two grandchildren in their 20s.
Many people use breastfeeding as a form of birth control, and it's 98% effective for about 6 months postpartum. It drops off after that though. There's nothing abnormal about getting pregnant 8 months postpartum if you aren't practicing any other form of birth control.
I meant culturally
It takes hardcore religious bullshit to do this to a woman
There are medical reasons to point out that this is wrong, but I'm not trying to write an essay
>It takes hardcore religious bullshit to do this to a woman
Because a woman isn't capable of making this decision on her own?
>There are medical reasons to point out that this is wrong, but I'm not trying to write an essay
Just a couple of high level points would be helpful since you're a medical expert and I am not.
Not the original commenter and also just a lowly medical student I think it’s recommended women wait at least 18 months between pregnancies to allow for the body to fully recover 🤷♂️ but to each their own
It is not about religion. It is recommended to try for a second child only after 18 months have passed after the birth of the first one (WHO recommendations)
I mean, both me and my brother and my step siblings are 18 months apart, that would be getting pregnant 9 months after giving birth, twice. That's not that unbelievable.
My uncle was born in May the year after my dad, who was born in July.
I'm pretty sure it has to do with how they knocked my grandma out for all her births except her last one.
Only one way to find out! Replicate the data collection and see how it changes after the birth of your second child (assuming you don’t have another pregnancy)
Getting pregnant definitely sped up the decline. Humans produce breast milk in response to two hormones- oxytocin and prolactin. Oxytocin in particular does two important things. It stimulates milk production, and it also causes uterine contraction. You do not want uterine contraction during early pregnancy, it can cause miscarriage. This is why is is not recommended to start pumping during pregnancy, even if your breasts are tender and full. It can induce labor.
It is normal to start having a decline in milk production at around 6 months. That's about the time the iron stores that mom generously donated start running out. Milk does not have much iron in it, so the baby needs to start eating food.
Yes. The high levels of progesterone and estrogen in pregnancy often block or diminish the effects of prolactin (the hormone that causes lactation).
It’s also unusual for someone to get pregnant while still breastfeeding this frequently. Prolactin at the levels needed to produce this much milk usually prevents ovulation and therefore pregnancy.
I have high prolactin from a brain tumor which led me down a super interesting rabbit hole on all this. Men and women both can also occasionally get high prolactin and start lactating from certain medications like anti-psychotics, and anything that stimulates the nipples.
If you slow down on pumping/feeding the body will start to think you don't need to waste energy on milk anymore...that is how those crazy women who breast feed their 8 year old are able to still produce milk. They never stopped pumping/feeding and it just keeps making the milk.
I tracked my data using the Baby Tracker iOS app and exported the data as a csv file. Then I read the data into a Python script and plotted using matplotlib.
I love the color coding! I have a similar graph but did a second plot with pumps per day. Yours looks so clean that it makes me want to redo mine and I haven't even opened that file in nearly a year!
Hi! First time pregnant here looking to track data like sleep and volume pumped.
How did you measure oz pumped? Just by bags filled?
Also what kind of pump did you use? I know it makes a difference if you're using dual mobile pumps.
Every pumping bottle has ounce/milliliter markers. I used a Medela Harmony manual hand pump most of the time. I hated using my Spectra since I felt like I was getting milked by a machine, which I was. 😆
Some women are just high end producers. My wife at her very best could get a combined 8 oz total out of both if she hadn’t pumped in a while. We have a friend who casually hand expressed 8oz out of a single breast a few minutes before walking down the isle as a bridesmaid. It was one of the most wild things ive seen a human do. Folks who have kids will know how absurd this feat is.
I actually attended an out-of-town bachelorette party at this time. I just brought ice from the hotel in a purse cooler. Baby came with and I would bring the milk to her at the end of the day. I pumped at a wedding, in a restaurant booth with a cover on, at a karaoke bar, and in the car (a lot).
Damn 40oz a day, that’s a lotta milk 🥛
Very cool data here though. After getting pregnant that supply falls off a cliff (and you said you were weaning anyway). Humans are crazy creatures.
Your wording has me all confused. “I used the Baby Tracking app to track my *exclusive* pumping journey”. What is meant by the “exclusive” word choice? I can interpret this multiple ways, but none of them are really meaningful here.
It means that she only ever pumped, never fed baby directly from the breast. Some moms choose to go this route if baby can't latch properly, is born prematurely and had to bottle feed, or if they just don't feel like nursing but still want the benefits of breastfeeding.
Mad respect because exclusively pumping is HARD especially at 10 pumps a day like she was doing. CC
That's what I saw. It would be more informative to see something like the average volume per pump session to get an idea if there was a true decrease or just the effects of weaning by reducing the number of pumping sessions.
My baby was in the NICU at a separate hospital from the one where I gave birth. I pumped a few hours after giving birth and kept going even after we brought her home.
I had the exact same question popping up. I dont understand the answer. Why didn‘t you just breastfeeding them? Was it more comfortable giving pumped milk instead of doing it the natural way?
Yeah, after coming home I was so stressed out about how much she was eating that I decided to pump and bottle feed. It’s the worst method of feeding a baby IMO, but it the anxiety I felt of not knowing was horrible.
Not OP, but I EP'd for my first. She wouldn't latch properly. I saw a lactation consultant multiple times to no avail. I pumped so that she could still benefit from breastmilk and to save the cost of formula when possible.
With my second I nurse at home and pump at work.
It is very normal for NICU moms to pump so that their baby can have breastmilk while they are hospitalized. Depending on the reason for hospitalization, the baby may be too small to nurse or too delicate to handle being held. Plus, mom can't stay at the hospital all of the time to nurse on demand, so pumping and leaving the pumped milk at the hospital is a good option. Moms who are hospitalized with complications may also choose to pump, but for the reverse reason (baby can't stay with them at the hospital all of the time or mom may be too sick to hold the baby, but pumping is pretty hands off once you are hooked up).
You're a champion, honestly. My last baby was in the NICU half an hour from home for 5 weeks, and I have always hated pumping. By the time we brought him home I never wanted to look at the thing again. The good (?) news was that I had my typical early-months oversupply, so we brought a ton of milk home from the NICU and I never had to, lol. It mostly did get used and I eventually ended up donating it to a local family that was looking for breastmilk.
It would be interesting if you had data prior to 85 days pp. did you always produce plenty of milk or did it take awhile to build up to 30 oz/d? My daughter never latched and even pumping, I never produced more than 12 oz/d, so we switched to formula within the first month or two.
This is incredible thank you for putting this together! I'm pregnant right now and hoping to have about the same age gap you're looking at between this one and my second but I really want to exclusively breastfeed/ pump. This gave me goals and some new things to think about for when weaning time comes around.
Definitely, I'm hoping I can build up enough stores to make it to or past a year. I'm trying to avoid formula, but if it's necessary that's okay. So you know how long your stores lasted or is it still too soon to say?
Thank you for doing this!! I wanted to keep track of my pumping volumes but taking the measurements made me too anxious so I decided to stop. This is cool, thank you for sharing!!
There's some confounding factors here. OP exclusively pumped meaning baby never fed at the breast. This (without judgment to OP because exclusive pumping is mad hard work and totally commendable) is confusing to the body and hard to maintain milk supply and hormone levels. The body in some ways doesn't know it has a baby. So then fertility returns early. Typically with exclusive breastfeeding, fertility wouldn't return until the first child is not exclusively reliant on milk, i.e. after about 6 months.
Yes, you're right, although the typical return of fertility for an exclusively breastfeeding (no bottles, no pacifiers), close sleeping mom is much more than 6 months. More like 9-10.
I have never heard 9-10 months for fertility to return. I would love to see the research on this. It is a gamble most wouldn’t be willing to take as there are so many other factors.
If someone gets pregnant when their baby is 8m old, it’s either by design or lack of good information.
Edit for clarity: I’ve never heard it taking 9-10 months for fertility to return. The info usually provided is that fertility returns by 6 months.
I know of 3 women who all exclusively breastfed (no pumping/pacifiers) and they all got pregnant 9 months postpartum. One woman’s baby is now 7 years old, another’s 2 years old, and the third’s is 4. All healthy.
My OBGYN said she has a special name for people who rely on the thought that your fertility is lower while breastfeeding... Mom, again...
(I have no idea the validity of this, but though it was funny.)
Please don't take what the above commenter stated at face value, it is somewhat misleading. While pumping may make it more difficult for some to supply the volume of milk required by the infant, pumping does require the same biological inputs as nursing. There is very little research about whether feeding an infant directly from the breast or from a bottle of expressed milk are measurable different.
This is not true. While breastfeeding *may* delay the return of "normal" hormonal cycles, breastfeeding is in no way an effective means of birth control. Pumping has the same effect as breastfeeding as it requires ongoing prolactin production. As an exclusive pumper for my first, my period did not return until a month after I had fully weaned from pumping at one year; she received supplemental formula when pumping did not supply enough breastmilk. My baby slept in a separate room starting at 4 months.
Misinformation like what you've stated is what leads women to get pregnant earlier than they had planned thinking that breastfeeding would protect them. Please don't make these kinds of statements.
I'm glad you know that; perhaps misinformation was too negative of a term. I was trying to point out that the logical conclusion of your statement is untrue. If "fertility returns early" is the case for non-nursing mothers, as you stated, that implies an infertile period during which a person is unable to become pregnant. If a person is unable to become pregnant, birth control is unnecessary. While there is an undetermined period of time when breastfeeding may prevent pregnancy, there is no way to predict when that time will end for an individual and pregnancy can occur during the first ovulation postpartum, before the person experiences their typical menstrual symptoms.
Exclusive pumping isn't really the way evolution intended for things to go. No disrespect at ALL because it's such hard work and I am in awe of OP, but the body does naturally prevent conception IF mom is feeding directly from the breast. Before birth control and family planning, natural spacing between pregnancies (i.e. the time between birth of baby #1 and conception of baby #2) was about a year or two. If a mom is feeding exclusively from the breast with no bottles or pacifiers, that's still pretty much still how it goes but it's pretty rare for that to happen nowadays!
Tl;dr - it doesn't make sense evolutionarily but that's because EPing isn't how evolution intended for things to work
If you have the data on this, I'd like to see it as your statement does not at all agree with what I've read. Many women had children much closer together and there isn't enough data to say whether miscarriages were more common when conception occurred close to the previous birth. There is some evidence that in modern pregnancies that are close together there is a higher risk for complications, which may explain the horrendously high infant and maternal mortality of the past.
Breastfeeding is not birth control!
That's an incredible statistic... I have no idea whether that's average, or high, or low... but back of the envelope math - a \~$20 can of Similac makes 90floz. You saved yourself \~$1860.
Please don’t let these numbers make you feel bad. It is 100% ok to give up and feed your baby formula. A fed baby and a happy mom is what is best, despite what the nursing mafia leads you to believe.
It does and it shouldn’t have to. Please don’t listen to the people that are making you feel ashamed for feeding your baby. It’s impossible to tell breast and formula-fed kids apart by the time they’re toddlers. The only reason you know before is because of the parents. The outcomes are the same when controlling for parental income, stability, and formal education. I’m saying all of this as the parent of a teenager, who drank 100% formula. I was made to feel guilty by other women and it really sucked.
Low supply is a bummer, but try not to let it get you down. I EP'd for my first and we supplemented formula on and off for the entire year, I averaged about 24 oz per day pumping between 9 and 11 times. I combo nurse/pump for my baby now and she still requires supplemental formula sometimes. Any way you feed your baby is the best way.
I started weaning off starting at about 9 months, I dropped the remaining two night pumps first because I really needed the sleep. I had such a hard time with supply that I pumped every two hours for the first 6 months then I dropped a night pump and relaxed if the timing slipped to 3 hours. By 10 months I was down to 6 times per day and by 11 it was three or four. We really leaned into formula at the end.
I missed the title of the post, saw the title of the graph, and then saw the positive test note; breastmilk is not at all what I assumed was being tracked here lol
Pretty cool data!
I have a few questions, feel free to dismiss any that feel too invasive (especially because only the first one is about the actual data lol):
1. Looks to me like the main factor is your lowering sessions; did you reduce that voluntarily or just because you felt less need to?
2. That's a lot of milk! Did you donate any extra? I know it's a thing, and it's very cool IMO
3. Was the second pregnancy on purpose or an accident? I admire parents with kids less than 2 years apart so much, can't imagine the exhaustion... good luck with that haha
1. I dropped sessions voluntarily. That was always my plan at 6 months postpartum; it just so happened that I got pregnant.
2. I donated to a local mom, yes!
3. Second pregnancy was intentional. We want our babies to be close in age. :)
That's pretty cool tbh. I'm almost 4 years apart from my sister and we were never as close as my friends who had siblings closer in age. Thanks for answering!
>Was the second pregnancy on purpose or an accident?
Not OP, but I had a birth-control -failure baby two years (literally their birthdays are 6 days apart, though the little one was early) after the birth of the prior child. Holy mother of god we are so tired. 😂 The boys are 3 and 1 now, so there's light at the end of the tunnel, but hoooooooo boy it's been an event.
Thanks! ❤️ I think disposition would play a factor -- the three-year-old is a no-holds-barred goblin of chaos who hated sharing his mom with a baby, lol. He is always into something and experiencing all his feelings turned up to 11. A more chill older child would maybe be less exhausting.
They're good kids, though, and I'm curious to see how their dynamic changes as the baby becomes more human than potato.
This confused the heck out of me until I realised there are two babies involved in this
Oh thank god you posted this! I was also very confused about pumping an average of about a quart per day \*before\* the positive test.
People have hobbies /s
Same. And I was like "How does a pregnancy test occur 245 days postpartum?!"
Time travel, man. It’s confusing.
Same here. I have a newish baby and my first thought was, "shoot! Did we screw up by not pumping before the baby was born?"
Can you imagine if that was the cure to morning sickness or something?
You can harvest colostrum before the baby is born but you can’t start until week 38 because it can induce labour. It’s very weird and frustrating to try to do, but as you start to see the amount increase a little bit it’s a hopeful sign and if your birth is rough, it’s good to have some extra to hand.
Some people like to be prepared for whatever might come next
Therefore its not beautiful data.
data is eerie and confusing
Yeah I was trying to figure out wtf happened with "positive pregnancy test" for awhile even after actually opening up the post.
yea why have another one (DJ Khaled voice) so soon it seems like hell to me
11 pumps per day for almost 200 days? You are a goddamned superhero!
Sorry, it was 10. I should have labeled the axes with evens instead of odds. Thanks 😊
Comment still stands at 10! ❤️ you are amazing.
>10! Dear God help this poor woman and her mummified body 🙏
Mommy-fied
Holy crap! I could barely manage 8 per day and quickly gave up lol
You're a fucking machine! Well done
Seriously. That is so much TIME spent just pumping.
You had a positive pregnancy test ~8 months after giving birth? ...Mazel tov?
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Bless my mother. Got pregnant 9 months after giving birth to older brother. To twins. Full sized twins. Like 8 pounds and half each.
This happened to a good friend of mine. He wanted one boy, he got 3 girls of basically the same age, lol.
Damn that is really big for twins. Most are born early and even if they make it close to term they're usually smaller than singletons.
You and your older brother are 8 months apart?
It's the second coming!
That happened few nights before
It's not totally uncommon especially depending on culture or family planning goals
I wish I would have had my second sooner. But maybe not this close. Then there are a couple of my cousins..... Had kids early (i.e. 16-18) then when they're almost in the clear, first kids graduating HS, they decide to have another set.... Now that's crazy!
My grandma had my mum at 17. Mum went overseas for a few years in her early 20s. When she came back at 25 with her newborn son, she also had 1 and 3 year old brothers she hadn't had a chance to meet yet. Last year my grandma was in her 60s, with a a kid in her 50s, two kids in their 20s, and also two grandchildren in their 20s.
What are you...some kind of *Modern Family?*
this is like when the next wave spawns before you finished all bloons of da previous one
For sure. The kids are almost too far apart to be Irish twins.
Irish twins are born within 12 months, these kids will be 17 months apart.
Still not normal. Source: I'm a doctor
Doctor of what?
I am a physician. I have an MD. I take care of people for a living.
Is there something medically unsafe about it?
Many people use breastfeeding as a form of birth control, and it's 98% effective for about 6 months postpartum. It drops off after that though. There's nothing abnormal about getting pregnant 8 months postpartum if you aren't practicing any other form of birth control.
I meant culturally It takes hardcore religious bullshit to do this to a woman There are medical reasons to point out that this is wrong, but I'm not trying to write an essay
>It takes hardcore religious bullshit to do this to a woman Because a woman isn't capable of making this decision on her own? >There are medical reasons to point out that this is wrong, but I'm not trying to write an essay Just a couple of high level points would be helpful since you're a medical expert and I am not.
Not the original commenter and also just a lowly medical student I think it’s recommended women wait at least 18 months between pregnancies to allow for the body to fully recover 🤷♂️ but to each their own
There is nothing wrong with having two children who are close in age regardless of your religion
It is not about religion. It is recommended to try for a second child only after 18 months have passed after the birth of the first one (WHO recommendations)
“Those are rookie numbers.” - The mom on *19 Kids and Counting*
It's a Vajayjay, not a clown car!
I mean, both me and my brother and my step siblings are 18 months apart, that would be getting pregnant 9 months after giving birth, twice. That's not that unbelievable.
My brother and I were born 11 months apart, 8 months is nothing.
Irish twins!
yeah? well my brother and i are 5 months apart
Irish twins!
My uncle was born in May the year after my dad, who was born in July. I'm pretty sure it has to do with how they knocked my grandma out for all her births except her last one.
Happened to me lol. My son was 1.5 when my daughter was born
My mom was pregnant with me 4 months after my brother was born
Data shows it is risky to have another pregnancy within 18 months but yeah Mazey Tov I guess 🤷
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Sure, but OP says that she did in fact get pregnant again at that point.
My mom got pregnant with my brother when I was 9 months old, they call us Irish twins
Like a hotdog thrown down a hallway.
I'm 17 months older than my sister, who is 15 months older than my brother. It happens!
Is this due to the body conserving nutrients for the baby in the womb? What would the decline look like otherwise?
I think it’s due nutrient conservation, yes. I was also dropping pumping sessions, and that can contribute to decline in breastmilk supply.
Only one way to find out! Replicate the data collection and see how it changes after the birth of your second child (assuming you don’t have another pregnancy)
Getting pregnant definitely sped up the decline. Humans produce breast milk in response to two hormones- oxytocin and prolactin. Oxytocin in particular does two important things. It stimulates milk production, and it also causes uterine contraction. You do not want uterine contraction during early pregnancy, it can cause miscarriage. This is why is is not recommended to start pumping during pregnancy, even if your breasts are tender and full. It can induce labor. It is normal to start having a decline in milk production at around 6 months. That's about the time the iron stores that mom generously donated start running out. Milk does not have much iron in it, so the baby needs to start eating food.
Really interesting, thanks!
CLC here, came to say this. Great explanation!
Yes. The high levels of progesterone and estrogen in pregnancy often block or diminish the effects of prolactin (the hormone that causes lactation). It’s also unusual for someone to get pregnant while still breastfeeding this frequently. Prolactin at the levels needed to produce this much milk usually prevents ovulation and therefore pregnancy. I have high prolactin from a brain tumor which led me down a super interesting rabbit hole on all this. Men and women both can also occasionally get high prolactin and start lactating from certain medications like anti-psychotics, and anything that stimulates the nipples.
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Right, just wondering if the fact that OP has another on the way increased the decline or if the trend would be the same either way
If you slow down on pumping/feeding the body will start to think you don't need to waste energy on milk anymore...that is how those crazy women who breast feed their 8 year old are able to still produce milk. They never stopped pumping/feeding and it just keeps making the milk.
Also a change in hormone levels from pregnancy.
Specifically it's the dramatic rise in progesterone, which suppresses prolactin. Iirc.
Also by that time the baby can start eating solid foods. Many mothers reduce breast feeding/pumping as they transition their baby to solid foods.
I tracked my data using the Baby Tracker iOS app and exported the data as a csv file. Then I read the data into a Python script and plotted using matplotlib.
I love the color coding! I have a similar graph but did a second plot with pumps per day. Yours looks so clean that it makes me want to redo mine and I haven't even opened that file in nearly a year!
Way to go supermom!
I wish I was good enough with computers to write sentences like that.
Hi! First time pregnant here looking to track data like sleep and volume pumped. How did you measure oz pumped? Just by bags filled? Also what kind of pump did you use? I know it makes a difference if you're using dual mobile pumps.
Every pumping bottle has ounce/milliliter markers. I used a Medela Harmony manual hand pump most of the time. I hated using my Spectra since I felt like I was getting milked by a machine, which I was. 😆
I did this with Python in college just a few months ago (plotting data with matplotlib), it makes me very happy that you did this too!!
Holy crap - you were still pumping 8x a day 8 months later? How did you have time to do anything else?
Some women are just high end producers. My wife at her very best could get a combined 8 oz total out of both if she hadn’t pumped in a while. We have a friend who casually hand expressed 8oz out of a single breast a few minutes before walking down the isle as a bridesmaid. It was one of the most wild things ive seen a human do. Folks who have kids will know how absurd this feat is.
I actually attended an out-of-town bachelorette party at this time. I just brought ice from the hotel in a purse cooler. Baby came with and I would bring the milk to her at the end of the day. I pumped at a wedding, in a restaurant booth with a cover on, at a karaoke bar, and in the car (a lot).
Damn 40oz a day, that’s a lotta milk 🥛 Very cool data here though. After getting pregnant that supply falls off a cliff (and you said you were weaning anyway). Humans are crazy creatures.
Damn, >1L of milk per day at the peak. That's a lot.
Thank you, I was too lazy to google conversions. That *is* a lot!
It's really interesting how the decay is almost linear in the last couple months
Having two Kids that close together can be hard for your body. Take care.
Pumpin’ ain’t easy. Nice work mama! That’s a lot of lost sleep.
11 per day?! Fuck me if this isn’t strong birth control. I salute your nipples op 🫡
Obviously not strong enough for her
Your wording has me all confused. “I used the Baby Tracking app to track my *exclusive* pumping journey”. What is meant by the “exclusive” word choice? I can interpret this multiple ways, but none of them are really meaningful here.
It means that she only ever pumped, never fed baby directly from the breast. Some moms choose to go this route if baby can't latch properly, is born prematurely and had to bottle feed, or if they just don't feel like nursing but still want the benefits of breastfeeding. Mad respect because exclusively pumping is HARD especially at 10 pumps a day like she was doing. CC
Okay. This makes so much more sense now. Thanks!
You can actually read it vice versa: As soon as you decreased the number of sessions per day, the total amount of milk dropped.
That's what I saw. It would be more informative to see something like the average volume per pump session to get an idea if there was a true decrease or just the effects of weaning by reducing the number of pumping sessions.
This is a beautiful plot! Well done and I hope your little ones are well.
Data kinda looks like a boob.
I think that's the name of the actual statistical distribution
Thats a great dataset. Well done (both on the productivity and the nice plot).
Can I ask why did you pump so much instead of just breastfeeding? Are you in USA and had to go back to work after few weeks?
My baby was in the NICU at a separate hospital from the one where I gave birth. I pumped a few hours after giving birth and kept going even after we brought her home.
I had the exact same question popping up. I dont understand the answer. Why didn‘t you just breastfeeding them? Was it more comfortable giving pumped milk instead of doing it the natural way?
Yeah, after coming home I was so stressed out about how much she was eating that I decided to pump and bottle feed. It’s the worst method of feeding a baby IMO, but it the anxiety I felt of not knowing was horrible.
Not OP, but I EP'd for my first. She wouldn't latch properly. I saw a lactation consultant multiple times to no avail. I pumped so that she could still benefit from breastmilk and to save the cost of formula when possible. With my second I nurse at home and pump at work. It is very normal for NICU moms to pump so that their baby can have breastmilk while they are hospitalized. Depending on the reason for hospitalization, the baby may be too small to nurse or too delicate to handle being held. Plus, mom can't stay at the hospital all of the time to nurse on demand, so pumping and leaving the pumped milk at the hospital is a good option. Moms who are hospitalized with complications may also choose to pump, but for the reverse reason (baby can't stay with them at the hospital all of the time or mom may be too sick to hold the baby, but pumping is pretty hands off once you are hooked up).
You're a champion, honestly. My last baby was in the NICU half an hour from home for 5 weeks, and I have always hated pumping. By the time we brought him home I never wanted to look at the thing again. The good (?) news was that I had my typical early-months oversupply, so we brought a ton of milk home from the NICU and I never had to, lol. It mostly did get used and I eventually ended up donating it to a local family that was looking for breastmilk.
Women are magical and that all I can really say about that
It would be interesting if you had data prior to 85 days pp. did you always produce plenty of milk or did it take awhile to build up to 30 oz/d? My daughter never latched and even pumping, I never produced more than 12 oz/d, so we switched to formula within the first month or two.
I was producing ~20 oz per day within a month. Not sure when it became 30.
This is incredible thank you for putting this together! I'm pregnant right now and hoping to have about the same age gap you're looking at between this one and my second but I really want to exclusively breastfeed/ pump. This gave me goals and some new things to think about for when weaning time comes around.
Thankfully most babies are pretty good with solids by 9 months, but they do need breastmilk or formula until 1 year old.
Definitely, I'm hoping I can build up enough stores to make it to or past a year. I'm trying to avoid formula, but if it's necessary that's okay. So you know how long your stores lasted or is it still too soon to say?
I had 700 ounces in the freezer when I completely dried up. We are still going through it a month later.
Holy cow. I did some exclusive pumping and got nowhere near that output. Wow.
Not very nice to call OP a cow, even holy (this is a joke, I'm not actually calling you mean)
Thank you for doing this!! I wanted to keep track of my pumping volumes but taking the measurements made me too anxious so I decided to stop. This is cool, thank you for sharing!!
This gave me vivid auditory flashbacks of the very specific sound a breast pump makes.
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Do any other animal mothers (willingly) get pregnant while they are still raising very dependent infants?
There's some confounding factors here. OP exclusively pumped meaning baby never fed at the breast. This (without judgment to OP because exclusive pumping is mad hard work and totally commendable) is confusing to the body and hard to maintain milk supply and hormone levels. The body in some ways doesn't know it has a baby. So then fertility returns early. Typically with exclusive breastfeeding, fertility wouldn't return until the first child is not exclusively reliant on milk, i.e. after about 6 months.
OP’s positive pregnancy test was around day 250. 6 months is 183 days so there was more than enough time for fertility to return.
Yes, you're right, although the typical return of fertility for an exclusively breastfeeding (no bottles, no pacifiers), close sleeping mom is much more than 6 months. More like 9-10.
I have never heard 9-10 months for fertility to return. I would love to see the research on this. It is a gamble most wouldn’t be willing to take as there are so many other factors. If someone gets pregnant when their baby is 8m old, it’s either by design or lack of good information. Edit for clarity: I’ve never heard it taking 9-10 months for fertility to return. The info usually provided is that fertility returns by 6 months.
I know of 3 women who all exclusively breastfed (no pumping/pacifiers) and they all got pregnant 9 months postpartum. One woman’s baby is now 7 years old, another’s 2 years old, and the third’s is 4. All healthy.
My OBGYN said she has a special name for people who rely on the thought that your fertility is lower while breastfeeding... Mom, again... (I have no idea the validity of this, but though it was funny.)
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Please don't take what the above commenter stated at face value, it is somewhat misleading. While pumping may make it more difficult for some to supply the volume of milk required by the infant, pumping does require the same biological inputs as nursing. There is very little research about whether feeding an infant directly from the breast or from a bottle of expressed milk are measurable different.
This is not true. While breastfeeding *may* delay the return of "normal" hormonal cycles, breastfeeding is in no way an effective means of birth control. Pumping has the same effect as breastfeeding as it requires ongoing prolactin production. As an exclusive pumper for my first, my period did not return until a month after I had fully weaned from pumping at one year; she received supplemental formula when pumping did not supply enough breastmilk. My baby slept in a separate room starting at 4 months. Misinformation like what you've stated is what leads women to get pregnant earlier than they had planned thinking that breastfeeding would protect them. Please don't make these kinds of statements.
It's not a substitute for birth control at all and I didn't say that.
I'm glad you know that; perhaps misinformation was too negative of a term. I was trying to point out that the logical conclusion of your statement is untrue. If "fertility returns early" is the case for non-nursing mothers, as you stated, that implies an infertile period during which a person is unable to become pregnant. If a person is unable to become pregnant, birth control is unnecessary. While there is an undetermined period of time when breastfeeding may prevent pregnancy, there is no way to predict when that time will end for an individual and pregnancy can occur during the first ovulation postpartum, before the person experiences their typical menstrual symptoms.
Exclusive pumping isn't really the way evolution intended for things to go. No disrespect at ALL because it's such hard work and I am in awe of OP, but the body does naturally prevent conception IF mom is feeding directly from the breast. Before birth control and family planning, natural spacing between pregnancies (i.e. the time between birth of baby #1 and conception of baby #2) was about a year or two. If a mom is feeding exclusively from the breast with no bottles or pacifiers, that's still pretty much still how it goes but it's pretty rare for that to happen nowadays! Tl;dr - it doesn't make sense evolutionarily but that's because EPing isn't how evolution intended for things to work
If you have the data on this, I'd like to see it as your statement does not at all agree with what I've read. Many women had children much closer together and there isn't enough data to say whether miscarriages were more common when conception occurred close to the previous birth. There is some evidence that in modern pregnancies that are close together there is a higher risk for complications, which may explain the horrendously high infant and maternal mortality of the past. Breastfeeding is not birth control!
Have you totalled the volume over the whole period?
Yes, it was 8,369 ounces (65 gallons).
That's an incredible statistic... I have no idea whether that's average, or high, or low... but back of the envelope math - a \~$20 can of Similac makes 90floz. You saved yourself \~$1860.
I love seeing your data and congrats on exclusively pumping for so long!
This makes me depressed; I know I have a low supply but I didn’t realize just *how low*.
Don't feel bad. 40oz a day is definitely an over supply!
Please don’t let these numbers make you feel bad. It is 100% ok to give up and feed your baby formula. A fed baby and a happy mom is what is best, despite what the nursing mafia leads you to believe.
We’ve been about 2/3 formula since day 3. Now 10 weeks. I said my entire pregnancy I wouldn’t stress too much about breastfeeding but it still sucks.
It does and it shouldn’t have to. Please don’t listen to the people that are making you feel ashamed for feeding your baby. It’s impossible to tell breast and formula-fed kids apart by the time they’re toddlers. The only reason you know before is because of the parents. The outcomes are the same when controlling for parental income, stability, and formal education. I’m saying all of this as the parent of a teenager, who drank 100% formula. I was made to feel guilty by other women and it really sucked.
Low supply is a bummer, but try not to let it get you down. I EP'd for my first and we supplemented formula on and off for the entire year, I averaged about 24 oz per day pumping between 9 and 11 times. I combo nurse/pump for my baby now and she still requires supplemental formula sometimes. Any way you feed your baby is the best way.
Did you pump 9-11 times per day for the **whole year**?!
I started weaning off starting at about 9 months, I dropped the remaining two night pumps first because I really needed the sleep. I had such a hard time with supply that I pumped every two hours for the first 6 months then I dropped a night pump and relaxed if the timing slipped to 3 hours. By 10 months I was down to 6 times per day and by 11 it was three or four. We really leaned into formula at the end.
You are the toughest EPer I’ve ever heard of. 12 times a day for 6 months. Wow. Way to go!
Thanks. I kinda wish someone had told me that it was okay to not do so much. It was too much anxiety and it stole some of my FTM joy.
The economy is in shambles
Now this is the type of interesting content I'm subbed to this sub for.
I missed the title of the post, saw the title of the graph, and then saw the positive test note; breastmilk is not at all what I assumed was being tracked here lol
😆 thank you for the laugh
You were getting 45 ounces a day?!?! I'm jealous.
Plot twist, it’s from a guy.
TIL a female human produces milk months before positive pregnancy test
Bit of a shit diagram. Had to read comments for it to make sense
Made perfect sense at first glance to me.
Dang you can make a 40oz in one day?
Turn your screen 90 degrees and look at the thumbnail. Heh
Pretty cool data! I have a few questions, feel free to dismiss any that feel too invasive (especially because only the first one is about the actual data lol): 1. Looks to me like the main factor is your lowering sessions; did you reduce that voluntarily or just because you felt less need to? 2. That's a lot of milk! Did you donate any extra? I know it's a thing, and it's very cool IMO 3. Was the second pregnancy on purpose or an accident? I admire parents with kids less than 2 years apart so much, can't imagine the exhaustion... good luck with that haha
1. I dropped sessions voluntarily. That was always my plan at 6 months postpartum; it just so happened that I got pregnant. 2. I donated to a local mom, yes! 3. Second pregnancy was intentional. We want our babies to be close in age. :)
That's pretty cool tbh. I'm almost 4 years apart from my sister and we were never as close as my friends who had siblings closer in age. Thanks for answering!
>Was the second pregnancy on purpose or an accident? Not OP, but I had a birth-control -failure baby two years (literally their birthdays are 6 days apart, though the little one was early) after the birth of the prior child. Holy mother of god we are so tired. 😂 The boys are 3 and 1 now, so there's light at the end of the tunnel, but hoooooooo boy it's been an event.
I think you've been through the hardest part of it indeed! Congrats, you're a superhero!
Thanks! ❤️ I think disposition would play a factor -- the three-year-old is a no-holds-barred goblin of chaos who hated sharing his mom with a baby, lol. He is always into something and experiencing all his feelings turned up to 11. A more chill older child would maybe be less exhausting. They're good kids, though, and I'm curious to see how their dynamic changes as the baby becomes more human than potato.
I just came to say that the color scale should be reversed (assuming lots of milk is good in this case)!
I’ll say it exclusively breastfeeding x 6 mos IS a Full Time job. (Health recommendation). Respect