Hudson Valley Nesties
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did you give your LO a pacifier in the hospital? im catching up on some bf reading and they mentioned not giving one for at least 2 weeks to avoid nipple confusion.
how long after LO was born did you pump? just curious!

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Re: moms who breastfed
i don't think we did a paci for a few weeks. sam never took to it, so it didn't do much for comfort sucking between nursing times.
for ava - i started pumping in the hospital due to latch problems. i EP'd for 6 mos.
for sam - i pumped once a day starting 1 week before returning to work (maternity leave was 12 weeks, so around the 11th week). due to EPing, i hate my pump and didn't want to spend any time with it while on maternity leave - lol! looking back, i should have started around 8 weeks postpartum to buld a nice freezer stash. i never had much of one, which was perfectly fine until i needed to stop pumping 2 weeks ago. we've been struggling because sam refuses formula.
We offered a pacifier to DS while we were still in the hospital but, he was never interested in taking it there or at home (I BF'd for 13 months).
As for pumping, I didn't start until DS was almost 6 months. HUGE MISTAKE! This time I will start pumping by 4 weeks. When I started last time, my supply had long been established and I was never able to express what I needed for him once I started back to work. Because of that huge error, I ended up needing to supplement with formula during my work days for about 6 weeks, until he could transition to cow's milk. I don't think formula is evil but, it's not what I wanted to do. I carried a huge amount of guilt that could have been prevented if I had been advised to start pumping within the first month or two of his life.
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never gave a paci in the hospital. started it somewhere around 5 weeks.
i started pumping very early on. like a few times when i was rock hard (even though they say you are not supposed to). then for a while dh, gave her a bottle at night while i pumped. so she was used to the bottle and i was used to pumping. all this by 2 months definitely. then i added an extra pump in the morning to increase supply. i went back to work 4 months post partum and pumped full time while there and bf'd when home. i quit my job at 10 months and stopped using a bottle, thinking amen im done with pumping. then she never wanted anything to do with a bottle again. that part was kind of annoying. we ebf'd for 13 months.
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Kevin got a pacifier while he was in the NICU. When I did breastfeed him there wasn't any nipple confusion. I did try to breastfeed while he was in the NICU and when he first came home, but then I switched to exclusively pumping b/c the whole breastfeeding thing was just too overwhelming for me and I wasn't sure how much he was getting if anything at all. Therefore, I started pumping immediately b/c they wanted him to get whatever he could from me while in the NICU. My milk came in when he was around 4 days old and once it came in, I was able to pump about 20-25 ounces a day. We still supplemented with formula, we always gave him the bottle in the middle of the night as formula in hopes he would sleep longer and to get him used to it for when we switched over to straight formula.
I pumped until he was 9 weeks old which is when we did a full switch-over to formula. He was colicky on my breastmilk and it just wasn't for him. When we switched to formula he became a different child. A happy one. I felt guilty about it, but it was the best decision for all of us b/c I was going insane with all the crying all day long. Plus, I was going back to work and I knew I wasn't going to be able to pump on the schedule I had while I was at home.