Exclusively breastfeeding vs Pumping?

[ytrevino1977]

@robinrocks Your baby is not missing out on anything. I used nipple shields for the first 3 months before we managed to successfully breastfeed without them and although it was hard I'm glad I made it work for the simple fact that I hate pumping and washing pump parts and bottles etc. But I'm lucky to live in a country with proper maternity leave so I could be home for the first 12 months, and breastfeeding worked for me. It does have its drawbacks though, as he's now 18 months and I've never spent a night away from him because we're still breastfeeding 3 times a day and I'm scared to get mastitis if I miss a feed, and again I hate pumping so it feels more hassle than it's worth to go away! But getting time to myself, especially the first 6 months, was near impossible because he fed frequently. We did pump and use bottles so I could get some extra sleep, but apart from that I felt so much pressure to always be around him (from myself and my fear of my supply tanking).

 

[dcg]

@ytrevino1977 Yeah most of the benefits of breastfeeding are experiential on the moms part - special cuddle time, easier, feels better (hopefully) than pumping, no cleanup.

There are a couple benefits for baby, but these usually aren’t a big deal in modern life - formula can cause more gas in baby which may be an issue if you’ve got one with a sensitive tummy, and breastfeeding can help give your baby antibodies to certain infections without having the virus infect the mum systemically.

 

[ytrevino1977]

@dcg A lot of the benefits in countries with safe access to clean water are overblown when people talk about them. I read research once that showed minimal reduction in illness that levelled out by 12-18 months depending on the illness/infection. It's so minimal that I don't consider it a real benefit, because it was like 1 in a quite high number will have 1 less illness over formula fed babies, so for most babies the effects are negligible. I don't have the article on hand though unfortunately. Plus babies still get all of the antibodies through exclusive pumping (which is considered exclusive breastfeeding - I should have made that note in my original comment).

 

[tina2kira]

@ytrevino1977 Can you cite or share the resource please? I’d love to read it

 

[ytrevino1977]

@tina2kira This is what I read! It was shared by admins in the evidence based breastfeeding Facebook group I'm in
https://fedisbest.org/2019/03/an-ev...QAwAGdOBNwXABsVnQtfj8_16f2OGGscjzAd7g6IuUOKAM

 

[dcg]

@ytrevino1977 That’s helpful to know! Thanks so much for sharing!

 

[williamandcarol]

@robinrocks My daughter also had a short nicu stage of 5 days. She was born at 36 weeks. I had to triple feed for 8 weeks until she got better at transferring milk. After that, she could just nurse or just bottle feed depending on what we wanted to do. I think it was just her getting bigger that helped. She ended up loving nursing once she got the hang of it.
My second has never taken a bottle. He was really fussy about positioning and kind of still is. If you want to work on nursing and latching, try different positions. Both pumping and EBF are very hard, especially at first.
If just pumping works for you, that's fine. If you want to stop and use formula, it is fine. If you want to work on nursing the baby, that's fine. Trust your mom instincts. You're doing a great job feeding your baby.