There's some great advice in this thread. I pumped right away only because my milk was taking forever to come in, Kate was small and not nursing much, and she was jaundiced. The nurses wanted me to give her formula and instead I pumped a bit to make my milk come in faster. I continued to pump and I think it compromised my milk production a bit. This time I will keep this baby on the breast only for the first 3 weeks and then pump to start a small freezer stash and so DH or Kate can do a feeding a day.
One thing I didn't see listed here, that someone recommended to me, is to start putting Lansinoh on your nipples now. I started around 35 weeks with Kate and it really did help it not be sooo painful in the beginning. I haven't started yet this time, but I just finished nursing a few months ago so I am hoping it won't be so bad. I should probably do it soon anyway.
Also, I remember feeling the Boppy was too big for Kate. I felt like it swallowed her up a bit until she got bigger.
Originally Posted by ashlee007
I have no experience nursing a newborn - Ava wouldn't latch until she was 8 weeks old. She had a tongue thrust problem and after several visits with LCs noone could get her to latch properly so I pumped full time until she finally learned to latch at 8 weeks old. I pumped the whole time and bottle fed her until then. Then she nursed successfully until I weaned her at 18 months.
I just wanted to say good luck to you and if you really, really want to bf then don't give up!
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Wow! How fantastic that you got her to latch at 8 weeks and then were able to bf! You are my hero! That must have been difficult!
Originally Posted by flipper
Thanks for all of the great advice ladies.
I know now not to pump right away i will just nurse all of the time. I am sure that will work out for me. It will just be hard at first.
What about through the night. do you nurse about every two to three hours or do you let baby sleep?
And then during the day. Feed whenever baby shows signs or every two hours whichever comes first, right
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We woke Kate up during the day every 3 hours to nurse if she was sleeping. At night, she woke me up every 3 hours. As she got older, she slept a bit longer between night time feedings. I think waking her during the day (but not at night) helped her to regulate her body and sleeping. Of course, any time the baby showed signs of hunger I nursed her.