Hellobee Boards

Here are some great posts about exclusively pumping on Hellobee:

http://www.hellobee.com/exclusive-pumping/
http://www.hellobee.com/hellobee-series-increasing-milk-supply/

I'll come back to edit with more info when I have more time.

I agree with @Mrs. Tiger. Pump every 2-3 hours in the beginning few weeks to really build your supply. I did that for the first month and pumped about 10x the second month. By the time my 12 week maternity leave was over, I was feeding my LO and I had 1000 oz in my freezer stash.

Buy multiple pump parts because washing them is a pain. I pumped, put the parts into a ziplock bag, put it in the fridge, took them out and resued it a second time before washing.

Agree with everything said so far! Pump like crazy for the first couple months (at least every time baby eats) but when baby starts sleeping longer stretches you can stop waking up overnight. By then your supply should be established. And if you see a dip in supply, add an extra session for a few days and it should come back up.

Also, know that once your supply is established it takes a lot to damage it. So if you miss a session here or there, its not the end of the world!

I liked wearing cami shirts under everything so that i could just pull the straps over my arms to put the pumping bra on, without having to be totally naked set up a pumping station in a comfy place where you can read/watch tv/ watch your older lo.

Also, massage was a game changer. I massaged during every pump session and got so much more when i did. It also prevents clogged ducts and mastitis. There are youtube videos you can watch for how to do it if you havent before! And make sure you pump as long as milk is flowing, plus about 5 minutes after. That signals your body to make more. If you stop when there is still milk left in your breasts it tells your body to stop producing/produce less.

Keep a manual pump in the car, just in case you are out and start to hurt. Its not super fun to sit in a bathroom stall or the car and pump, but its way better tnan being engorged! Plus you will always have a way to feed lo the evenflow manual pump i had was really quick!

Also, do not wash pump parts every pump. I washed mine every 48 hours. Find a large tupperware container that can hold all of the parts and put it in the fridge immediately afte pumping.

I also kept enough milk in the fridge for a day and a half. I only froze any extra beyond that amount. Target freezer bags are great because they lay flat to freeze...the medela ones stand up on their own but they take up a lot more room. Once bags are frozen you can store them in a storage container....i had a cheap ziploc brand container that worked great and did the same thing as the expensive systems you can buy.

Good luck momma! I found EPing to be so much less stressful than breastfeeding was for us. I m going to try to bf again with this baby, but honestly will have no problem doing it again if i have to (although i am probably going to call it quits at 6-7 months if that happens because it is really time consuming and once baby is mobile it does get much more difficult.)

@Mrs. Lion: It is so much harder with baby #2!! Especially since there's a toddler to care for too. I'm going to be shocked if I make it past 3 months Great tip about the manual pump in the car!! I have one from the hospital, I'm going to have to put it in my glovebox

@swurlygurl: i am so afraid of this!! Im going to do the best i can to make it to 6 months, but if it doesn't work i am fine giving up he fight too.

@swurlygurl: i followed los eating schedule. So i pumped every time he ate. By the time he was down to 5feedings i tried to drop to 4 and it seemed to work. I would go ahead and try to drop 1 and see how it works for you! Ypu can always add it back if its too soon!

I was an EPer and actually loved it! I will be EPing with future LOs for sure. I did not like BFing at all so EPing was the perfect balance for me.

The fridge trick mentioned above is a lifesaver

I bought multiple part sets and always kept a spare set in my bag for travelling

The boon LAWN dryer is a must! Don't buy the grass size!!

The cheap gerber bottles fit on medela PISA flanges

The sanitizing wipes were a lifesaver when I was traveling and couldn't store parts in a fridge

Don't stress yourself out...I told myself that if I wasn't pumping at least 50% of her intake I would stop and just switch to formula. Once she started STTN (very early on, I think bottle feeding helped that!) I no longer pumped in the MOTN. Once my supply was established I only pumped 3-4x a day. Establishing all this made EPing very manageable!

Good luck, the first month is tough pumping 6-7x a day, but it does get easier! Feel free to wall me if you want to chat about EPing . Sometimes it feels like you are the only one "crazy" enough to do it, but in my baby group 4/10 of us EPed so it wasn't all that uncommon!

@MamaG: With #1, my company had a nice pumping room with sink so I washed my parts each time. Awful, but our fridge was also inconvenient. With #2, it's a small office, and I'm lucky to even get a closet to pump in... The fridge isn't too inconvenient though, so I keep my parts in a little cooler bag with an icepack and take it to the fridge.
If you don't have access to a sink and *really* don't want to walk to the fridge, you could probably get by with a lot of icepacks in a soft cooler

Lots of good tips here already. Some others I found helpful:

Drink TONS and TONS of water.

Make lactation cookies to help with boosting supply.

The price has gone up since I bought mine, but this is the hands free pumping bra I used. It was AMAZING, could not have done without it. http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Wishes-Hands-Free-Breastpump-XS-L/dp/B00295MQLU.

@MamaG: Is it possible to request a fridge in the mother's room? I stored my parts in the kitchen fridge, but we don't have a mother's room and I pumped in my office.

This is probably a dumb question, but if you EP do you also pump it if you are out and about with LO / at someone else's house / out for dinner or whatever? Or do you just do it as soon as you get home from somewhere / rearrange the times each day a little to make it work with your schedule? I just don't get it logistically!

@HappyBaker: I wasn't an EPer, but I always pumped after nursing Xander, especially in the morning and especially in the later months. If it was just one feeding, I would skip pumping, but if I was going to be at someone's house all day, I'd bring the pump and pump after nursing. And if we were out and about (like shopping), I'd skip pumping, but I tried to do most of my outings between feedings so I could nurse and pump when I had to.

@MamaG: Continue to pump after every nursing session (or roughly every). Eventually you'll have enough for a bottle and you can do a bottle feeding instead of nursing one session. Then you can pump that session instead and hopefully get enough for the next feeding, etc.

You may find you have to pump more often than you were nursing though to have enough to cover all feedings, because baby tends to be better at emptying the breasts than the pump is.

Good luck!!

@MamaG: How is pumping going? Would love to hear how your experience has been so far. Congrats!

I am seriously considering EP...any new insights???

@simplyfelicity: @Charm54 helped me so much, she gives great advice!

I decided to EP my second after like 3 days of nursing because my experience nursing my first was so awful and I could feel myself going to a bad place pretty quickly.

I only lasted 4 months EP-ing, though I did like it much much better than nursing, it ended up being really painful for me because I kept getting milk blisters / clogged ducts that I didn't experience with nursing.

While it was hard, I liked it - I could plan my day around pumping times (which are a LOT in the beginning but it gets less and less as you make it further). I liked knowing exactly how much my baby was eating since my first had growth issues from not getting enough. I also liked that anyone could feed him, so I wasn't as attached to a baby as I was the first time around.

To save time I just kept my pump parts in the fridge and used the same ones all day, and you get in a pretty good routine pretty quickly!

I may be joining you ladies soon. I'm dealing with postpartum depression and anxiety and my supply has taken a major hit, lo isn't gaining fast enough, and I'm suffering a huge delay in my let down reflex. EPing and maybe supplementing is looking like a good idea. I'm pretty sad about it. Breastfeeding had been going really well, at least I thought.

@PawPrints: I'm so sorry to hear this. I EBF my first and now EP for the twins. All that matters is that your baby is getting enough to eat - no matter where it comes from. My advice is to stick to pumping every 2-3 hours and try to pump while bottle feeding to save time. Also since your supply has been low always pump until the boob is entirely empty.