At 11 weeks, Baby Z has been sleeping through the night from 9pm to 7am, and may or may not wake up once in the night to nurse or get a diaper change. She has days where she sleeps straight (yay!), which means that I may need to pump once or twice in the middle of the night.
How does this affect your milk supply?
In the daytime, she nurses or I pump about every 3 hours (I try not to go longer than that, but have gone to 4/4.5 hrs a few times) But, depending on her last nursing session, I may go 4-6 hours at night without pumping/nursing. I usually get up somewhere around 2:30-3:30 am and pump, but in the last few days, I've found that I can only pump about 3oz, when I was pumping 4-6oz before. I also don't feel so engorged, like I did a few weeks ago. Is my milk just regulating itself or am I hurting my supply by going longer than usual to pump?
Should I be pumping twice at night in that 9 hour period? Would love to know what other moms do about sleep/pumping at night.
Thanks!
I did the same thing as you....I woke up at 3:30am every night to pump, even when the baby slept through the night. That has seriously got to be the worst part of breastfeeding. Everyone is souuuuuund asleep and here I am still waking up at 3:30am to pump. Sigh. I don't think it's necessary to pump twice in the middle of the night. When I pumped once, my supply kept up. When I stopped the middle of the night pump, within a week I saw a huge drop in milk (maybe half?).
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