With my first, I lucked out. We had a positive nursing relationship from about day 4. I never had painful engorgement or let down, I never leaked milk, and I had a very good supply that met his needs.
LO1 is 25 months and LO2 is 3 weeks. I am nursing both of them, yes I know, crazy. This was not my plan but kids subvert our plans, right? Anyway, I nurse LO1 about 3x a say for 3 min each and LO2 is about every 2.5 hours, for 20 to 30 minutes.
This time around I'm dealing with a lot of leaking and painful letdown. Will it get any better? Are there any tips or tricks to help manage this?
About twice a day , where I nurse just LO2, I use a haaka pump to catch the leaking on the other side. I've managed to collect about 6 oz a day this way, 3 go in the fridge for feeding later that day and three go in the freezer, I have about 60 oz frozen in the freezer at 3wks. I have a feeling that this is somewhat also the cause of the leaking at other times, but I don't really want to give it up because I like having milk in the fridge and freezer. I don't use the Haaka at night, I never have, but I do leak a fair amount at night.
As for the painful letdown, if I haven't fed in about 2 or 3 hours, all of a sudden my breasts will feel very painful and start leaking. It usually stops in a couple of minutes, but it sucks.