I find it fitting that I sit here at 4:30 in the morning writing this post.
The middle of the night pumping session is SO important for your milk supply.
It is at this time at night, and between 1 and 5 in the morning, that the hormone prolactin is at its highest. Thus, when you pump during this time, it helps engage and maintain your milk supply.
It is hard to motivate yourself to pump at nighttime. I know. I'm doing it right now, but I'm determined to get all those ounces out so that I have enough to feed my baby.
There used to have to be an alarm set for me to get up because the baby would sleep through most of the night and I was trying to get two pumpings in during the night. But now I know my body wakes up normally (and so does the baby) and so I pump once at night (unless I wake up at 1am and 6:30am or something.
This is also the time of day (night) that your milk is the fattiest. Fat equals happy healthy baby. :) Happy Healthy baby means happy momma.
There's always the challenge of when little N wakes up while I'm pumping (happened tonight). I just leave the flanges hooked up (I wear a handsfree bra) and go soothe her and help her back to sleep (and clean up spit up off my shirt).
I used to need a snack when I woke up in the middle of the night (and sometimes it's tempting to eat when I'm at my in law's house and they have a super stocked snack cabinet) but now most of the time I just drink some water (and oh I drink a lot of water), and that keeps me until morning. I also found that eating in the middle of the night made it harder for me to maintain the amount of calories that I wanted to eat during the day (because of what I accumulated during the night).
Happy pumping!
Grace
I exclusively pump too... my baby sleeps 12 hours straight through the night, but I still get up to pump around 3:30am... she's 3.5 months old at this point. Should I continue this routine? I do it because I'm so scared of losing my supply and I get so much milk at this hour, I'd hate not to have that milk to supplement my lower pumps during the day. Just curious if I will ever be able to cut out this middle of the night pump and still keep a great supply. Oh, by the way, I use a hospital grade pump-its the only pump that really works for us! I'm able to pump around 30 oz a day, pumping 8 x's a day. Thanks for this blog! I'm glad to know I'm not the only one!
ReplyDeleteHi Frances!
DeleteThanks for posting! How wonderful for your baby's sleep and you too! Depending on when my daughter wakes up i may pump once or twice a night. (Last night she woke up at three, so I pumped once, but the night before she woke up at 12:30 and at 5, so I pumped twice). I would continue pumping during the night as long as you can. This is because your body's production prolactin (hormone that engages your milk supply) is highest between 1 and 5 am. It is also good to pump in the middle of the night because after so many hours, your body will start to think it needs to make less milk. If you decided to drop your middle of the night session, even though you'd keep doing the same amount during the day, it would decrease eventually. In my experience, when I didn't pump at night, it would take a couple pumping sessions to "catch up" to the amount that I'd normally make during the day (and that is w/ a hospital grade pump). For me, this sometimes even happens when I go over 4 hours. This may not be the case for you.
Eventually, you can drop it. You can go to as fewer pumps as you can maintain the amount your baby needs, or as low as you need to go to maintain sanity. Just know that when you drop pumps, your supply will go down, even just slightly.
When you decide to drop sessions, remember to increase the amount of time you pump each time. (if you pump 8x for 20 minutes, know 7x will be 23 mins, 6 will be 27 mins, etc)
Have any other questions?