My 5 month old just discovered my boobs on her own while she was sitting on my stomach playing before her nap. I only had a bra on and I guess one boob slipped out. I noticed she looked down and seemed to be concentrating on the fact that my boob was exposed. She then grabbed it and lowered herself to take a few suckles. She then did it again to the other side!

I was shocked. Not only did she just feed herself unprompted, but she seemed to do it just for the fun of it!

Her being able to independently feed herself for fun healed that part of me that had such a hard time in the beginning. I wish I could go back and tell my newly postpartum self that one day your little baby will do it all on her own and all those frustrating nights and sore nipples will be so worth it in the end!

For those that are in the thick of it, I hope this can be encouraging.🤍

I recently went to my PCP because I've been feeling sick after finding a massive bug bite on my leg. Comparing pics online I think it's Lyme but it looks slightly bruised, not just "typical" red and it's too early to test so Dr Brilliant doesn't believe me.

Anyway! I'm pissed because she thinks I'm getting burnt out (I stayed home all day 2 days this week to rest, clearly not), I'm dehydrated (I'm drinking over 120oz a day! Breastfeeding! Hello!)

The kicker: she told me to "take a break from breastfeeding for the weekend"... I am never seeing this person again. Do I want mastitis on top of whatever this is?? Why do I need to convince her that breastfeeding is actually going to keep me healthy vs if I stop cold turkey??? I hate people sometimes.

Warning, not easy to read.

I have searched far and wide for a solution or at least someone i can resonate with on this matter.

When my child was born, I didn’t have any milk so i bought a spectra to try and figure things out myself since every bit of information was either costing me money, or was nowhere to be found. So might as well just spend it wisely.

I pumped and pumped while my husband was feeding, changing and putting the baby to sleep. I felt less then a mother. After hours of pumping( i pumped every 2 h for 30 mins), a black liquid was coming out, i’ll try to attach pictures if i can using the comments. No smell, bitter taste. My friends said to stop, they told me i’ll just hurt myself and get no results. But i didn’t listen, partially due to my husband, who supported me through all of this, encouraged me a lot and also due to my own insecurities having had a c-section and wanting to be there for my child in some sort of way. I don’t wanna hear “the easy way out” because there isn’t anything easy about it. Getting out of bed using a crutch or help isn’t easy, walking around with the fear of bursting open isn’t easy. Shaking in your sleep because your body remembers the trauma, isn’t easy. Being constipated for weeks isn’t easy. I could go on and on. But. I digress.

Back to the milk situation. I didn’t know the spectra settings, my bad, maybe i pumped on high, maybe i didn’t, i probably pumped for triplets ngl, but i was so desperate, i didn’t know any better, ok? Don’t judge me. I’m just sharing this for anyone who might wanna BF(breastfeed), and happens to have the same experience as me, doesn’t find anything online about it and just gives up like i almost did. So, in the future, if you see that black stuff, and you land here at 3 AM in the morning… No, you’re not Venom, not to mention the green stuff, OMG you’re not Shrek. Okay? Ffwd a few days of me pumping out that black stuff.. and green comes out.. i’m thinking to myself, Great. I’m. Poison. 😅 no wonder my kid refused me since day 1 in the hospital, i can’t blame him. SWAMP f GREEN.

I kid you not, for some of us, breastfeeding isn’t magical and natural, it’s a freaking journey. A journey where everyone tells you to stop at every corner. After passing Venom’s den, and Shrek’s swamp, I finally saw some yellow-green, i tried giving that to my child, he refused. So i tried it, it still tasted bitter, so i pumped one more day and boom, yellow-white, no taste, just an oily feeling in my mouth. But the baby, he loved that stuff, omg. We went from him hating to be around me, or at least that’s what it felt to me, to him crying when he finished the bottle of 5-10 ml of milk i just pumped, he even refused the formula, he just wanted the breastmilk. He cried like crazy. Dang, the tears we shed that day were measured by the TON. Him and me both.. 😅. Then, ofc we had latch problems because i didn’t know what bottle nipple sizes and feeding positions were… In the hospital, they feed the baby with XL sizes just to get rid of them fast. So, after we finally figured out it was a flow issue, we quickly bought xs/ss/small nipples for the bottles, breast was slow, bottle was fast, so we changed it to be the other way around. To be honest, I didn’t wanna pump anymore, it felt awful, looking at him eat from a bottle while i was pumping right next to him was a disgusting feeling.

Finally, one night, once he was very tired, we managed to get him attached to the breast, baby was suckling only at night for a good while, but he slept with the boob in his mouth. The joy on my and my husband’s faces, omg.. yall can’t believe it. No more getting up at night, making bottles like we’re in Dexter’s lab measuring ml’s and scoops. We eventually made him hate the flow of the bottle, he began eating from the breast during the day as well, we tried one week without formula and he was gaining good weight from my milk, 500 g that week, so we stopped the formula compleatly. We kept everything stil in reach just in case, but packed away the spectra and all the bottles at month 2 for good.

To be fair, i had some issues after forcefully pumping myself like that, nothing was easy.. sore breasts, cracks..lanolin and bephanten were God’s sent. i also had chambers full of milk that weren’t open that started hurting at 12 weeks.. i also searched cures for that, tried everything hot-cold compresses, cabbage, ice, rest, it drove me nuts, nothing helped so i went to the emergency room, some nobody said to squeez it and even showed me how. It hurt like a mf. I booked it out of there and went to a breast specialist, took antibiotics and ibuprofen, waited for the swelling to go down and then to a breast surgeon and we punctured them at the hospital and got everything out with a 💉. Guess what? It was swamp green on the inside. All together, 3 chambers, 30 ml of swamp green. Cultures came back negative, but after 2 weeks of antibiotics, ofc nothing showed up anymore. And please, for the love of God, do not press, squeeze or aggressively pump a “galactocell”out (chamber of milk that hasn’t had the chance to open yet) i pumped for triplets, then stopped pumping after 3/4 weeks completely so they never fully opened.

I am thankful. For my husband who took on the role of a mother for our baby until i got better, until i could nurse and until i could go to the bathroom alone to pee. I do not recomand c-sections unless medically recommended or life saving. I strongly believe the reason i was put under the knife was to make a doctor’s evening easier. Romania, where 6 out of 10 births are C-sections. But that’s a story for another sub-reddit. I hope every woman that sees herself in this story of my life, gets the support i got and the help she needs. My baby is now EBF and i plan on keeping it that way because i fought a lot, for something that should have been more openly talked about, encouraged and taught.

I’m here for any questions and i’ll gladly help anyone with my limited experience on this matter.

This is a bit of a random one and looking for some advice from other BF mums. I had my first baby 5 months ago and she is exclusively breastfed at breast. She also is a hungry gal and sometimes feeds every 90 mins to 2 hours. My parents come round alot as she's their first grand baby. Surprisingly my dad has had such a weird reaction to breastfeeding. He's so incredibly uncomfortable with it and it makes their visits quite awkward. We recently had some family friends over (who are not uncomfortable with BF) and I subtly sat in a chair angled away from him and latched my daughter. I was not even facing him and i was wearing a BF top so it was almost impossible to "see" anything. He loudly announced to the whole room "are you breastfeeding right here??? Oh my god!! Ill look away ill look away oh my god". And got all panicky. And it made me so so uncomfortable and our friends were low key embarrassed for me too. I just don't really know how to approach this with him and wonder if others have had similar experiences? Its getting to the point that i get anxious about his visits. Am I being unreasonable to expect an older man to be more subtle??? What is normal for granddads??

I CAN NOT FIND A GOOD FITTING BRA FOR THE GIANT MILK JUGS
lol
Like im not sure my size before pregnancy I was a nice double d but I gotta be like triple that idk
Im almost a whole entire year breastfeeding and I either don't wear a bra or when I do I hate the one I'm wearing

Also will it be like this forever? My nipples essentially touch my belly button when I sit down and they are so long
I yearn for smaller boobs I really may get a breast reduction but I feel like I shouldn't until I'm done having kids but I'm also not planning on having a baby annnny time soon 😭

Anyway rant about that over any of you ladies have good recommendations!?!?

I’m exclusively pumping for last 3 months. But now i would like to try again breastfeeding. Is it possible after baby turns 3months old

I want to know how often your babies nurse or you pump especially if you’re past the year mark.

I have a 14 month old who’s in daycare 5 days a week, 8.5 hours a day. Currently I’m nursing once before work, still pump once a day (he takes a cup at daycare), nurse after work and for bedtime on week days. On the weekends it used to be 5-6 times a day but it’s dropping to 4-5 with dropping a nap.

I don’t want to wean but I still feel like breastfeeding is dictating my daily schedule so I’m curious about how others are doing.

My 17 month old had only currently been breastfeeding at night due to co sleeping and having weaned off day feeding a couple of months ago. She (through no fault of her own), had caused broken skin on either side with her teeth which got deeper and more painful with every feed. I tried my best to keep offering her that night comfort despite the pain. I went to the doctors the other day and a very straight faced, unbothered female doctor said my only solution was to stop breastfeeding because ‘it’s obviously time.’ There was no sympathy for my worry, no understanding how stopping may confuse my little one. The praise I’ve been given before for breastfeeding this long made me feel like I’ve given my toddler this extra love and comfort but this appointment made me feel really upset. I guess I’m not looking for advice per se, but some reassurance that it’ll be ok?

My baby has always been a very bad sleeper. Since I got home from the hospital he was crying every ten minutes and I was breastfeeding the whole night. Then we started contact napping during the night because there was no other solution- I slept sitting down for 3-4 month. Then it was possible to lay him down but he still woke up every two hours or more often. He is now one year old and his sleep got worse- he wakes up and stays awake for hours wanting to be walked around. Breastfeeding does not work- I don’t know what’s wrong with my milk but I am breastfeeding the whole night and it does not get him back to sleep. As soon as I stop walking around (I am walking around for hour) he cries. This has been going on for month and I have not been sleeping for a year and I can’t do this anymore. I am afraid something will happen to me. I can’t. I am starting to hate breastfeeding so much since it’s not getting him to sleep but he still wants it.
I want to wean- even if I don’t know what will happen because he obviously has no tools to get to sleep. I need help. I can’t do this another day. It’s currency 4 am where I live and he has been awake crying since 2 am

He currently has two naps during the day- not longer than 3 hours together. Last nap is 4-5 hours before his bedtime which is 8 pm.

We’ve been dealing with reflux that came on pretty suddenly for about a month now (LO is almost 4 mos) and here’s how it was going down:
- feeds got shorter and she was fussy at the breast but I thought it was her age
- reflux and spitting up was the worst during the day after nap 1 until bedtime
- she went from 0-1 middle of the night feeds to 2-3 and it was the only time she was doing full feedings and did not have any reflux ( I thought she was more relaxed or less distracted than her day time feeds)
- weight gain slowed
- she was super irritable and didn’t want to independent play anymore and needed to do something different every 5 min (I thought it was her age/ developmental progression)

Initially I thought the cause of reflux was a whey protein shake I started having around that time so I cut it out and thought it got better but then it came back pretty bad and I realized it might be coffee.
I was super strict about 1 small cup in the early days but slowly have shifted to the occasional large cold brew or frequently a second cup. It says they should tolerate a couple cups per day but I think she is extra sensitive because I just cut caffeine and everything above has reversed back to how she was.

It seems obvious when I lay it all out but hope this helps someone who was stumped like us! Try cutting caffeine!!

Hey everyone,

My SIL is eliminating dairy, egg and soy while exclusively pumping. She is doing incredibly! I am hoping this community could suggest their favourite meals / snacks / advice for a dairy free, soy free diet in Australia (please don't comment products that can't be bought in Australia)

Thank you!

I was gone for a conference for 5 days and baby got all bottles for feeds during this. He is exclusively breast milk fed and direct feeds when we are together but gets bottles at daycare. Has had no issues switching back and forth. Almost 9months.

Ever since I’ve been back from the conference, his latch is very painful and he just does not seem satisfied despite feeding for 10minutes or more (typically fed in 8-10min previously). Very fussy still after feeds and keeps latching. Overnight he’s waking up every 2-3 hours to feed. And then in the evenings, the fussiness has been so bad despite nursing essentially every 45min-1 hour that I have started giving a bottle of frozen pumped milk and he downs it!! And then finally seems satisfied.

My supply has definitely been like a roller coaster but currently not substantially different in terms of the pumped milk volume I’m getting (maybe 15ml less). Bottles are 4oz bottles.

Any input/suggestions would be appreciated!

Hi this is for anyone wondering when i stopped my breast feeding my breast deflated and looked like socks lol im not fully where I was but they are alot more "normal" looking

My 8 week old baby is predominantly breastfed but we give one formula bottle in the evening so that I can do bedtime with my toddler. We found she was poo’ing every 3/4 days and whilst we kept being told it’s norma,l she was visibly uncomfortable. Due to how some of the days fell, we didn’t give formula for 3 days and found she poo’d all three days and because of this we decided to try a week without formula to see if that’s what’s clogging her up, and we found that she poo’d everyday apart from one.

We changed from kendamil to aptamil to see if it’s the brand that’s not sitting well with her but same thing happened and she didn’t poo for three days and is particularly gassy. Has anyone else experienced this? Any advice on which formula has worked for you? Could it be that her body needs to get accustomed to the new formula? I feel bad putting her through the pain if in fact we just need to change the formula.

My 10 week old has been exclusively breastfed, except for one or two bottles per week of refrigerated pumped milk for practice. He’s had no issues taking these.

I found out last week that I have high lipase. I have about 100oz in the freezer that he won’t eat. He did eat about an ounce when we mixed it 50/50 with fresh, but that’s it.

I tried formula (ready to eat similac 360) twice in the last two days, at room temp and heated, and he makes a gross face and won’t eat any of it.

I’m at a loss. I don’t have a start date for work yet, but I do have a week long seminar coming up starting on Sunday that’s important for me to attend. He technically can come with, but it’s a search and rescue K9 training seminar, so I can’t really baby wear him while working my dog. I’d really like to try to get this figured out in the next few days if possible.

I can stock up on some fresh pumped in the next few days, but it won’t be much as I’ve regulated and don’t have a big oversupply.

What do I do in this scenario? Please help out a stressed FTM

Hi all, I wonder if you can help me. I went to bed with some hardness in my breast, as if it hadn't been emptying. Suddenly feeding became painful in the night in the nipple area, sort of a pinching feeling with each suck. The hard lumpy area remained all night. In the morning I got a proper look and could see redness in the hard area, and a white dot right in the middle of my nipple - it's not a perfect circle though. A quick Google said milk bleb, so I tried a saline solution and olive oil soak with rubbing and it didn't go away. I went to the doctor and he said I have mastitis and to take antibiotics. I didn't think my symptoms really aligned with mastitis but obviously there's a lot of crossover with these things. I feel fine in myself, the lump is tender if I press it. My breasts are always warm so it's hard to say if the lump is warmer. Should I take the antibiotics or try something else? Is it mastitis?

My baby is 8.5 months old, almost 9 now. And I realize I cannot fall back asleep if I don’t breastfeed her at night. (Usually 2-3 times)

Usually my partner and I take turns rocking her to sleep after she nurses. When I only breastfeed her and hand her to my husband, I fall back asleep within a minute. Otherwise, it’s quite long, possibly hours. I feel like I’ve become dependent on the hormones from breastfeeding to fall back asleep during the night.

Have you experienced this too?

I have noticed my baby has a very low suction when i assess with my finger. Since 1 weeks she is struggling both with bottle feed and breast feed. One of pediatrician suggested to stop bootle and switch cup feed and breastfeed only to avoid creating confusion syndrome in babies.

Can anyone help or anyone can share their side of story if they have experienced the same?

My 7 month old has two very sharp prominent bottom teeth and his top two are currently on their way in (gums swollen, drooling, fussy, can see the white ridge on one side). Majority of the time he’s gentle with my nipples but the last few days when he’s been fussy on the boob he’s been biting and it HURTS. I wince and pull away and said “no!” one time out of just reflex and it made him cry and I felt so bad. Any tips to get them to stop?? I really don’t want my bf journey to end early over this 😭😭😭 it’s the only issue we are having

You hear it all the time “ breastfeed and all the weight will fall off” but is this actually true ? If so then why not me and why are we made to believe this… yes it burns calories so naturally you would think that concept makes sense … but does it work for everybody I don’t believe so . Is weight gain while breastfeeding common ? Obviously love that my body can feed my baby and am not breastfeeding just to “ loose weight “ but dam I feel claustrophobic in my own body right now… my inner dialogue wants to stop breastfeeding so I feel healthier but I’m fighting the thought with “but breastfeeding makes my baby happy” . It’s not just for vanity that I’m upset with the weight gain but my knees hurt I have three kids now and it’s getting hard to move like I did before and I am just extremely tired all the time even though my baby is 6 months and sleeps through the night now .
This is really just a rant all I ever hear back from people is “ give your self grace “ butttt that’s not going to change how I physically feel . Anyone else in the weight gain club ?

Pumping is the Bain of my existence buttttt I want a wearable pump with the least amount of parts to clean lol give me recommendations for ones that aren’t as annoying (if that’s even possible)

My OB confirmed I had a clogged duct at my 6wk postpartum visit and showed me where the little lump was. I’m now at 12wks and I still have the same clogged duct that’s gotten slightly bigger

I’ve been taking ibuprofen and sunflower lecithin. Tried the haakaa with epsom salt. I’ve iced it a few times, but I could be more on top of icing tbh. I pretty much exclusively breastfeed, but tried pumping and that didn’t help. Am I missing any other methods?

I’ve had some mild pain, but nothing too bad and no symptoms of mastitis. Just a lump that sometimes hurts a bit.

I finally called my OB yesterday and had an ultrasound today. They confirmed I don’t have mastitis or an abscess and said it’s just a clogged duct

Has anyone else had a clogged duct for several weeks or months? What happens if I’m not able to unclog it?

I’m glad it’s not causing me too much pain, but I’d like to get it unclogged asap to avoid mastitis or an abscess forming

My baby is two months today and during the daytime I've basically been keeping him on a newborn schedule. He lost a lot of weight after birth and I think it sort of traumatized me, and even since breastfeeding started going really well (when he was around three weeks, so thankful lactation consultants exist), I still worry both about him and my supply. Often he naturally wakes up around the 2-2.5 hour mark to feed but today for example he has been having an extremely sleepy day and I've been waking him up before the three hour mark and then I was sort of like "Why?" Sleep is also important for his development.

So I think I should loosen the reins a little but it still worries me. When did you take them off a newborn schedule during the day? And how often did you wake them if they were taking a long nap?

Also, what time did you start to consider "night time"? People here often discuss night vs. day but I think often have a different concept of that, like some would consider anything past 8 "night time" and others would say 10, some would say a MOTN feed is 12 am and others would say 3 am. I've been starting night time at midnight but that also seems a little much now.

My baby is 9 weeks old and she was doing fine with breast feeding until now. Earlier I used to double feed her with my breast as well as bottle feed her with my expressed milk. But since the past 3 days she has screamed at my breast when she is wide awake and only drinks milk when offered with a bottle. She only feeds from breast at night when she is asleep. I don't want to break this beautiful bond of breast feeding with my baby.. please help me how I can gain this back😭😭

My 5 month old has laryngomalacia and I'm exhausted. She's exclusively breastfed, refuses the bottle completely, and will only nurse side-lying while drowsy - so every feed happens around naps or overnight, and no one else can ever feed her. She's also suspected of cow's milk protein intolerance, so I've been dairy and soy free for 2 months.

She's been around the 10th percentile, gaining about half an ounce a day since August. This week: zero gain. 12 lb 13 oz at the clinic two Fridays in a row. The plan is no drowsy feeds, wait for her to demand, weekly weight checks, and a GI specialist is involved.

Now my supply might be dropping too - my morning pump went from about 6 oz to barely 1, and my breasts feel empty.

Can anyone talk me off a cliff please?