This is a note from the lactation consultant at the hospital.
*Before beginning your pumping career, it's important to understand two things:
1. Morning pumping will yield the most milk, whether you're pumping at home or at work.
2. The amount of milk yielded when you pump regularly during the day will decline as the day goes on. This is normal for most women.
BEGIN TO PUMP THIS WAY:
1. Nurse the baby well on one side between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m. in the morning. Pump the other side for approximately 10 minutes. Then nurse the baby on the pumped side to further drain the breast.
2. Refrigerate or freeze the milk.
3. Later in the morning, about one and a half hours after a feeding or during the baby's nap, pump both breasts.
4. Chill this milk, add it to the milk already refrigerated, and then freeze the container. If you froze the milk you collected earlier, freeze this portion separately, or chill it before adding it to the frozen milk. Do not add warm milk to chilled or frozen milk.
5. You have finished pumping for the day. For the rest of the day, just take care of yourself and your baby.
*Assuming you collect 3 to 4 ounces of milk per day, pumping twice a day for 3 weeks will put 63 to 84 ounces of milk in your freezer before you return to work. With practice, you may soon be able to pump as much as 8 ounces in a day. At that rate, in 3 weeks you can collect 164 ounces!
REMEMBER!!! USING A PUMP TO OBTAIN MILK TAKES SOME GETTING USED TO. RELAX, TAKE YOUR TIME, AND DON'T EXPECT TOO MUCH TOO SOON. BABIES ARE MUCH BETTER AT GETTING THE MILK OUT THAN A PUMP SO DON'T JUDGE HOW MUCH YOUR BABY IS GETTING BY HOW MUCH MILK THAT YOU PUMP.
I hope this can help someone.
