Sorry G., I dinna hae time to read the whole thread, but Ms.V had lots of really good help from La Leche League when Sprout came to be. They are a bit fringe-y at times but boy, do they ever have the expertise. Maybe check for a local chapter?
Also the public health office here has nursing advice drop-ins with an experienced nurse. Dunno if you’d have access to something like that.
Hi Ginger,
You’ve gotten some great advice on this thread. One of the best bits is to pump on one side and feed on the other - I did this frequently when I was pumping with my daughter. If you are pumping when your baby is not nearby have a picture and even a worn onesie to smell to help with your letdown.
To help your supply you can find some other methods than dark beer, though that one is probably the most fun;) . Instead first try drinking water. And then when you think you’ve had enough, drink more. Also you should be eating oatmeal once a day, a cup or so. There are a couple of herbs that are great for milk supply, fenugreek is probably the easiest to find. It is a flavoring used in pancake syrup among other things so if you take it you’ll smell like maple for a bit. 3 capsules 3 times a day is what I took, and only for a short time, no longer than a week at a shot - this is not meant as a long term suppliment. There is also something called blessed thistle but I don’t know much about that one and haven’t used it myself.
La Leche is great, but can be a bit gung-ho for some people’s taste. Kellymom is a great site for breastfeeding help: http://www.kellymom.com/ and http://www.breastfeeding.com has an awesome community.
Finally, like others say IGNORE anyone who tells you that your milk is too thin or doesn’t have enough calories in it or any other nonsense. If your baby is wetting or pooping in 8ish disposable diapers or more like 10 - 12 cloth diapers and is gaining weight in a steady pattern (after an initial drop in the first few days after birth) then you are doing fine. What you pump has no relation to what the baby can extract - babies work much better than the pump for getting milk out of ya.
Did you deliver at a hospital? Often they’ll have a lactation consultant you can call for help. I highly recommend this.
I’m not a lactation consultant but I am lucky enough to work with one of the top LC in the country and I do a lot of other work with breastfeeding moms. Plus I nursed my kid until she was 2, and pumped fulltime for most of her first year. If you need help or have more questions you can e-mail me, I have a ton of other resources I could point you towards but I don’t want to overwhelm you.
Good luck!
Twiddle
FTR, fenugreek, fennel. anise, coriander and blessed thistle are all great for milk production. Beer is just easier to get non-herbal open moms and docs to take! (Plus, it has the added alcohol/relaxation benefit for nervous moms.) If you and your doctor are open to herbals, there’s a really yummy tea called Mother’s Milk that is wonderful.
Again, I don’t suspect you have a production problem, but the beer or tea is nice, won’t hurt you if you’re producing enough and might give you some peace of mind. The tea is also great for upset tummies - yours and the baby’s. I often have moms of “colicky” babies drink the tea and baby gets the benefits through the milk. Fennel and anise are both carminatives - meaning they help expel trapped intestinal gas.
[insert standard herbal disclaimer here]
For those who have asked about my ‘poison’ milk: I expressed a sample and gave it to my doctor. She passed it along to someone else, I don’t know who, some lab or something. They analyzed it. I had no production problem, it was just that it wasn’t nutritious enough for my son to thrive on. I suspected I had the ‘family curse’ when I fed my firstborn for FIVE hours straight without a break, and he was still hungry. In Canada we had home visits from nurses, and she assured me that I was doing everything right, so it should have worked.
Anyway, like I have said, that’s not the problem this time around. My body is almost 11 years older, and things must have changed in that time. Thank your deity of choice.
I told this to Bonus Mom (bio mom in law) and she said her mother had the same sort of problem. When I mentioned it to my sister, in amazement that I’d never heard of it outside of our family, she said that in the North there are quite a few women like that. Strange that I’d never heard of it.
I had the same problem when I began pumping. I started around 5 weeks postpartum and I got only a few drops at first. I thought it was that the pump I got was no good (the Avent Isis), but I kept at it. It would literally take me all day of pumping every few hours just to get an ounce or two. It was very frustrating at first. Gradually the amount increased as I got used to the pump and I think my body figured out to let down with the pump, not just my son, and as my supply increased. Now he is 4 months and I can get 4 ounces in about 10 minutes if I am reasonably full. Nothing wrong with the pump, I just had to get used to it. I also tried letting him nurse one side and pumping the other, provided he was full enough from one side.
I think it is harder to pump when your baby is eating so often because your body supplies in response to how much the baby eats. If the baby is drinking all your milk you have to teach your body to make ‘extra’ for the pump. In my own experience it got easier once you can skip a feeding, like now I am back at work and I can just pump when he would normally eat. It was building up a supply for those first few bottle feedings that was the hardest. (Note - my baby never did take a bottle. No one warned me this could happen, so I think it is good that you are giving him a bottle early, I know some breastfeeding advisors tell you never to start a bottle before 6 weeks, next time I am going to start as soon as possible, provided he can latch on ok. We did find alternate methods of feeding when I can’t be there.)
Don’t get discouraged, it will get easier.
I work for Medela - but I am not here to push any products - you already have a pump. Our website has some general breastfeeding information which might help you, though- here .
My guess is that you aren’t letting down when you pump - a very common occurrence. To pump on the opposite side while the baby is eating is excellent advice. I am not just speaking from professional knowledge but personal experience. I pumped three times a day for the first year of my son’s life as well. In order to help with let down, I made a recording on a little travel alarm clock of the sound of my son eating and kept his picture in my bag. It might also help to have something that smells like the baby - one of his receiving blankets or something. I would listen to the sound and look at his picture and that really helped and became a conditioned response.
Feel free to email me if you like. 
I forgot to mention my favorite nursing bra ever - glamour mom makes great nursing tanks and bras and they are so comfy and even cute! I hated, hated, hated those huge white monstrosities at most stores and I live in these things, they are even comfy enough to sleep in. The bra style is a little more supportive than the tank style, but I find they both give pretty good support, and the tank comes in cute colors. A little pricey but well worth the money, IMO.
It always took me forever to pump. Its normal for some of us. Just don’t plan on a second career as a dairy cow… About thirty minutes to get enough for each feeding. It was much worse in the beginning.
Fenugeek helped. My daughter was so picky regarding position and place and pumping so difficult I can’t imagine pumping and feeding at the same time. The biggest thing was just having patience - and a tolerance for sore nipples! (Another hint, bigger nipples may take a non standard “funnel thingy.”)
One of my girlfriends ended up supplementing. She had been a militant breastfeeder, but a trip to the hospital and some nasty prescriptions put her in “pump and throw” mode for a few weeks. Choice between starving baby and formula and formula wasn’t nearly the devil’s brew it had been before. Another is supplimenting for daycare - she does breast and home and pumps at work, but there is one formula bottle a day - she just can’t pump enough at work. Some people are opposed to any formula, but its something to consider.
And a girlfriend had the same “poison milk” problem. Just not nutrious enough. Happens.
Ginger - weird about the milk (I was moved to goat milk early on, though the other sibs got a longish benefit at the source).
Okay, depending on the electric, you might need to do a bit of low pumping then crank it up after a moment or two. Took me quite a while to get to a point where I could get an entire feeding’s worth at a pumping session - my body just didn’t gear up to the pump well and I had Giganto Baby with matching appetite.
Whereas a family member had nibblers and snackers but could pump 10oz without breaking a sweat.
Everyone is different.
If you are using a Medela, you might want to give it some time, sessions as you’re nursing, double pumping when you aren’t, drinking more milk, eating more protien (helped me a lot), and the Fenugreek or the Mother’s Milk tea. Some of my friends have actually gone to off-label uses of domiprodone and had some sucess.
Good luck; I’ve always found breastfeeding.com and kellymom.com very useful resources.
If you can pump and nurse at the same time, try pumping in the morning.
That was what I did until my baby went into ‘I’m famished’ mode. She’d nurse so much there was nothing to pump!
best of luck to you.
p.s.
if you can, try another machine. Once my pump’s tube was clogged and I didn’t realize it! It might be that your pump is broken.
Ginger, I don’t believe you ever answered the question about what brand of pump you use. It makes a major difference. My wife originally bought some cheap (~$30) pump from a brand known for generic baby stuff, but not specific to breast pumps (Evenflo, maybe? Or perhaps Gerber). That thing hardly milked her at all. We decided to spring for a $150 Medela pump, and the thing is a wonder.
Are you using a cheapie? That could very well be your problem. If you’re definitely going to be pumping, a Medela is an expense that is very well justified.
The pump can make a major difference, but not always.
I was using a hospital rented Medelia - the one in the huge blue box. I think my lawn mower has less horsepower. And it still took a year and a day to pump.
Some of us just were bred for beef…
I always had the most success pumping after my longest stretch of sleep (not that it was ever long 
).
One ounce the first time of pumping is a good start! I think I started with an ounce or two, and gradually increased it (over a couple of weeks) to where I was getting 8-10 ounces every morning. That was more than enough for an occasional bottle while I was unavailable, and some to put in the freezer.
I also started pumping once late at night, so I could leave that milk for Mr Sam to feed bubs, and I could sleep through a feeding 
It’s not “abnormal”. Lots of women don’t respond well to breast pumps. I breastfed my son for 9 and a half months, and I always had much less production than that of some of my friends.
On a 'silver lining" note, at least I didn’t suffer from painful engorgment and leaking. But I did have to supplement with formula as no matter HOW much water I drank and how good my vitamen and nutrition intake was, my production amount never really increased by much, and would be pretty much dried up by the day’s end.
If it were a matter of “latching” or the like, I’d recommend “la leche” but in my experience with them, they were rabidly in favor of breast feeding and ONLY breast feeding (prefereably til the child was pre-pubescent) and tended to talk down to you and put you down for not being “up to snuff” production wise.
Just be patient with yourself. I don’t know if you want to try it or not, but I had no trouble whatsoever getting my wee one to switch from the bottle to breast and back for the entire almost 10 month period. I used a naturally shaped nipple, and heated it somewhat so that it was as close to the breast as possible. Plus, the first few times? I switched back and forth for the first couple of feedings.
Breast for a few moments, sneak the bottle in, sneak the breast back…It didn’t make my son any less anxious for the breast milk.
Hope that helps, congrats on your little one, what a great time in yours and your baby’s life. Sighhhhhh, nursing is a wonderful time. Relax, don’t let others’ opinions mar your enjoyment.
It’s not a cheapie, but it’s not in the $150 range. I bought it to see if it would work out. If needs be, we will later pick up a better brand.
Hahaa! Love it!
My health insurance picked up my hospital grade pump. The lactation consultant prescribed it because I had problems with production and latching and they paid for it. I rented it for as long as I needed it. Might be worth a phone call to your peditrician and insurance company.
If you go the hospital rental grade route, there is a new one available specifically for people with let down problems. It has a stimulation phase separate from the pump phase. You know how a baby does that flutter thing when they first attach until they do the suck-swallow thing? This pump does that flutter thing to start you off, then switches into draw mode when it senses let down. I haven’t tried one myself, but it is getting rave reviews.
The mother-in-law is a La Leche League consultant, so I’ve fielded more than my share of breastfeeding questions. Apparently it’s not that unusual to have difficulty expressing either for the mouth or the pump, especially since your child is so young. Many mothers have problems even getting as much milk as you’ve been expressing for the pump, but capacity does increase as long as you keep at it.
I have no idea if Whynot’s suggestions will help, but I will say that the colour of beer is a function of malt, not hops-- and the hoppiest beer around is the straw-coloured India Pale Ale.
Congrats on your new baby! Today is my first day back at work after Baby Kate’s arrival and I’ll be pumping 3-4 times a day for the next 10 months just like I did for our son. So I have some experience with pumping, and you’ve had some great advice, but I have to strongly recommend as a few others have, that you use a good pump. If you just need a manual one for occasional use, the Isis is great and pretty affordable. If you want an electric, Medela or Ameda really is the only way to go, although the Whittlestone and Whisper Wear pumps are supposed to be pretty good too. Anything else is likely to result in lots of frustration, and possibly lots of pain.
Having said that, I agree fenugreek can work wonders, and be persistent. I started pumping for Kate while she was in the NICU, and was only able to pump a few cc’s at first, but today I’m pumping 4-6 punces at a time. Your body just needs time to adjust. Good luck!
Ditto on the quality of pump.
Many suggest the Medela Pump In Style …we got a used one off of eBay and replaced the cones and tubing. (We actually first rented a hospital quality one from the hospital)
Check out http://www.pumpingmoms.org/