I have nothing but total admiration, respect and awe for those mommies out there who are pumping their breast milk or have pumped their breast milk in the past. I am just trying to pump enough to make little breast milk ice cubes to mix in with some rice cereal for Mariele. About 20 minutes of pumping this morning yielded me about 3.5 ounces!! The milk was coming, but very slowly. I am using a handheld single Avent pump. Anyway, the milk I pumped this morning filled 6 ice cube tray compartments (they are supposed to be 1 ounce servings per compartment). I am going to pump a little every morning to try to get used to it. There is definitely a technique to using those little manual pumps.
So I guess I should have said first that I am planning to start Mariele on rice cereal within the next few days. Her ped gave us the go ahead at her 4 month appointment, but he said it would be fine to wait until 6 months since she is thriving so well on my breast milk alone (chubby thighs hee hee)! Well, lately she is so interested when we are eating. She is grabbing at our food and salivating even more profusely than she normally does. I guess I'm starting to feel bad that we are all eating in front of her. So I will try a little rice cereal with her (no more than once per day for awhile).
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Manual pumps are the worst! I used a hospital grade automatic and loved it. I exclusively pumped for N&A for almost 3 months (for very long reasons too complicated to leave in a blog comment) and with the hospital pump I could easily get over 10 oz in one session.
Plus I could talk on the phone or read magazines since I could do it hands free!
Reading your post as I sit here pumping at work! I pump 3 times a day 5 days a week. I have the Medela PIS and second Laura on the manual pump...it is not good.
I actually use the formula that I got for free from the hospitals to use for Autumn's rice cereal. I would use breastmilk but I need all the milk I pump for her bottles during the day. So she gets 2 oz of formula a day in his rice cereal. I get about 3.5-4 oz each time I pump at work for BOTH sides. I do pump in the morning before work and I get about 5 oz on just one side. Pumping in the morning seems to be my best time. Kudos to you. I am counting down the months that I have left to pump at work- it is not fun but it is my 'me' time and I have been doing a lot of reading!
I had to pump for Maya for 6+ weeks when she was sick in hospital and then when she came home for a while...it sucked, but I did rent a hosp. pump and it made it easier. You can actully also mix the cereal with water...I did that and Maya took it no problem. I know it sounds gross to us, but they have never had it before, so they don't know the difference.
This is why Ian is getting his cereal made with water this summer...when school was out I was DONE pumping!
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