Dairy Production

Later that evening my husband and I went to the hospital to see the lactation consultant. My mother and Bebe came along too, but they decided to stay in the car. The lactation consultant explained the process of pumping, and gave me some information to read. She then showed us a few pumps, and said that we could buy a pump, or rent one. If I used the pump for more than two months rental was the same price as the pump. We decided to buy it out right. We figured that this was our first child, and that it would be a good thing to have.
Then we were off to the store to buy all the things we needed for the pump; bottles, storage bags, microwaveable sanitizing bags, and just about everything else you can imagine.
Then back to the house. Time for another feeding, and now I got to add yet another step to the feeding routine. As it turned out adding the pump didn't add any time to the routine. At least not while my mother was around. The new plan for me was feed one side, then the other. Then I would hand Bebe to my mother for her supplement while I pumped for ten minutes. At first this was actually much faster for me.
After using the pump I decided to read all of the information. As I was reading I came to a chapter that I was very interested in. This chapter talked about special eating problems. The very first section was devoted to babies with jaundice. It talked about all the problems we had been having. It talked about how tired the child would be, and that because they were tired they would have trouble latching on, and that the baby would eat very slowly. It also said that establishing a good milk supply without a pump would be very difficult. Yes, this information was valuable to me. I only wish I had known this sooner.
*An interesting side note, six months after the fact I was talking with my sister-in-law about Bebe's feeding issues, and the fact that she was jaundiced, and she told me that jaundiced babies should drink only formula, because the molecules are bigger, and they will draw the jaundice out of the body faster. She said that a nurse told her if you want to breast feed a jaundiced baby, you should pump, and store, until the jaundice is gone.*
In the first day of pumping I was so surprised that I actually had milk in my body. It seemed so strange to me. I kept thinking this was so amazing. I had actual milk in my body. I was producing a dairy product. It even had cream on top! Then I noticed that I had very little milk. In one 24 hour period I was able to pump six ounces of milk. I know most women can get more than six ounces every time they pump. It wasn't much, but at the end on each day I had enough milk for one feeding. The lactation consultant said that if I could do this I could sleep through one night time feeding, and someone else could just feed her.
This seemed like heaven. I could sleep for one four hour block each day. You might be wondering if I woke up when the baby cried or was hungry. No, I did not, because she didn't wake up in the night. She would have slept straight through. We had to wake her, and now that I could sleep through one feeding waking her for one of these feeding was no longer my problem.