What's your number?
"Your number" is the number of times you remove milk in 24 hours in order to maintain your milk supply.Before you return to work, note how many times you nurse, pump, and collect leaked milk.
This number needs to stay the same after your return to work.
If you produce “just enough” milk, your number is likely 8-12.
If you produce “too much” milk by this time, your number is likely 6-8. (see below)
How many times to pump at work
Stress affects how easily your milk lets down during pumping, and your baby may remove your milk better than a pump.Click here to view instructions for pumping, so your sessions are efficient and productive.
Use a high quality double electric pump, and consider getting a second set of pump parts to save time.
If it's hard to find time to sit down and pump, consider using a battery-operated “hands free” pump for those times. They’re expensive and may not remove milk as well, but it’s better than skipping a pump session.
- If you produce "just enough" milk, your number
is likely 8-12 milk removals per day by the time you return to work.
- Thus, you’ll likely need to pump about every 3 hours at work.
- Pumping 15 minutes is typical, but you might be able to get empty faster than this.
- If you pump too little milk at work today, draw from your freezer stash in order to send enough to daycare tomorrow. If your freezer stash starts running low, there are things to figure out. Click here to learn more decreasing milk supply upon return to work. Supplement with formula if needed.
- If you produce milk abundantly, your number
is likely 6-8 milk removals per day by the time you return to work.
- Thus, you’ll likely get by with pumping every 4-5 hours at work.
- If you pump too much at work, your supply might ramp up too high. Then, you'll feel full much of the day, and you'll be at risk for plugged ducts and mastitis.
- If this seems to happen, you may need to pump for a certain volume, rather than for a certain number of minutes. Thus, you’ll stop at “X ounces” rather than pumping for 15 minutes.
Milk removals at home
It's important to consider how many times you remove milk at home - in addition to how many times you pump at work.Upon return to work, your older baby may sleep longer stretches at night. It’s nice, but you may have to choose between sleep and milk supply.
Full breasts don’t have room for more milk, so as a general rule, don’t leave milk in your breasts more than one 5 hour stretch per 24 hours. Thus, you may need to wake up and pump, or do a “dream feed,” because too few milk removals may tank your supply.
So, the number of times you need to remove milk at home (pump or nurse) depends on how many times you pump at work, so that the total number of milk removals reaches “ your number.”
Kay Anderson MD, IBCLC
5/23