Pumping too Much

I recently returned to work. My four month old baby is exclusively breast milk fed.


I usually feed my baby two times before I leave at 7 am and 9 am. She has a bottle of

EBM mid-morning about 11 am, then I return at lunch at 1 pm to feed. She then has another bottle of EBM at about 4 pm and I do the rest of the feeds at 7 pm and 10 pm after work. I have found that my baby takes very little EBM, only 1 bottle of 2-3 oz in the morning at about 11 am and another 3 ounces in the afternoon at about 4 pm. While I think that she doesn’t take enough from the bottle, I don’t think this is a problem since she has continued to gain weight (though slower) since I returned to work. But I want to know if I should continue pumping as much as I do? I usually pump 4 sessions and can get at least 4-5 ounces per session. I have been cutting back since lots of milk gets wasted because she never finishes the bottle and I am running out of freezer space…


Is it ok if I cut back just to pumping just enough to meet her needs? Or will this have an effect on my milk supply over all?

Hi..sorry there hasn't been any reply. i haven't gone through exactly the same thing, but may be i can share a bit of my story.


after my bub turns 5 months, he finally took bottle. i stopped him latching since then. i tried pumping since then, but let down was so slow and i seemed to pump less and less quantity. i knew as a fact that he could draw out more milk directly than me pumping. as i was not consistent and persistent in pumping, my milk supply drops rapidly! i eventually gave up pumping and i was from exclusively breastfeeding my bub to exclusively formula just within one month! i had some reserve in freezer, but wasn't much left.


so i guess it depends how long do you intend to let your baby have EBM. it looks like you are able to pump more than her dialy intake and still have plenty of reserve in freezer. my guess is you probably can reduce slightly but still maintain a regular timing in pumping. i remember i saw some forum where working mum is pumping about 3-4 times a day and once home, let baby direct latch on. so they pump one before they come to work, 2 times during work, and one at night if baby sleeps when they home. but they don't have further latch on during the day. remember your body produces based on demand. so if you pump less, but still regular, your body should still be able to generate that amount of milk.

just to add on, if you happen to cut down on pumping, and in the event that your reserve starts depleting and you know that your daily pumping no longer meets your bub's demand, you probably can start pumping more regularly then to increase supply. i did that during growth spurth and it worked. he was less than 4 months old then.

Well done for combining breastfeeding and working. You can slowly reduce the episodes of expressing if you choose, since it appears you have more than enough milk to meet your baby's needs. Your body will adjust. Try to decrease the volume of milk expressed to only 3 ounces instead to 4 to 5 ounces by shortening the session. This will gradually reduce supply and leave more freezer space.



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