Preferring pumping to actual breastfeeding?

Good grief, I'm not sure if all babies have a "strong suck" but my son sure did. I hated breastfeeding. Pumping was hard because I had to do it every two hours and I was just too darn tired to continue. The whole process ended up being too stressful on both Christopher and I, so I quit after about two weeks.
Atleast he got the good stuff, that's what I really wanted for him. I was never too fond of the idea of breastfeeding anyway, but I wanted the best for him.

hmmm im not sure if this is total out of place or not but i just wondered. you say your friends supply seams fine. so could it be possibly shes having problems bonding with the baby. as i say i could be totally wrong but i would have thought no matter if it takes you baby an hour to take one feed youll sit there and let the baby feed rather than pumping brestmilk out so trhat the baby doesnt take up so much time...

i dont understand why you would exprese if you didnt have to. time wise that must take longer. you got to take the time to express, you got to take the time to setrilise all the things you need to use and you got to sit and feed the baby, why would u chose to do that over just sitting ther and feeding your baby...

i can understand perople have problems breastfeeding. i my self did, i had hard time getting him to latch on i got exzema round ,my nipples i could have cryed with how pain full it was to feed him some times. so i can understand it is a difficult thing to do.

That's great thanks for the update.


ashley_lynne I hear you about 'strong suck' I thought my son was intent to suck off my nipples at first.

Same here Linnis!

I personally found pumping easier and less time consuming. With baby #1 I was breast-feeding every 45-minutes at one stage, because she kept falling asleep at the breast, I couldn't wake her up, I'd put her down to sleep, then she'd scream her head off, I'd put her back on, the same thing would happen. I barely left the house for a year, because going out would turn into a breast-feeding marathon. It got better after the first year, and I breast-fed for two years. Baby #2 I breast-fed for six weeks, then she started doing the same falling asleep on the breast thing, and while she wasn't as bad as #1, I had her and the older one to take care of on my own, so it was easier to just pump, feed her a whole bottle without falling asleep. Believe me, it was a lot less time-consuming than my experiences with breast-feeding.

And I don't feel like we bonded any less, as I was a lot more aware than with my first (as I didn't get any sleep with my first, so was rather zombie-like at times), so I was able to actually enjoy feeding time. I ended up expressing milk until she was about fourteen-months-old. My supply did drop off earlier than with the first, but overall a better experience.

It's different for everyone; for some pumping is harder and time-consuming, but for people like me the opposite is true. Whatever works

Kristy