Day 1.

After tons of research I have purchased a Medela Swing breast pump. I had another brand from when my little man was born but it was horrible and causing extreme pain so I knew I couldn't use that for my journey. I have also purchased Fenugreek tablets and a feeding tube so I can make my own SNS (supplement nursing system). There are heaps of tutorials on YouTube on how to make your own if you don't want to risk spending a lot of money for something your baby may or may not use. I think the Medela SNS is roughly $45 and I bought the feeding tube for $5. You can also use a medication called Domperidone to help with your milk and most success stories I've seen swear by it but I'm choosing not too. There is also mothers milk tea, brewers yeast and blessed milk thistle (I think I got that right) but I'm just using the fenugreek, the breast pump and the SNS. This is my pumping/fenugreek schedule.

Every 2 hours I'm pumping for 15 minutes each breast. At the moment I'm going to bed around midnight so i wake up around 2:30am to pump and then I will get one 4 hour stretch of sleep from 3am to 7am. With my fenugreek tablets I'm taking 3 tablets, 3 times a day and my tablets are 1000mg. It's so important to pump regularly and not to miss a session. Luckily my husband is home from work for 6 weeks so he's here to help with the kids if I'm tied to a breast pump or need to sneak in a little nap.

At the end of today I finally got a tiny bit of milk when pumping. When I say tiny I mean there were a few drops on my nipple. None in the pump at all, but it's something and it's quite encouraging. It was very cloudy and sticky like colostrum but I've been told you don't reproduce colostrum when relactating but it sure looks like colostrum to me! Bean isn't interested in latching, most likely because it's been nearly 4 months since she's been on the boob. Sometimes I can get her to latch when she's asleep but I'm sure she thinks my nipple is her dummy while she's sleeping. I'm pretty positive that she won't latch because she's used to something rubbery giving her food or comfort whether it be her bottle or her dummy so tomorrow I'm going to get some nipple shields. If they work I'll worry about weaning her off them later the main focus now is to get her on the boob. In the meantime were having lots of skin to skin and cuddles!