I miss overproducing...

metalamor

When my milk came in I really overproduced...I could just pump about 9 or 10 ounces at a time and I got a great stash in the freezer. But my milk supply has evened out by now. I'm pretty sure I'm making enough, but I returned to college/work full-time two weeks after giving birth and (thankfully only) two days a week my son is fed with pumped milk.

However, when he started having problems with colic he would get too worked up to nurse on me long enough so I would pump when he wouldn't eat off me anymore and we went through my freezer supply pretty fast once I stopped overproducing. I'm trying to build it back up, but when he gets a bottle sometimes (mostly during the early day) he'll eat up to 6 ounces at a time so it's easy to keep up with fresh milk but extremely hard to pump enough milk to store!

I'm pretty sure I make enough, like I said. The times of day he eats almost 6 ounces at a time from a bottle are the times I can pump 7 or 8 ounces and I know there's more in there because I can squeeze it out pretty easily. When he eats only an ounce our two from a bottle (usually in the evening and at night) I can only pump about two or three ounces.

Over the past week or so (he's 5 weeks old), him refusing to nurse well off me when he's really upset has seemed to pass. In fact, at this point he seems to prefer me when he's upset, which is a welcome change and a relief. But he's an inconsistent baby, so it's hard to know when to pump. Sometimes when he doesn't eat much, I'll wait to see if he wants to eat again before I pump. Then I'll be paranoid I've waited too long and not be sure whether to pump or just wait for him to get hungry again. It seems like Murphy's Law sometimes; I'll decide it's safe to pump and he wakes up hungry right after I made sure to fully drain my breasts by pump and hand (to make sure I stimulate more supply). He waits longer between feedings in the evening and at night, but by then my milk supply has gone down with his demand to feed so if I do pump between feedings it's not enough to store. 

I really miss my oversupply now that I'm trying to stock back up on freezer milk just in case. My milk supply just for him is fine, and unless he's especially hungry on a certain day I can usually pump enough for the two days I can't breastfeed him until nighttime. But not enough to store, usually. Anyone have anything similar going on?