Sore already
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Your nipples shouldn't be sore as you shouldn't need to even touch them to do hand expressing. I'd suggest looking at some hand expression videos on YouTube before trying again.
You don’t have to do that
Try not to stress too much about collecting colostrum. Remember in the early days it’s important that the baby removes colostrum/milk from the breast so the body knows to produce more. It’s nice to practise and have as an insurance policy just in case you are separated from your baby, but ideally you want baby on the boob from the beginning to get the right signals sent 😘
Yeah I don’t feel like I have to be doing this, I guess I just want to provide how I can. Idk if I mentioned but my son came out jaundice and wouldn’t latch but when I asked for help they looked at me like why I couldn’t do this instead of helping like they said they would. It really knocked me down. My baby ended up in the Nicu a day after coming home because they took my word for it that he magically started latching when he didn’t I lied because I felt they weren’t gonna support me anyway. So this time around yeah I’m a bit committed to having every tool I can do that doesn’t happen to me again. Some women it comes to them easy but I doubt myself now because it was so hard for me the first time. I’d feed him pumped milk from the bottle, get him to sleep then stay up another 30-45 minutes desperate to pump so that I had enough for the next time he woke up an hour or so later lol. I want to go in with confidence this time
Not everyone can collect colostrum, I collected loads with my first and couldn't get anything off with my second, so I wouldn't be discouraged, there is loads of support to breastfeed now and also online, have you joined the breastfeed Facebook's group? Get the baby straight on you after delivery and do skin to skin and offer him/her your nipple straight away, there are so many different ways to hold your baby to get the best position for you both, but the latch is the most important, you need to get your arm behind the baby and your hand cupping it's head, then when the baby has a wide mouth push it straight onto the nipple and they should latch on xx