Just dumped milk and feel like giving up
Not sure if this is the right flair or not and this is gonna be a long one so apologies in advance.
Currently 17 days pp and have been exclusively pumping since day 2 in the hospital. Starting off we did have to use donor milk right away because bubs will latch but for some reason refuses to suck on the boob. His very first feed went perfectly and every time after that he just will not feed. I honestly think he developed a preference for the bottle from that very first day but who knows.
So here I am trying to make sure I’m pumping every 3-4 hours, but I have no friends or family where I live and my fiance only got one week off of work. So I’m currently doing overnights + days while he’s gone since he has to sleep for work also and I have to be up at night to pump anyways. I am thoroughly exhausted and more often than not over the past two weeks I’ve prioritized sleep over pumping (not in every instance just when I was falling asleep sitting up and could not bring myself to get up and get my pump parts). Even when I’ve tried to nap during the evening while hubby has the baby, I either can’t sleep or end up oversleeping and not pumping for 6-10 hours.
Well I thought I was doing okay, just needed to get more consistent but my supply has consistently dropped since coming home. I even have been doing a power pump every day to try and help. The first week was great and I was even getting up to 4oz in a session which I know is pretty good for how early it was. But now I haven’t gotten a single pump over 2 oz today and my last pump I just dumped the milk because I had literally zero output from my left and less than 1/2 oz from the right after trying for 30 minutes. I sobbed and poured it down the sink because I didn’t even feel like it was worth getting a bottle dirty for.
I just feel like such a failure. I see these posts on here all the time and I see all the comments talking about how any milk you can give your baby is enough and how every little bit helps, but at this point it just feels useless. He can latch and eat just fine on the boob, but refuses to. I’m sacrificing all my free time and what little energy I have to maintain this pump schedule when I’m doing almost everything alone and running on 2-4 hours of sleep in a 24-hour period. Idk what I’m looking for here, I guess just a place to vent. I just want to curl up into a ball and cry in my bathtub. I know a lot of people might say that it’s not worth the stress and mental strain if it’s truly not working but I feel like I’m giving up too early and failing my baby. Not to mention my partner and I are not in the best place financially due to unforeseen circumstances at the place we both work (that happened the week I gave birth), so childcare is out the window and feeding 100% formula is going to be a strain. 😞 I was not made for motherhood
Posted Jun 5, 2026, 4:51 AM UTC