Hi!

These are all things I happen to have lots of experience in

First, for pumping, I would suggest pumping when you're feeling very full and right before the baby nurses, like maybe if you wake up before baby. Also, pumping on one side while baby nurses on the other. It was a huge revelation to me when I learned that baby will be able to stimulate me to produce whatever baby needs, even if I pump right beforehand or simultaneously.

Second, for hospitalization, I was hospitalized twice while my daughter was nursing - once when she was 6 months old and once when she was 11 months old. They wouldn't even let her visit me the first time. The second time, I had my appendix out. I was there one night the first time and two or three the 2nd time. My DH had a hard time at night, but DD did ok with milk that I had expressed (I was working, so we always had milk in the freezer/fridge).

Third, for nursing after surgery, here is the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine's protocol: http://www.bfmed.org/Resources/Downl...rotocol_15.pdf

Basically, the gist of it is once you are awake after anesthesia, it is out of your system and safe to breastfeed. Very well researched.

Hope this helps!
Adrienne

Oh, and we had great luck with BreastFlow bottles. They require sucking to get milk out and didn't choke my daughter like other bottles did. Although, she had to have EBM from a bottle at a much younger age than your son - he may do fine with any bottle or even a sippy cup at his age.

I would suggest looking into renting an automated double pump. I had difficulty using a manual pump unless I 'saved up' one breast all night (until it was about the size of a softball!) and then pumped first thing in the morning. Even then, I only got between 2-3 ozs. The double pump allowed me to get twice that amount pretty much at any time of the day except for right after a feeding.

Great, thanks LLMom and Adreinne!
I did the saving one breast over night and that worked well. Hubby is trying with the bottle (we're using nuk) though don't think LO has quite figured it out yet, he mostly wants to chew it... I managed to borrow a pump from local community midwife...I've also postponed for a month to give us some more time.
Progress is being made!!
Thanks again

Great! So glad to hear how things are working out.