bottle feeding from the beginning

If you really don't wanna bf they can give you drugs to stop your milk coming in. They are pretty effective but don't have a 100% success rate. I had them after I had Jared to stop milk production and it worked fine. Theres also the likes of milk stop that you could take. But any expressing or feeding is just gonna encourage your milk.

If you can do it (mentally and/or physically) it'd be worth trying to give your baby a few days of colostrum. You should be able to collect it in a syringe then squirt it (slowly) into your babies mouth. Get you midwife to show you how to express for those first few days. You'll only be getting droplets of colostrum really but it's worth it if you can do it. But I'm guessing this will trigger your milk to come in which will make you uncomfortable if you're not going to BF. You could consider expressing a few times a day just for comfort (rather than the 8 or so you'd need to do to keep you milk going) and slowly take less/do it less often. I'm not sure if the drugs they give you stop the colostrum as well. Depends what approach you're taking (no colostrum, express only colostrum, BF only for a few days etc). Try to get your Ob or MW on board with your plans and they can probably give you a few tips.

thanks so much for all of your advice, I've done some googling but there isn't alot out there.

Peanut, what is it that you took?? I'm thinking that I probably will do colostrum but I'm not 100% sure. My mil ff both of her kids so when I see her next I think I might have a big talk to her about it all.

For the pill that stops your milk coming in at all you have to leave ya boobies alone completely or its just negating the effects of it. When I took it I was told to leave my boobs alone completely and to have a tight fitting bra and DH was told hands off. So I don't think you could take the pill and do colostrum. It would have to be one or the other. But if you wanted to do colostrum you could try all the other types of ways to dry you up, like cabbage and milk stop and all those sorts of things. You should chat with your MW about it.

Can you take the pill after you've done colostrum?  (just curious)

A lot of mw actually recommend trying to let it happen naturally too... I know a few who have FF from the beginning and been encouraged to not take the tablets.

I cant remember why but its a medical reason.... darn preggy brain!

I FF from birth and took milk stop but my midwife didn't recommend the pills, something to do with the side effects and increased risk of stroke (from recollection!). I wore a tight bra 24/7 and left them completely alone, tried to minimise water running over them in the shower and popped milk stop like crazt. Didn't bother with colostrum as that would have stimulated them too much. I had a couple of days of being a bit engorged and uncomfortable, but it wasn't bad at all. Will be doing the same thing when this bump arrives.

There were side effects from taking the pill? lol

I don't remember being told about any side effects other than the obvious milk not coming in and certainly didn't experience any. So now I wonder what the potential side effects were.

Strange never being told esp when I was told of side effects of everything else I had to take/have by the ob

MyPeas - I'm pleased to hear that it wasn't too uncomfortable cos I'm planning on doing exactly what you did. How much colostrum did you give your dd??