I think certain habits/tendencies solidified once we both really got breastfeeding down. He started to get both more efficient and more distracted at the breast during daytime feeds, so those sessions would go faster. But at night the breast would help him fall and stay asleep, so I would tend to let him stay on a bit longer in the hope that that would lead to more sleep overall for all of us.

And congrats on the fresh baby :)

So, in the first few months I did pump once a night just to get some extra milk for freezing and so my husband could give him the occasional bottle. And then once I went back to work when my son was around 7.5 months I pumped more frequently, basically whenever my work schedule meant I couldn't accommodate my son's nursing rhythm.

But I think any nursing mother would tell you pumping is basically the worst of all feeding options. It is much more time intensive than nursing (need time to set up pump + actually pump, then time to feed baby, then time to clean pumping parts for the next time) but also still puts a lot of the primary feeding pressure on the person producing the milk (unlike with formula, where anyone can prepare baby's food and then give it to them). So I tried to avoid it as much as possible!

I never put him on a schedule; I've generally always followed his lead with respect to how often he wants for feed. This was possible since I was off work the first 7.5 months, and even after that I have mostly worked from home so I could keep nursing as needed/desired.

It is not, since it's data I gathered myself and I haven't published this project in a public repository or anything. I suppose I could consider doing that.

Oh, you're right re: Monday! I didn't notice that in the rules... But mods haven't removed this post, right?

I have a different chart for total minutes spent breastfeeding per day; I can share it later when I am back on my computer (currently on my phone after a middle of the night wakeup :))

Aw, thank you! I appreciate the sentiment.

Data gathered by me over the first year of my son's life. I didn't manage to track every session, but I captured the vast majority.

Visualization was made with R / ggplot