Milk supply and sleeping longer

Just wondering whether your baby sleeping through the night has effect on milk supply.
Brady is starting to sleep in 4-6 hour stretches at night and sometimes I wake up really full and was wondering if this would eventually effect my supply. Should I pump at night or something? A couple times I've woken up and hand expressed some milk just to get the painful fullness to go away.
It's weird to think that the older and bigger they get...the longer they can go between feeds. I don't understand how that works.

[Ecologic]

My baby has been sleeping for more than 10 hours on most nights for 1 month now. He is 7 months old.

I am worried about my milk production, I have to pump when he is in day care and I rarely have enough, I often have to complete with formula nowadays.

As soon as he started sleeping through the night, I started pumping at night a little bit before going to bed - mostly to add to his daycare bottles. Our schedule is: I feed him at 7PM before he goes to bed, then I pump at 10PM before I go to bed. He generally wakes up a 6AM and I feed him then.

Good luck!

[allmymarbles]

Your milk supply is not affected. In third-world countries they do not use pumps and surely our grandmothers didn't. They did not have trouble with their milk supply. Be glad your baby is sleeping.

[Clysta]

Your supply will adjust to what they need to eat. Kylie has slept through the night for around a month or two now and I've never noticed a difference in the amount I produce. She certainly isn't showing a growth issue at least. The way I've done things is that she normally nurses to sleep around 9-12pm. (We have no schedule at all in our bedtime routine...) and she'll normally wake up around 8-9am and eat. Sometimes she'll wake up every once in awhile around 4 or 5 and want to nurse, but this isn't often. You can pump at night if you choose, but if you do it's possible your body will continue to produce more milk in response.

[Heatherm4]

Ok thanks!! Oh my Clysta...you have a great little girl to be sleeping like that!! LOL I'm happy with a 4 hour stretch!
I don't know what I was thinking about pumping at night...now that I think about it, it'll make it worse when he does start sleeping through.

[cocacolapanda]

No need to pump at night.  My little girl has been able to go about 12 hours since about 4 weeks old.  Before then I'd pump twice at night while she slept.  To be honest I pumped more milk when I did not wake up.  If your little one doesn't eat enough just pump after feeding first thing in the morning.