To get so upset about wasted expressed milk

[TheChineseChicken]

I have spent quite a bit of time building a stash of expressed milk in our freezer. We don't have a lot of success getting DD to take a bottle but try every now and then.

On several occasions recently I have returned from a brief outing from the house to find DH has used yet another of the bags of milk to try to feed DD 'because she seemed a bit hungry' only for DD to reject it and the entire lot of milk to be poured away. Even though I was a maximum of 15 minutes away from being able to feed myself.

We now need only have 2 bags of milk left and the thought of having to express it all again is just too much. It's made me feel utterly fed up and tired of all of it. I find motherhood and mat leave hard and things like this just tip me over the edge.

Am I overreacting?

Oh FFS.
Just google it.

I don't think she was screaming, just being a bit fussy. She'd been fed not too long before so definitely wouldn't have been really hungry.

I know that DH does care but doesn't always realise how things will affect me. Which I guess is fair enough as he's not a mind reader!

Lots of wasted milk stories etched in people's minds.

thanks Baroness

Yanbu. Expressing is exhausting and tiresome.

I wouldn't be annoyed if my husband mistakenly thought the baby was hungry as I've done it too, I would be annoyed if he didn't care it was wasted!

I've been exclusively expressing for 10 weeks now (have been adding some formula in recently though). It's very hard work and that milk is precious! My husband calls it 'the good stuff' and certainly wouldn't be blasé about wasting it.

Ps we put wasted milk in baby's bath as it's good for their skin.

I have a lot of admiration for women who exclusively express KayTee. Sounds tough and exhausting. Well done for sticking with it

Thanks for the bath tip

I'll never, ever forget a bank special care nurse throwing in the bin a small bottle of expressed milk from beside DS1's incubator. I had low supply and expressing was like torture, watching barely anything ever come out. I went nuts, burst into tears and hysterically started screeching about how long it took me to express it. She got it out the bin and washed the bottle and gave it back. The regular nurses totally understood though. So no you ANBU. Quite rational and self restrained response compared to mine!

I've had similar responses to that when annoyed at other times!

God you have my sympathy. I hated expressing so much that I didn't push it too much when DS kept flatly rejecting bottles.
Definitely freeze ONLY in small batches from now on...
I haven't had the same good experience of doidy cups- DS just puts his hand IN it and tips it all everywhere

In the nicest way, YABU. And I know how you feel! I'm currently looking at 200ml wasted breastmilk...

It's my parenting instinct when babies are upset to give them food. I think it's reasonable for your DH to do this.

It's great to have a stash in the freezer but this is for using when you're out, surely?

Go out on a good show and pump. Put it in several 50ml bags and have done with it.

Expressing is hard work. Babies are hard work! It's understandable that you're upset but it sounds like DH was doing his best for the baby.

I have been building a freezer stash before I return to work. I was sorting it out the other day and managed to leave half a litre out on the work top overnight. I was gutted.

I think DH understood when I said, "DD is, apart from a microscopic contribution from you, entirely made by my body". She was about 3 months old at the time. That's pretty incredible if you think about it. A perfect, small human being that you made inside you and with your breasts. No wonder they sometimes don't understand.

Expressing tip: Think about George Clooney sex while expressing. It works.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about DH trying to do the best for DD. He's a wonderful husband and father so I know I should cut him some slack.

I feel your pain, I expressed loads for DD2 in the early weeks before my supply settled down and dutifully put in small bags in the freezer.

One day I was shunting stuff around and I must have pulled the freezer too hard. Few days later bad smell prompts us to open the freezer, yes it had defrosted and all the milk was stinking. We had to throw the lot. I cried buckets.

I like that MrsTerry.

I once expressed a whole bottle and left it attached to the pump to cool down a bit before it went in the fridge. Briefly left the room and when I came back saw that the f**ng dog had eaten the pump and the milk. I was not impressed

OP I knew just how you feel.

Suggest you talk calmly to your DH when you are not angry. He cannot fail to understand it when you put your case across without emotion (if you can manage it! Life is so hard with a new baby).

I bought a great pump, expressed, froze EBM, bought 5 kinds of bottles, got various people to try giving it to DC, tried to give it when DC was asleep, tried everything.

Bottles never happened for us. I expressed quite successfully and it was quite a jolt when I looked back and realised that not a drop of all that EBM had made it into DC!

What I'm trying to say in a long-winded way is that you can start thinking in a different way - you may not need to replenish that large stockpile - I suspect that if bottle feeding hasn't happened for you yet, it may not

First time I expressed was in hospital when we'd had to go back in after one night at home because ds had lost 12% of his birth weight.

Expressed, got criticised for not producing enough milk, then it got taken away to put in the fridge. Morning comes, we're moved from the children's ward up to maternity and I never saw that milk again. Then spent hours expressing over the following days and ds drank none of it because he was feeding fine and there wasn't a problem. It all got wasted.

I also kept frozen milk in the freezer for well over a year after ds lost interest in bf. It was so hard to throw it away, but eventually we needed the space.

Once I was expressing in bed and didn't realise, in my tired stupor, that the bottle wasn't attached correctly to the pump tube and I was expressing a significant amount of milk straight into my bedsheets. So not only had I wasted a load of painfully expressed milk, I also had to change my sheets in the middle of the night. I cried lots. There IS a point in crying over spilt milk!

Ds2 is now 5. I still have breast milk in the freezer as I can't bear to throw it away. It's been there for about four years - I made it, it was hard bloody work, it's a miracle of nature, I will never make any more.

DH just lives with it, bless him.

Poor you. Expressing is such hard work, whoever said upthread that only people who have done it understand the preciousness of every drop is right. I am also down to 2 bags in the freezer.

I expressed for my DS as he couldn't / wouldn't breastfeed and bitterly remember the full 8oz bottle that got hidden at the back of the fridge and had to get chucked.
I'm on my second baby, she was EBF but wasn't gaining enough weight so I had to start expressing as well to give her top up feeds. She's 6 months now and having 3 meals a day but I am constantly playing catch up. She has a bottle of expressed milk before bed and if we go out.
I have to keep stopping DH from giving a bottle when I can breastfeed her. He sees it as quicker and easier but doesn't really get what has gone into producing that bottle.

For mothers, feeding a baby is emotional, for men it's practical.

YANBU. People on my local breastfeeding facebook group are always recommending putting bm in the bath if it can no longer be used for feeding. Apparently it's an amazing moisturiser.

I haven't tried it myself but might be worth a go. Certainly better than pouring it down the sink - soul destroying, I completely agree.

I expressed about 100oz before going back to work (manual pump I could get up to 10oz per day but it was so boring)

It's all still in the freezer and I pumped it 8m ago. So it's all basically wasted... DC wouldn't take it in bottles /cups even if warmed.

Think I'm going to have to start using it on the whole families morning cereal to get
through it