Expressing and feeding advice...

[joolzr]

Hi all

I'm trying to start feeding my 13 week old girl some expressed milk. She's happy to take from a bottle but I'm worried about judging how much milk to give her in each feed- so I can have a few hours out.

I've been trying to express each day but don't get a huge amount- 50 to 75ml. I'm also worried that if I express, she'll go hungry that day. Is that the case? I also find expressing quite difficult to fit in if I'm going out during the day so don't manage it every day.

She's quite wee (25% percentile) but I'm small and so is OH so it's not a worry.

How much milk would you expect her to take in each feed? It's mainly so I can go out in the evening when she feeds every 2-2.5 hours and I think my supply is pretty low at this point anyway.

Thanks

JoolzR

When my DD2 was in SCBU at birth i was told they need 180mls per kilo of weight in a 24hr period...

So times the 180 by how many kilo's she is (always round up to nearest kilo), then roughly devide that amount by her average amount of feeds in a day (including night feeds)... i always add another 30mls (or 1oz, whatever you work in) as my DD is a little guzzler, even when she was only 4lb she was on more than needed!! If you can't understand that then just let me know her weight and i can work it out for you.

Thanks glaskham. Really useful info.

She's 5kg, so should be on 900 ml per day. She does about 7 feeds a day which is about 130 per feed.

I stressed about it all day yesterday and feed her every two hours. Then OH only gave her 60ml in the evening and she went to sleep!

On the upside, that means I have some extra milk in hand.

I found that on the days I DIDN'T express I sometimes didn't have enough milk for the evening feed (when daughter was + 6 months and ENORMOUS).

Expressing on the contrary really helps the milk flow.

I think if you are only expressing for the occasional feed you don't need to worry too much as she'll catch up on the breast at other feeds, esp. if you are feeding on demand.

Speaking from my own experience, if you are going out for 1-3 hours max, leaving even the small amount of expressed milk in a bottle will be fine. I often found that my DS would demand feeding the minute he saw me, whether he had downed 60 or 160 ml of milk in the period I was away. The bottle always was palliative, iyswim, it bought me the freedom to go out and about for an hour or so, without worrying.

And, if you carry on expressing regularly (and at regular intervals during the day), you will find you express more and more. I got to the stage that I had so much, I didn't know whet to do with it all (I don't live in the UK and there was no milkbank to donate to or anything).