Expressing milk into a "freezer bag" query on hand breast pump(avent)

[colette]

Ds is now 6wks old and I would really like to get into the habit of having expressed milk ready in the freezer,basically so that I can have a bit of free time now and again.
I have dug my avent hand pump out(not used for 5 yrs and only a few times )I'm looking at these freezer bags and am confused as to how to use. Are they supposed to be sterilised? And if so how?
Do I put the bag inside the not fully enclosed bottle when expressing?
I have lost the instructions and have not got the hang of hand expressing. Any advice welcome.

Hi colette, the freezer bags are sterilized. You do put the bag inside the bottle and the avent ones have a line which tells you how far to pull the side bits IYSWIM. The milk will last for 24 hours in the door of the fridge, 6 - 8 hours in a sterilized bottle at room temp, 48 hours in the body of the fridge and 3 months in the freezer. HTH

Mioght be worth starting your ds on a bottle asap and keeping it up most days - my dd would take a bottle at 7 weeks and won't now!

Colette, good luck with the hand expressing. I couldn't get but 2 ounces, and that was extremely hard. I think I threw out the hand pump. I had much better luck with the Medela Pump in Style.

colette, if you go to the avent website , you can download copies of most of their product instructions. I found it really useful when I got a second-hand steriliser without any instructions. Good luck!

Colette, that's great you're starting to express now...I would certainly start early and build up a store. When my daughter eventually went to nursery my milk supply seemed to dry up fairly quick and I wish I'd had more stored in the freezer!

I would also agree with ninja re starting a bottle early...my daughter took one up till about 5 weeks but after that we didn't bother till she started nursery. Big mistake! She never really took a bottle...struggled on till she got to the age of cups.

Hi, you need a plastic 'bottle' specially designed to hold the bags. You can get them from any Avent stockist eg John Lewis or on the net. They are sterile, you pull them open and fit them them into the plastic container that goes on the pump. I used them a lot and found them very helpful. The Avent website will help you. I never had any probs with my Avent pump.

I always gave the bottom of the bag a bit of a tug to open it out a bit as I did have a few problems with flooding if the milk didn't open the bag properly. Loved my Avent pump (as much as you can love something like that!) and found it worked really well. I could practically put it together blindfold.

Don't forget that any small amounts you can express can be combined to make a full feed and also are useful for mixing with baby food later on.

DS2 took a bottle at 6 weeks and then didn't take one again until, oooh, about 8 or 9 months! Refuesed cups as well.

Just a note to treat bags with care in the freezer as they can get damaged and all your precious milk ends up on the floor when you defrost it!

I used to defrost my bags in a (clean) bowl, just in case!

The leaflet I was given (in Scotland) said you could store breast milk for up to 6 months in a * freezer.

Mears suggests saving the milk you express/drip (into a breast shell) over the course of a day/48 hours, in a bottle in the fridge and then freezing that, which I've been doing.

Must try dd2 on bottle again...

I used to sterilise Tupperware ice cube trays and containers, then pour the milk from the avent bottle into the trays, put them inside plastic bags new from the roll whilst freezing, then store them in the sterile containers. I could then thaw as many or few as I wanted.

Thanks for your replies
The breast pump is waiting to be sterilised,I keep putting it off. Last night Ds slept for nearly 6 hrs unfortunately I woke up with breasts like baloons ready to pop. I ended up going into the bathroom and milking myself to take the pressure off,I didn't really want to wake him as he's just starting to go longer at night and I thought it wouldn't help this . Of course he woke up the minute I came out of the bathroom.
However it has got me thinking that maybe I could hand express-I dread to think how long it would take. I will get round to it soon. The whole expressing thing feels like a penance for the free time or extra sleep it will allow me to get. Any good hints on expressing?

Do it whilst surfing Mumsnet. It is completely possible honest.
I also used to express after a feed - not the recommended way but it worked for me, and meant I could do it when dd was happy to lie on the floor and gurgle (or sleep) and it didn't feel like an extra job because I tagged it onto the end of a feed.
When I had really got the hang of it, I could feed dd from one breast and express from the other - but I had loads and loads of milk and dd was always satisfied with one side.

Hand expressing can be really quick There is detailed info
here

If using a pump, hand express initially to get the milk flowing. Keep switching sides as the flow stops. You get more milk quicker that way instaed of sitting with the pump going for 10 solid minutes on one side. I expressed at various times. Don't worry if you express then the baby wakes for a feed. You will still have milk to feed the baby because the pump is not as evvective as the baby is. There have been a few threads on expressing - worth doing a search.

I would try expressing it at times of day when it suits you. Your body clock soon adapts to producing milk according to demand.

Thanks for your posts. Prufock - what a great idea . I will try , the other thing I've wondered is , when I expressed with Dd1 I seemed to get over engorged the next day. Is the only way to avoid this to express every day or is it because of the age of the baby ie; how well established b/f is,It is great to get info on this - thanks

Try not to worry if you don't manage to get much out. I express when I'm at work, and some days I'd get 6oz without any problems, and other days I'd struggle to get 2oz. I was getting a bit anxious about it because, although I had some stored in the freezer, my stock was dwindling rapidly. The turning point came when some kind soul left a pile of Hello! magazines in the room I use. Once I stopped 'willing' the milk to come out, and just read a magazine instead, I was much more relaxed about it, and the milk flowed more readily. Sorry, I don't really know anything about the overengorgement.

mears, thanks for the hand expressing link - will be useful.

Agree with you pimpernel about concentrating too hard. When ds no.3 was in soecial care I couldn't express a drop for 5 days. Luckily he was not on milk feeds during that time. I stopped concentrating on looking at baby picture etc and started reading gossip mags instead. It worked a treat.

Two tips, firstly make sure you drink enough, like with breastfeeding it can make you very thirsty. I expressed with my first from birth to 8months and found there were days when I felt v engorged but now breastfeeding with my 2nd (now 8months) I find the same. Secondly when you come to freeze your milk find a square or oblong upright container to hold the plastic bag in. The milk will freeze in that shape and will be much easier to stack and store if you have loads. At one point I had over 300fl oz stored.

The bags may well have perished and prone to leak after freezing and defrosting (as my husband recently learned with disastrous results), so invest in some more - you can buy a box from Avent or the usual stockists.

I find it easier to express into a bottle and then to transfer to a bag, but feed from the bag using the special "bottle" and a blue teat. Hope this is helpful... must go!

By the way I remember a friend of mine telling me that she used to produce about double the amount of milk her babies needed. She used to freeze it and the hospital used to take it from her. Mind you this was years ago. Do they still do this?

LOL Jammyanj - I used to do it the other way round : Express into the bag with the special bottle and then defrost into a normal bottle because of the problems with bags that leaked when defrosted. Even brand new bags leaked

The box of bags actually came with what looked like extras of the base of the bag holding bottle for you to stand the bag on in the freezer. Worked really well.

Do NOT under any crcumstances leave your freezer doo open when you have lots of expressed milk in it. It's very depressing to pour it all away.

Certain special care baby units do. I donated to one in Glasgow.

Thanks for all the info . I asked the hv about it yesterday- and she couldn't tell me much! So I am geared up to start

I donate to John radcliffe in Oxford. There are 14 human milk banks in th uk. look here for info on milk banks in your area they are desparate for milk and it saves the lives of prem babies.

ukamb.org sorry I can't get it to work!