Questions about expressing, green poo and stuff

[EggsandBacon]

Hi,

I've got some questions that I'm hoping an experienced breastfeeder can help with - background is that I have a 2mth old DS who is exclusively breastfed...

1. I am trying to express so my DH can give him a bottle (I'm going for a day out in a couple of weeks so building up to it). I've I leave the bottle of expressed milk in the fridge, how should I heat it up when we're ready to give it to him? Presume not the microwave?

2. I've no idea how much milk he needs for a feed, I managed to express 100ml yesterday, then no more seemed to come out - doesn't seem like enough? He'll need at least two feeds when I'm out....how much do I need to leave for him?

3. Recently he is doing really dark green poos - like mint sauce (sorry) - used to be mustard yellow. He's putting on weight and seems pretty happy with life, so I'm not too worried, but isn't this a bit weird?

Ta muchly for any advice you can give,
E&B

I used to stand my EBM in a bowl of hot water to warm it up. Sometimes I didn't bother, DS drank it fridge cold quite happily. (and he was v. newborn - I exclusively expressed for 8 weeks before getting him latched on).

Hospital told me babies (weight in kg x 150) / usual no. of feeds in a day would be how many ml to give at a feed. I think Kellymom has a calculator. Yes, - here.

My DS had green poo on and off when he was exclusively breastfed. It came and went with seemingly no explanation. Unless accompanied by any other symptoms, it's normal.

i agree green poo can be completely normal if baby is otherwise well.

I also warmed EBM in hot but not boiling water

The feed calculator is correct but is based on the amount of calories in formula feed Your breast milk may contain more or less calories per ml. Sorry if that's not very helpful. The calculator is a good guide but if you are going to be offering a feed daily over the next 2 weeks i'd see how much he takes and how long he's satisfied for as a way to estimate how much and how many feeds to leave. Start storing some in the freezer and then you'll know that your dh has plenty for your day out. I could never get more than 60mls EBM at a time so lots of small amounts frozen just added them together to make a feed.

Breastfed babies don't need a major increase in volume of feeds from 1-6 months unlike with formula as your milk changes for your baby. The average is 700-750ml a day afaik, so divide this by the number of feeds a day to get a ballpark per feed volume.

Thanks everyone, this is really helpful. I've started expressing and freezing!!

I have one more question - I expressed some milk on Monday and left it in the fridge overnight, then my dh gave it to ds on Tuesday evening (warmed up in a jug of hot water). Ds was not impressed - but did eventually accept it and had about 90ml. I threw away the last 20ml, but before I did I smelt it and it smelt really off - so I had a taste, and it tasted off!! I guess it had been out of the fridge for an hour or two with all the faffing, but I didn't expect it to be like that - freshly expressed stuff seems fine, is it odd that it smelt off so quickly? Feel pretty bad that we fed him it now, although he wasn't exactly spitting it out.

Just to say you shouldnt ever microwave ebm as it affects the proteins in it. Milk kept in coldest part of fridge should be fine for a couple of days so think how long you stored it for was fine.

Eggs - Did your milk taste soapy or rancid?

It might be you have 'excess' lipase in your milk (lipase is the enzyme responsible for breaking down the fats in BM).

Kellymom has some good info on lipase and it's effects on EBM and how to counteract it here.

HTH.