Leaving 9 week old BF DS for half a day - how much EBM to offer?

[peedieworky]

Hi - I've been waiting for a date for day surgery and just had a call from the hospital to say they can take me tomorrow as a cancellation. I'm keen to get it over and done with & they've been really flexible about letting me keep DS with me right up to surgery so that I should only be unable to feed him from from about 3.30pm to mid-evening. He tends to feed anything from 2 to 4 hourly (I never let it go past 4 hours) so I'm hoping I will only miss his bedtime feed at 7pm-ish and maybe the one before that. I have given him EBM for his middle of the night feeds before and he takes about 150-180mls (he is on the 91st percentile size wise!!) but he'll often have gone 5-6 hours without a feed before that, so I assume he wont take anywhere near as much as that? I have issues with excess lipase so my milk spoils quickly, so am keen that DH doesn't waste milk by offering him too much. All wisdom appreciated - thanks!

Have you heard about scalding your milk to sort out the lipase? Info here as that would give it a longer shelf life but as it destroys some of the ant-infective properties I would imagine you wouldn't be able to start a bottle and keep it for 4-6 hours.

If you do scald your milk I would think you would have to treat it like formula and discard at the end of the feed so small bottles of 60-80mls would probably be best (more bottles can be given to baby if they finish the first one).

HTH and good luck with your op.

Generally I think the advice is around 30mls/1oz an hour (which makes sense if he has 150ml-180ml after a 5-6 hour gap) plus a couple of extra oz just in case.

Long term expresser here. At that age she's probably taking 25-30 oz per 24 hours, so I would leave 8-10 oz for an eight-hour stretch. If your milk spoils quickly, express smaller quantities into several containers (bags or bottles) and put them straight into the freezer. They are very quick to thaw from frozen, and your DH can just take out a couple of oz as and when needed.

Thanks for the feedback. Rita that's especially helpful and will reassure my DH no end!

Sorry - he!