Expressing in morning = 'wrong sort of milk' for night time bottle?

[ChipsnCheese]

I express a bottle every day for dp to give to dd. The only time of day that I can successfully express and get 3-4oz is in the morning.

I was recently told that morning milk contains stimulants and night time milk contains sedatives. So maybe our great plan is actually preventing a good sleep rather than aiding it? Is what i was told utter bunkum or is there some truth in it? Anyone else found the upper/downer equivalents in expressed milk? (if so maybe we should convert bm to pill form and sell it on the street, hence making enough money to not have to return to work).

thanks

I think night time breastfeeding produces sleep hormones in both mother and baby helping you both fall back to sleep quicker after night feeds - don't think it is the case that there is stimulants/sedatives in milk at different times of the day though!

Hmm interesting. I'd never heard this before, but would be interested in responses.
I wonder if melatonin transfers to breastmilk?

Hmmm, sounds like yet another thing for a parent to beat themselves up about. Agree with RitaMorgan comment about the process sending you both to sleep. My DC was given loads of expressed milk, some fresh, some defrosted so goodness knows what time of day it first turned up and she slept like a log.

I've never heard that you need to match your pumped milk to the time of day before. I've been trying to find some information about this and the only thing I've found is a news article from a few years ago. I've not found anything from a reliable source (LLL, NCT, Kellymom...) that says you need to give your baby morning milk in the morning etc.

You could ask what other pumping mothers do, whether they note the time as well as the date on their milk when they store it. I can't say I've heard of anyone doing that.

Maybe Tiktok will know more. I'll keep looking and asking around in the meantime. Who was it that told you this, was it someone with specific BF training?

My son still has a bottle of expressed milk at bedtime, usually pumped the previous morning, and he sleeps all night.

my baby is 9.5 weeks and has been having a bottle of my expressed milk at 6.30pm since 5 weeks old.

I find that since having this feed as a bottle she has slept BETTER

I express most of the milk in the morning too, although i also express at 6.30pm when she feeds as she takes 6oz and i cant get the full 6oz in the morning

Wow, nannyl - 6oz? I only do 3.5ish for my 3mo.

Pascha, would you mind telling how old your son is, and how many oz you give in a bottle?

Thanks so much!

Ok, he's 14 months now. He had one bottle a day pretty much from birth, and specifically at bedtime from about ?3 months I think? (it got moved around the day a bit to start with)

He was on about 3oz(ish) at 3 months, rising to 6oz by about 6 months. He slept through from 6.5 months. Since a year he has taken about 5oz.

At the peak I could get 7oz from one boob easily in about 20 mins. Now its about 2-3oz per boob. He has a bottle 5-6 nights a week so pumping once a day is enough for us.

I anticipate pumping for a while yet because he is has problems with dairy still. I would like, in an ideal world to stop pumping, but he's just so allergic to dairy and refuses soya as a drink.

Does this come from 'The Politics of Breastfeeding'. I seem to remember a section in there where the author talks about how little we actually know about the content of breast milk and its properties. She speculates that we may even one day find it's matched to time of day (or something along those lines), but as I remember it it's just an illustration, not saying that milk is matched to time of day.

I remember reading something similar, but I spent 7/8 months (started when she was 3 weeks old) doing exactly what you are with no harm at all done to dd who guzzled it down at 7pm and generally slept well. I wouldn't worry at all about it.

This article talks about the levels of Tryptophan in bm (it's used by the body to make melatonin). There is less in the day (as adults don't generally sleep in the day) but more at night (when we do) babies then use the tryptophan from the breastmilk to make melatonin which helps to regulate their body clock.

So bm does help regulate babies body clocks (obviously other things do to - it's not just the tryptophn in bm) but to what extent is not currently known (or not accessible to me to read!).

Having said that, any breast milk you give your will be better than not, even if it is wide awake daytime milk rather than sleepy night time milk.

The trouble is if you express at the time baby has their bottle feed, you might find it's as well to cut out the middlemen (the pump/steriliser/bottle) and feed directly due to the less work involved.

Thanks, everyone! seems that it's a good student research topic. I'd be very interested to take part!!