How much do I need to express for a 9 week old EBF baby?

[salvadory]

Hi all, dd2 is ebf and I'm now thinking of expressing some milk do my dh can feed her occasionally. I have no clue how much in fl oz or mls I need to express. How much milk would a ff baby take at this stage and would a bf baby need the same or more? Any help/ advice gratefully received.

Hi, I can't recall how many oz a ff baby would gave at this stage but sure any if the formula websites (or look on back of pack if in supermarket) but I would say you need to express several small amounts so you still have enough for next bf, and so your body has a chance to catch up ( as it would if your baby were taking more). I froze about 2 oz each time in bags to start with. I would also say see whether your baby accepts the bottle before you expend too much effort expressing. Dd2 would never take a bottle despite my best efforts until I entirely stopped bfing so a fair bit of expressed milk went down the sink :-(. You can start with putting say 4 oz in the bottle and if your baby takes it you can always express some more directly into a bottle ready to replace the empty with. You will soon see how much he/she takes. Good luck! X

Roughly speaking bf babies between 1 & 6m old take 19-30oz a day (baby A may take roughly 20oz a day, baby B may take roughly 28oz a day and baby C may take roughly 26oz a day) with an average intake of 25oz a day.

So if you are going to be apart for 4 hours you would aim to leave 4oz in two bottles (plus a couple extra in case of emergencies in the fridge/freezer) as bf babies don't normally take big feeds in one go and if baby doesn't want the milk/only has a little bit you don't want to waste all of it. DD3 had bottles at 6m & 9m due to me being in hospital and she took a max of 120ml but more normally 90ml (3-4oz) rather than a ff baby who might have had 7-9oz a feed.

A good article for your DH to read on bottle feeding a bf baby is this one as it talks about feeding in a way that most mimics bfing and is least stressful to babies.

HTH