Expressing - how much?

[whosboo]

How much do i need to express for one feed - (1 week old baby)? Can Any one give me some ideas?

How impossible is it to find this out? I looked everywhere for ages (the best i found was 100-200ml per feed-not too helpful!) but in the end went by trial and error. When my DS was 5 weeks he took 60-80ml a feed,(he was about 10lb 5 then)and it gradually went up. He's now 13 weeks and takes about 125-150ml (weighs 14lbs1oz). For a week old baby you probably need about 60ml maybe less? But express more if you can then just see how much baby takes - does no harm if there's some left over. Also don't know your circumstances but baby may not take the bottle easily at first and may find the next few breastfeeds after difficult as young babies get confused-its sometimes better to wait a few weeks. Also if s/he can see/smell you they sometimes aren't keen-mine tries to lure me over from the other side of the room with puppy dog eyes while ignoring DP holding a bottle.You can sit baby with their back to your tummy though, that usually confuses DS!
for posting like i know it all (i know i don't!)and going off on one, just winds me up that there's not loads of info so if you want to breastfeed it always means getting your boob out!
www.expressyourselfmums.co.uk is good though :) (sorry don't know how to link)

The rule is:
Take babys weight in kilos. For every kilo allow 150 ml of milk. This is the Daily Allowance. Divide this by the number of feeds the baby has per day and that gives the amount for a single feed.
So if you have a 4kg baby who feeds 8 times a day:
4 X 150ml= 600ml= daily allowance
Divide by 8 = 75 ml
The general advice though is not to express till 6 weeks while supply is getting established.

I expressed before 6 weeks, and found it helped supply so long as I did in in addition to the feeds. Think I might have started at about 3 weeks. DS didn't get confused, but that might have been because we used the expressed milk for DH to do the last feed at night so I could go to bed (after expressing for the next day). So he couldn't smell me.

I used to express once in the morning, after feeding DS, and once in the evening. The only feed I didn't do myself was the late evening one, and I expressed instead until DS dropped having that feed anyway - then started expressing in the am only. I definitely found this didn't diminish supply. In fact, my boobs took ages to go down in the mornings once I started to wean DS - they'd basically been used to feeding DS, then producing a whole other feed through the pump, so supply in the morning was huge!!!

Sorry, seem to have got carried away. Good luck with it all!

Thanks for the advice. I'm a bit worried coz after express feed last night LO is eating every hour today!! So many questions - so little time to surf the net to find the answers...!

Don't worry, at 2 weeks babies' feeding habits don't have any rhyme or reason to them! LO was maybe just having more of a snacking day today.

Ooh, I was told not to express this early, I'm sure the suggestion was to wait until milk was established.

Just been to antenatal class today & was told that you can put a sterilised bottle in the fridge & then just top up with an oz here & there through out the day. Also the milk lasts in the fridge for 5 days !!!

Will check out the website, so what that has to say. TBH I found it expressing a bit of a fag, good idea for DH to give the last feed though.

you can freeze expressed milk too - Boots sell special freezer bags for it that you attach to the expressing machine. At one point I had a whole freezer drawer full, and DS was fed on breast milk for a whole month afer I stopped actually breast feeding him!

I never kept mine for 5 days though - I thought it was shorter than that in the fridge?

If adding milk during day, cool it before adding to storage bottle

According to the Breastfeeding Network:

Fresh breast milk:
Room temp-6hours
Fridge 5-10' 3 days
Fridge 0-4' 8 days
If temp rises above 4' after 3 days then use within 6 hours or chuck

Freezer -18' or lower 6 months

Previously frozen

Defrosted in fridge 12 hours
Defrosted outside fridge use immediately

Hope this is useful

2-3 oz or 60-90ml as an average.

research has found that human milk stored in the refrigerator [0-4C] for eight days actually has lower bacterial levels than freshly expressed milk.

When I was bf ds I used to express at the same time every morning, used to express anything up to 6 oz. If I wasn't going to need it for that day I would freeze it so always had a lovely stock. DS used to take anything up to 12 oz per feed but this is when he was alot older than one week, didn't start expressing till he was 6 weeks old as was so worried about nipple confusion, by this time he took either bottle or breast easily those first six weeks though were REALLY REALLY hard, but it gets so much better.

Good luck