One off expressed feed - advice needed!

[knittingirl]

Ds is currently 10 weeks and ebf, and when he is 6 months old I willbe sitting some exams. Two of the exams are 3.5 hours long and two are 5 hours long. By that point I'm hoping that the 3.5 hr exams will be fine if I feed ds directly before and after, but I'm concerned about whether at that point he'll be able to go five hours between feeds. I've never expressed, but have been wondering whether it'd be worth me expressing a feed for just in case he doesn't last. Does anyone have any advice for expressing as a one off - how to express and the best way to feed it to ds?
Thanks

I breast fed my dd til she was nearly two. I tried expressing a few times, but she hated the bottle. I was lucky in that I could be there most of the time for her, so it was a choice I didn't have to make. He should last 5 hrs between feeds - but if you do decide to go down the expressing route, give him (& yourself) several weeks to get used to it! Good luck with the exams too!

By six months he should be able to last that long, although may not be very happy about it.

If you do decide to express, you may be able to do it as a 'one-off' as by then your supply is established and works on supply-and-demand (I think I'm right on this) - so a rogue pumping session or two will just be like DS demanding an extra feed. If you don't want to get a pump for just one occasion then you can hand-express. It'll take a while to get a decent amount of milk, but you can google the correct method for hand expressing. Whether or not he takes the milk while you're away is another matter. We had no luck with DD and bottles, but my DH did teach her to drink from a doidy cup at about 5 mo. Now if I'm away from her (she's 7mo now) she'll take expressed milk from a doidy or sippy cup. You'll most likely be introducing a sippy or open cup at around 6mo anyway, for water when introducing solids, so that might be a way to get milk into him.

If he'll be 6 months then you'll probably have started to give him solids by then. So he could have a yoghurt or some veg to keep him going while you do the exam. Or he might take expressed milk from a sippy cup. Don't panic!