Hand expressing for relief, should I save the milk?

[mowmylawn]

My son will be 6 weeks tomorrow, until recently has been cluster feeding from 7pm-midnight and my supply is pretty good now. He's still feeding a lot but it's a different times now, completely random and for varying amounts of time (sometimes 10 minutes, someone off and on for two hours).

Because of this, sometimes one of both breasts become very full and uncomfortable so I've been hand-expressing for a bit of relief and to make it easier for DS to latch on. It's the very watery milk and I've been expressing it into a towel as wasn't sure I should save it - I would think if I fed him a bottle all made up of the very watery milk then he'd get the green poops (not that I would hand express a whole bottle of watery milk, just that if I did have a bottles' worth it would be made up of a few days of these expressings).

Should I be saving this milk?

Yes...Personally, I saved all the milk that I expressed whether from hand express or by machine. don't worry about how the milk looks. It will not look like cows milk or most definitely not formula. But has a lot more nutritional value. I believe LeLeche has a great leaflet on storing breast milk. if not then, NCT will have it on the website. any milk you get is worth its weight in gold.

It may be worth checking your latch to get a better feed and make sure you are feeding from both sides. I know it is sometimes hard to remember what you did last.

Yes absolutely! Freeze it, then your dp/whoever can give it to them when you're sleeping/out and about!

It won't look like cows milk as JW says, but its worth its weight in gold. I remember once crying because I dropped a full bottle of expressed milk

Only if you want to use it. You don't have to save it if you don't want to.

But it doesn't matter that it looks watery - it doesn't make it bad.

It's totally up to you. If you express into milk bags (you can buy these in Boots) you can keep the milk in the fridge for up to 7 days or in the freezer up to 6 months. It's better to store several days' worth of milk separately as if you mix it, it's only OK as long as the oldest batch in there is OK. And some people have a rare condition where the milk tastes soapy when it's been frozen and defrosted, so I'd try freezing a small amount and tasting it before you freeze a whole lot and then have to throw it away.

You could always freeze it and then use it to make up cereal, sauces etc when weaning. Or make "breastmilk ice lollies" for when he's teething.

Love the idea of breastmilk ice lollies!
Didn't know about that soapy tasting thing - how strange.