Unfinished expressed milk?

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I can't find any definitive advice on how long you can keep a half drunk bottle of expressed milk for. I'm having my first night out tomorrow (yay!) and am leaving around 500ml of expressed milk for ds. Do you think this will be enough for an evening and if he doesn't finish a bottle how long would you leave a bottle for before chucking it?

here's what Kellymom has to say...

Can you not just split it into several smaller bottles to be on the safe side?

Thanks spindelina that's really useful. I think dh will split the milk into 5 x 100ml feeds and if ds doesn't finish a bottle it looks like it will be ok to keep for a couple of hours at least. DS cluster feeds at night but then sleeps from 10/11 through till 4/5 so hopefully bottle feeding won't affect that!

I think I used to go by the rule that as long as it had gone back in the fridge within about a half hour of coming out, it was probably good for another 4 hours or so.

Having said that, I'm sure I remember a bf counsellor telling me that there had been a study done that showed that breast milk left out of the fridge had lower levels of bad bacteria. She wasn't advocating it, just pointing out that there's a lot of conflicting advice. To be fair, I might be misremembering, as I was toked up to the eyeballs on crazy baby hormones and hadn't slept for months.

Have a great night out!!

You would think that someone would have done some decent research on this really wouldn't you? I think that's how we'll tackle it. I'm very excited, I didn't get my first night out with dd until she was over a year old as she wouldn't take a bottle and would only go to sleep on the boob. Ds is a different kettle of fish and doesn't seem to care where his milk comes from as long as it comes! He can also fall asleep with a cuddle or by himself. It's amazing how different they are when I don't feel we parent them differently. Just goes to show they really are born with their own characters and preferences.

You might want to look into how much to leave for a night out.

LLL goes by approx 24-30 fluid oz per day for a baby prior to solids. So 17 fluid oz (500 ml) is a great deal unless you're out overnight or something?

I will try to dig out the link ...

www.llli.org/nb/nbjulaug07p168.html couldn't find the link I was given but it says here to portion 2-4 oz per feed (50-100ml) so portion it up like that in sterile containers to avoid any waste!!

My HV gave me this tip in the run up to Xmas as unused and fresh means left over feeds can be frozen for another day.

Thanks Squizita, I know I have expressed a lot - I guess I was panicking about dh running out of milk! He is under strict instructions only to warm 100ml at a time. I guess this way I can have a few drinks knowing there is spare milk if he wakes up earlier than expected.

Sounds a good idea! I have had to chuck milk before and it's so annoying!

Definitely, I'm hoping to let my hair down a bit at Christmas too so this should give mea good idea of what I need