How much expressed milk should I give my 7 week old?

[neolara]

That's it really. I had my first go at expressing yesterday and gave it to my DS in the evening. He wolfed down the 3.5 oz immediately after breast feeding for one and a half hours in the preceeding two hours. (I seem to have lots of milk!) Afterwards he wanted to have even more from the breast. Despite this gorging, he still only slept for 3 hours. He is nearly 12 lbs, so a big boy and obviously likes his food. I was hoping to get my husband to give him a bottle of expressed milk at around 10 pm each evening. Any idea roughly how much milk I should be aiming for? I quite fancy sleeping for longer than a two and a half hour stretch and hoped that expressing a bit might help this happen.

Hi - I don't think there is a target that anyone could give you. You just need to offer him more and more until he starts to leave some and not request any more from you afterwards. I didn't manage to establish proper breastfeeding with ds and only ever expressed for him. I mixed up to 3 sets of expressed milk at a time and although it hurt to throw away the waste sometimes (after all that effort), it was the only way to guarantee he was being offered enough. Wish I could be more specific!