Salty breast milk and starting to express

[m4rdybum]

Baby is one week old today and I am at the point where I have decided to solely express my milk and give her it in a bottle, as well as her formula feeds. She has no problem taking a bottle, as we have combi fed from the start.

Got my hand pump today and managed to express just over 3oz. It was my first proper time expressing, bar squeezing a few drops out to ease engorgement. DH just had to try the milk I had expressed and took a glug- and said it was really salty.

Is this just because it's been sat in my boobs for a while? Or a dietary thing?

Also, any tips for expressing? I'm aiming to express every 3-4 hours as this mimics my baby's demand and I don't want to create an over supply.

I think the salty taste is probably down to diet. I've tasted mine and sometimes it tastes sweet and other times it has tasted salted too.

Tips for expressing would be to express every 3-4 hours to begin with and stop after the last few drops unless you want to increase your supply. I found that having a double pump really made expressing easier for me- 10 minutes and I am done. I use the medela symphony which I think is great.

I found that recording my pumping sessions really helped me with timing too - Look for the pump app available in the App Store.

I pumped for DS1 for 9 months and my experience was that you need to be pumping more often than that. More like every 2hrs while awake and then give yourself a 4hr break overnight to get some sleep. You’ll need to build your supply and without a baby doing it it’s hard.

Good luck with it - now I’m bf DS2 I’m not sure it’s an easy route, but it is the answer for some of us.