hunker/mears/tiktok colustrum expressing before birth?

[misdee]

i am getting waaaaaaaay ahead of myself here, but i'm sure someone mentioned this at some point?

last pregnancy i developed gestional diabetes, woulod like to avoid the whole tube feeding and SCBU situation this time if the same thing happens.

got a long time till i need to worry about it, but would prefer to read about it now so am prepared and fully informed

Blimey - did I miss something?!! WOW? Congratualtions.

omg.

Are you pg Misdee ?!

yes

WOW!

That heart transplant really DID work, didn't it ?!

Congrats to you and Peter

I think, am not totally sure though, that portandlemon knows about this, she has GD and mentioned expressing colustrum a while ago, I'll link this to my antenatal thread so she sees it.

Congrats btw.

OMG!!!! Congratulations

you are up the duff? omfg!!!!!

you old devil you!!!!!

congrats!!!

thanks VS.

i only heard about this after having dd3. would like to know more about it.

I don't know a huge amount about it but have asked on MN before so can summarise (what I can remember of) the collected wisdom...

1. If you can keep your blood sugar levels carefully under control, particularly in the last few weeks, then there's relatively unlikely to be a problem. Did you need insulin last time? If your GD is diet-controlled then that's better.

1. Some hospitals are over-ready to want to do top-ups and/or tube feeding. NICE guidelines are that there's no need for this just because your baby has lowish blood sugar levels, if there aren't any clinical issues. Don't get rushed into allowing something that there may be no good medical reason for.

1. You can often achieve good results just by frequent feeding and by making sure that you keep the baby warm (getting cold will cause blood sugar to drop far more quickly).

1. If you do express colostrum antenatally then don't use a pump (colostrum is produced in such small amounts and is so sticky that the vast majority of it would get lost in the machine) -- hand expressing is best. If you pester your midwives you should be able to get sterile syringes that you can hand-express into and freeze.

I've decided not to express antenatally because I never ever leak any colostrum before delivery so think I would probably be on a hiding to nothing, so am relying on factors 1-3 to get me through. But if I did get any leakage I would be at least trying the hand-expressing and freezing thing.

(point 2 means that if your baby isn't showing any clinical signs of having low blood sugar there's no need to top up just because his/her blood sugar levels are technically low -- they may well recover on their own with frequent feeding)

Just jumped in to say a massive congratulations misdee and peter

so i didn't miss anything... did I know first???? WOW (never been first at anything!!)

You should read the "I'm a regular and unexpectedly pregnant!" thread, sagpuss -- one of them recently turned out to be Misdee...

threads, that is

here u go shrinking

well I saw the thread this morning on active convos, but didn't look as I figured I might probably not know the person.... so last again huh? Never mind.