ive got a few questions about expressing milk...............

[biglips]

i have a 6 days old baby

1. If im in the middle of expressing and say for eg someone came to my house to visit and i put the disc lid on the bottle and leave to cool down but not got a full bottle as i wanted. Can i reopen the same bottle again ie an hour or later and carry on expressing or do i have to use another bottle?

2. It is 4 hours ive gotta use the breast milk once it had been cooled down and put in the fridge to keep it chilled

3. Would like to freeze some but i havent got the foggiest what to do!!

4. If i have a alcohol drink...how long does it stay in my system?

5. And last of all..im using a manual breastpump atm, once i have finished expressing bottle 1 and like to carry on expressing bottle 2 straight away, have i gotta clean and sterilised the pump for each bottle?

many thanks

1. I would use two bottles as the temp of the first milk will be cooler than the second.

2. I recomend using breast milk within 24 hours of storing in fridge, although I have seen up to three days is ok.

3. You can freeze in bottles or there are also pre sterilised bags you can buy from chemists/baby stores. To thaw either put in fridge over night or for a quicker result thaw in warm water and use ASAP.

4. If it's only one alcohol drink then you'll be fine to still use the milk.

5. Medela instructions say the pump only needs to be sterilised once per week and washed well in hot soapy water once a day. So you'll be fine to use the pump for each bottle with out sterilising. I usually recomend keeping the equipment in a container to keep it clean.

many thanks Nanny

1. If im in the middle of expressing and say for eg someone came to my house to visit and i put the disc lid on the bottle and leave to cool down but not got a full bottle as i wanted. Can i reopen the same bottle again ie an hour or later and carry on expressing or do i have to use another bottle?

• i would say yes, but make sure you use that bottle before any others expressed latr

2. It is 4 hours ive gotta use the breast milk once it had been cooled down and put in the fridge to keep it chilled

• bm keeps for 6+ hours out of the fridge, several days in the fridge, and longer in the freezer.

3. Would like to freeze some but i havent got the foggiest what to do!!

just freeze it and use asap asfter defrosting

4. If i have a alcohol drink...how long does it stay in my system?

• you can have some alcohol without it affecting bm, just don't get pissed

5. And last of all..im using a manual breastpump atm, once i have finished expressing bottle 1 and like to carry on expressing bottle 2 straight away, have i gotta clean and sterilised the pump for each bottle?

• no. bm doesn't act like fm so you could use it for longer without washing. wash between seperate expressing and sterilise once a day.

What the others said. But with freezing - buy some special breast milk bags from Boots (I found the Avent ones split all the time but the Lansinoh ones were great) and write with a freezer pen when you expressed and how much is in the bag. Makes it much easier when you come to defrosting. And don't overfill the bags - much better to have several 2oz bags than one 8oz bag as you can just defrost what you need.

many thanks again.