How much to express?

[lal123]

I think this has been asked before - but I can't find the thread(s)! We're going out on Friday night - DD (5 weeks) will be looked after by her gran. She's exclusively bf and I've been expressing some milk and freezing to leave for her. How much do I need to leave? She weights about 9lb now, feeds every 3-4 hours and I expect to be away for just one feed. Thanks

lal

3-4 ounces should be plenty

thanks! I've got about 9oz in freezer - might keep going so that I can have a couple of drinks!

in the New Scientist, 10th October issue, it said that research has been done on breastmilk expressed at different times of the day.

it said that milk has different levels of certain chemicals etc depending on when it's produced: so milk produced in the late evening has more sleep hormone in it and that hormone gets stronger through the night until morning when it goes back to day milk (oh, such technical phrase i'm using...)

anyway, it doesn't answeryour question of how much, but if you're expressing for an evening/night feed, it might be worth considering expressing a few times in a day/evening/night and freezing the milk according to the time it was expressed.

Thanks for that nicklebabe -will try that!