how long can milk be kept?

[clarebear23]

Hi, I have a 1 month old baby and have just started to express milk to share the feeding with my partner. If I express 8 oz in to one bottle, how long can I keep the bottle going if he doesnt drink it all in one go? For example, could he drink it over the course of the evening?

any advice gratefully received

Thanks
Clare

For a 1 month old baby I would express it into two bottles of 4oz each, then if he doens't finish one you can chuck the rest, if he finishes one then he has a nice fresh one for the next feed.

If you are mixed feeding and a baby is used to sucking hard on the breast, he could very easily guzzle all or nearly all of the 8oz of milk and overload himself, maybe sleep too long before his next breastfeed which would interfere with your supply etc etc..

Are you planning to express at the times he is having an ebm feed to keep your supply up?

Personally I found expressing such a faff that I preferred to just bung baby on the boob for each feed. Dp would have liked to 'share the feeding' but it just meant so much work for me with that blardy pump and then having to express while he was bottle feeding the ebm or my milk supply went all pear shaped.

Milk keeps a very long time, several days in the fridge as its so full of natural antibodies. I think the problem would come when you have a teat thats all covered in baby slurp and spit, coming into contact with the milk at every sip, and then that bottle being kept hanging around.

Kellymom says that it's ok to reuse ebm that has been drunk from.

I did this on the odd occasion if I had to because tipping my ebm (which was like getting blood from a stone) would have made me weep.

Thanks - will do it in smaller bottles then and carry on expressing whilst he is feeding on bottle or try and express as much as possible and freeze where necessary....