All about expressing? Please someone help me!

[Pinkcupcakex]

I have a 4 week old daughter who is breastfed. She occasionally uses a dummy and I have expressed a few bottles of milk which she accepted. We want to give her a bottle of expressed milk each night so DH can do a night feed. However, I'm really confused how much I actually need to be expressing as I'm worried if say my mum babysits her for a few hours she'll run out of milk. Do I just empty both boobs as she normally does that in a feed? Or is there a specfic amount I should express?

I'll add she is really healthy and gaining weight well

What I did was just kept expressing regularly so I had a stash stocked up. You can freeze it etc so maybe be best to start trying to get a stash so you won't run out!

Sorry that wasn't very helpful, I used to express both boobs, after he had a bottle so I had a supply.

A rough guide is that exclusively breastfed babies over 1 month need about 750mls of breast milk per day. So divide that by approx how many feeds she has in 24hrs and you have a rough guide of how much milk to leave per feed.

Thanks everyone. For a few days Ill keep a note of how many time she feeds to work out the ml and start building a freezer supply up How long can you freeze breast milk?

So confusing feeding these tiny humans LOL

You could try a hakaa pump on the side she’s not feeding from and collect the let downs. You can freeze breastmilk for six months, and it has to be drunk within 24 hours of being fully desfrosted.

Thanks one more question, do I need to warm the milk up before she feeds or just have it at room temperature?

I found that my best expressing time was in the morning very soon after DS had fed as I had more milk. I'd just express for 10-15 mins each side until I felt I had got as much as I was going to. If DS went a long time in between feeds then I'd try and express again after he'd fed to catch any surplus. We used to freeze in small bags - 2 or 3oz - although I know many of my friends froze in 5-6oz. Meant that we were less worried about wastage and it took less time to defrost.

As for heating, that's really personal preference (of the baby!). DS often took it without hearing so we took the view that we'd stick with that as then if he didn't finish it we could leave it longer, whereas if it had been heated then we'd throw the remainder out after an hour. That is probably totally scientifically wrong!!

Kellymom was a great source for breastfeeding/storing/expressing queries - definitely worth checking out.

Thank you!!!

I’ve never heated a bottle - they drink them at room temp or straight from the fridge (thank the lord)

My baby preferred/prefers his milk nice and warm. At this age he was drinking 4 oz bottles- at six months he's on 9 oz!

If I was away for say four hours at this age I would feed just before leaving and leave two 4 oz just in case- sometimes baby would just take 4 oz and feed on return, other times would have both bottles

Unfortunately that's not quite right - the amount you get with a pump even if you time it doesn't correlate with the amount that the baby will get from the breast. It might be the same or it might be less - generally a pump is less efficient than the baby. Babies also sometimes tend to drink more from a bottle than they would from the breast (don't ask me how they worked that one out because I have no idea!) so you might need to pump over several sessions to get enough for one feed. At this point you also don't want to create any long gaps between feeds so you might need to express while the bottle is being given which can feel counterproductive.

Yes to freezing in small amounts. I used to find that I got the best output from pumping if I expressed before a feed was due and then I'd let DS feed afterwards because babies can usually get milk out even if the breast is "empty".

Just a word of caution, it might be a little bit early to express regularly yet. You won't have gone through the six week growth spurt and additionally you'll still be having hormone based rather than demand based supply, which can mean that you're sending confusing signals to your body. For some people this is OK and doesn't cause any problems but for other people it can seem to cause supply issues.

If you do get any worries or issues with supply the best thing to do is stop expressing and just feed direct as much as you can, then you can go back to expressing once you've got the routine back in place.

I agree Kellymom is a great resource. Good luck!

If I go out I leave perhaps 150ml of milk for about four hours. That’s probably the max hours I can go out without having to pump for comfort. However DS doesn’t like bottles and will often refuse to eat until I come home.

Personally I found pumping for a night feed pointless because my breasts didn’t know I was “off duty” and continued to produce milk. So DH would be downstairs feeding an expressed bottle and I’d be upstairs pumping to empty my full boobs. You can’t switch off your boobs and have a night off. So seeing as I was awake anyway, I thought I might as well just feed the baby. Fresh milk is better for him anyway.