Expressing Colostrum

[Little_Toad]

I will be bottle feeding my baby when it finally gets here but I would still like it to have the colostrum.

I'm not sure how this can be done and what stage. Can I have it expressed before birth? or just after? Any advice would be great thanks.

[Tarnya]

Colostrum is so much thicker in consistency than Breast milk it is near impossible to express it, you can but i would be surprised how beneficial it will be as a lot of the properties and antibodies will die exposed to oxygen, the best way to get it to bub is throught the boob, if you are insistant on not breast feeding at all I think you'll experience it to be very hard. Why not just try attatching bub after he/she is born to give the colostrum and reverting back to bottles after your milk comes in? Good luck either way

[~Emmylou~]

You won't be able to get much until bubs is born. Some women leak a little bit of colostrum when pregnant but not enough to express any amount worth keeping.

The delivery of the placenta is the signal to your brain to open the milk factory ;)

When my DD was born she was a few weeks early and a very lazy breastfeeder in the beginning. she was also in the special care nursery for two days.
The midwives had me squeeze colostrum into a specimen jar and they fed it to her with a dropper or just poured it into her mouth straight from the jar.
This worked fine for us until we could keep her awake long enough to get her on the boob a few days later.

There is no problem with it losing any of it's good stuff if it doesn't come straight from boob to baby - just the same as breastmilk retains it's good qualities if pumped and given via a bottle. My midwives were more than happy to do this fiddly process with DD because they wanted her to have the colostrum no matter how it came.

Colostrum is very thick and comes in much smaller quantities than your actual breastmilk, so doing this may be an option for you.

[KarniF00l]

hmm.. I had ALOT of colostrum leaking out before i gave birth to DD2 so it can't be that impossible. I guess if you end up having the same thing as i did, there's nothing wrong with expressing and freezing it. :thumbsup:

[annsam]

I had to express from day dot with DS and expressed colostrum. I didn't get any let-down before he was born so some people do and some dont. They syringe fed him it in hospital, by time we went home the milk was in so what they will probaby do in hospital is help you to hand express the colostrum as you only get drops of it and use an electric pump to start bringing in the milk flow. If you dont want to breastfeed though I dont know if you would need to pump express..... probably just hand express for a couple of days.

[gidgeroo]

I had to express colostrum for my premmie DS2 and I was amazed that my body even knew how to since he was 11 weeks early.

I hand expressed as much colostrum as I could into a small sterile specimen jar and then this was given to him via a syringe intra-nasally. It was really thick and looked like snakes venom - I held my nipple just over the edge of the jar and expressed with my right hand. I had to express as DS2 wasn't in the hospital with me and was too little to breastfeed.

[meme]

i have heard of some mums using syringes to store expressed colostrum in if you can express while pregnant and then freeze and then it is all ready to be fed to bubs.

feelings can change and you may feel more comfortable about breastfeeding than you think. every birth , baby and lactation can be so different.

i think it's great that you are thinking about providing colostrum for your baby.:thumbsup:

[MrsMiggins]

I had practically no colostrum. I had none leak either before or after I delivered, and could not even hand express a drop when I was feeding DD. (Even the midwives were surprised that we couldn't express anything at all. We tried before & after her feeds & nothing - not a drop.)

Some of the mums I was in hospital with though had no problems expressing enough for feeds. It all depends on what your body is going to do I guess!

[~Danni~]

I had heaps before DD was born and even more leaking now (only 26 weeks), I supose it depends on wht your body wants to do.....

We were told at our lactation day though not to try and 'milk' or selves till at or after 37 weeks though cos the stimulation can bring on premmie labour...

Good luck with it all though, hope it works out:thumbsup: :)

[xkwzit]

That's a good point BabyB

Expressing is a bit of a skill and you may not be able to get anything at all before baby arrives. After the baby is born, you can hand express, but you can't use a pump (at least that's what i was told). I expressed a bit for DD1, such a lot of effort for such a few small drops of colostrum.

And naturally your baby will be a more efficient expresser of colostrum.

Cheers

[SassyMummy]

I didn't have enough to express before the birth...only a few drops here and there...it would have been a waste to try.

After DD was born though, even though I planned to breastfeed, she kept falling asleep as soon as being put onto the breast...so feeding was very difficult. As a result, the colostrum was expressed and given to her by syringe. There's not as much colostrum as there is milk (once your milk comes in)...so it's only a little bit here and there. At first, the midwives milked me like a cow...shortly after, I learnt to do it myself.

I'd recommend getting a breastpump anyway...even if you plan on bottlefeeding. I didn't think I'd need a breastpump (because I'd just hand-express anything I needed to)...but on the day I returned home from hospital (Day 5), all my milk came in and BOY did it hurt. I hand-expressed for a couple of hours before sending my mother to the chemists to get me a pump!

Because you won't have the release that breastfeeding provides...expressing will be a godsend (until your supply dwindles...). You'll be able to give that expressed milk to your baby too while you're waiting for your milk to dry up...

[Fairyfloss]

I had to express my colostrum with DD, it can be done, basically you use a syrange or a cup depending on the amount you have availble, and express it drop by drop, you can not use a pump, until your supply is 10ml or more, which is usually around the same time as the time the milk comes in. it is a bit fiddly, so the midwifes usually did the expressing for me.

WARRNING: DO NOT EXPRESS ANY THING BEFORE GIVING BIRTH :shame:, EXPRESSING CAN CAUSE LABOUR.YOU DON"T WANT TO HAVE A PREMATURE LABOUR. (infact, that was one of the methods they used to induce me, nipple stimulation:eek: )