Expressing Breast Milk is Hard Work
Mothers that express breast milk are obviously dedicated breast
feeding women. It is a lot of extra work to get breast milk to feed
your child in a bottle, at a time when the household is already
busy and stressful with a newborn baby.
If you are expressing breast milk for the occasional bottle feed, or to get baby
used to taking a bottle, then most mothers do this after
breastfeeding their baby on the boob. If you express after a feed,
then you will only get a smaller volume of milk, as the baby would
have had most of the milk to drink first from your breast. But the
next day, your breasts will naturally produce extra milk (i.e
baby's feed + the volume that you expressed).
When you are expressing breast milk with an electric
breast pump, allow about 10 to 15 minutes per side. Expressing
with a manual breast
pump takes longer. You may need to do this a couple of times to
get enough milk for one bottle feed.
How much volume does baby drink? The volume required depends on
the age of your baby. Try to aim for 150 mLs to offer to a baby
first to see how much volume they are drinking. This is something
that you don't know until you introduce a bottle, as with
breastfeeding there is no volume gauge!
You will need to store the breast milk that you collect.
And you will need to sterilise all equipment that you use.