How much expressed milk?

[Ruth_Baldock]

I'm attempting to leave Lex for about 3-4 hours tomorrow evening. She has a feed at 7, and then normally between 9:30 and 11pm. I have no idea how much milk to leave for her- it's from my frozen and until now unused stash. She's a big girl- 98th centile and over 7kg already, so I'm thinking more than the 3oz her brother would take at this age.

This is assuming she will take a bottle, we have had very limited luck with this up till now...

[Jo'sEnglish]

I found the calculator here useful:

http://www.kellymom.com/bf/pumping/milkcalc.html

then I just make sure I have more than that!

[MGolden]

Expressed milk thaws incredibly quickly and can't be re-frozen. Depending on who is looking after Lex, it may be worth leaving out very little knowing that if she is still hungry it is easy to defrost some more. I was ridiculously upset when my older son wasn't really hungry when I went out without him for the first time and I ended up throwing out loads of expressed milk!

[Saffron]

Thawed milk can be re-frozen, but the processes of freezing, thawing, and re-freezing will decrease the nutritional value of the milk, including loss of active antibodies and probably degradation of RNA in the milk too. It may also make the milk taste different, which some babies don't like. Although, Little Saff never had a problem with this b/c she was a very sucky baby who would quite happily have sucked the tail off a zebra if we had let her!

If you think you might want to re-freeze the thawed milk, it's best to leave it in a sterile container. Milk in a bottle from which Baby has drunk can possibly have bacterial contamination (although there is also a good arguement to say that this bac would be killed by re-freezing...). In light of that, it might be best to only offer a few ounces in a bottle at a time. In other words, lots of little bottles, rather than one big one. Then milk in its storage bag(s) can be re-frozen.

[MGolden]

That's really interesting Saffron. Clearly times change - my boys are 12 and nine now and we were very clearly told not to re-freeze! :)

[Audrey]

According to NHS Breastfeeding workshop the average requirement is 30ml per kilo of bodyweight.

[Saffron]

MGolden Wrote:

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> That's really interesting Saffron. Clearly times

> change - my boys are 12 and nine now and we were

> very clearly told not to re-freeze! :)

Probably a lot of people are still being told not to re-freeze, due to a lack of understanding of the biochemistry involved in food science. It's not bad advice, it's just very conservative advice. It's probably best not to have to re-freeze from a nutritional point of view, if there is otherwise a ready supply of ebm. But if a mother has only a limited supply of ebm, then giving re-frozen breast milk would still be preferable to giving formula milk.

[Ruth_Baldock]

Thanks all! Unfortunately our umpteen attempts to get her to drink the damn stuff last night crashed and burned: it looks like Lex will be coming to a very formal dinner party with us...

[hellosailor]

How did Lex get on at her first formal dinner party Ruth?? Or did she start snaffling EBM in time to leave her?

[Ruth_Baldock]

She did really well! Slept for 3 hours, woke and had a feed, a chat and a yawn, then back to sleep! Angel baby, v pleased.