Breastfeeding

No clue about bottle feeding - Please help!

Hello! I am currently breastfeeding my one month old but I would like to introduce her to a bottle (so that I can leave her with her grandmother once in a while) but I have no clue about bottle feeding with breast milk. I bought a pump and it said to refrigerate the milk as soon as possible but that was all. When you want to feed the baby, what do you do after you pull out of the fridge? Do you heat it? If so, how? And for how long? And how much should you give the baby? Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Re: No clue about bottle feeding - Please help!

  • I usually store fresh milk in the refrigerator 3 days or less.  If you freeze it, it will keep for about 3 months.  You can warm the milk by putting the bottle in a bowl of warm water for 5 minutes or so.  How much the baby eats depends on how much they normally nurse and how big they are.  When my baby was a month old he would normally take about 2-3 oz every 3 hours.  At 6 months, my baby will eat 6 - 7 oz every 3 - 4 hours.

     

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  • To first have some milk to give DS in the bottle, I would pump after the first morning feeding or whenever I felt engorged to build up a little stash.  I freeze everything except the milk I know I am going to use in the next 5 days.  Milk is good out of the refrigerator for about 4 hours.  So then, DH would give DS a bottle and I would pump while he was doing that.  When DS was 1 month he would take about 2-4oz.  I pump for 15 minutes.  I would typically pump more than DS ate back then, so I would freeze what I knew I wasn't going to use.
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  • Breastmilk is good in the fridge for 7 days. Using a bowl or mug of warm water to heat it up is best - don't microwave. Swirl the milk before you put it in the bottle as the cream likely separated while in the fridge (the milk has NOT gone bad!). I'd say prepare 2.5 oz at a time right now. Most bf'd babies top out at 5 oz when they're older. It's rare that they would take 6 or more...
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