Milk, Milk everywhere!

cottingham3 · March 2013

So, I have worked extremely hard at establishing my supply. LO was born Dec 28 at 26 weeks. I have been pumping every three hours since his birth. As yo might imagine, I have frozen milk everywhere. Close to 500 oz to be exact!

Currently he is still in NICU and recieving 42mL every 3 hrs.. half BM and Half 30 cal formula. The doctor said they will start reducing the formula portion once he is totally PO fed with steady weight gain. I generally pump about 140mL...two sessions...during my daily visits and he has that amount fresh.

We are looking at home over the next few weeks!! So, I would like to hear how you rotated your stash when LO came home after long NICU stays. My ultimate goal is to tey and put him to breast. If that happens I can see myself using the stash slowly for when I have to be away from him. What if I continue to EP? Should I give him fresh some and frozen some? Or would it be better to give him the frozen and freeze what I pump? Just not sure what would be best so please let me know what you did!

DrRx · March 2013

I was able to produce so much milk that by the end of my daughter's 83 NICU stay (26 weeker), our entire freezer in our kitchen, the garage freezer, and 1/2 of my parent's freezer was full of the 2-ounce NICU bottles that they gave us. She was also on 1/2 of Neosure for the extra calories and stuff.

I was going to keep pumping twice a day, but after I got her home, I just pretty much stopped. We already had so much milk, and I really started to resent the pump. We brought her home on oxygen and a monitor, and I just didn't want to be tied to another machine if I didn't have to. We would mix her bottles with both BM and formula, but sometimes would do it separate. We ended up finally finishing the BM about 4 months after we brought her home, when she was 7 months old.

GL! I'm happy to hear that he'll be coming home in the next few weeks!

Brummy14 · March 2013

My plan is to start rotating frozen on a half frozen, half fresh basis once it hits 3 months old...I estimate it will take around 40 days to burn thru all the frozen I have now. I'll freeze the rest of the fresh I pump during that process.

Once that's done, I'll go back to using all fresh.

Then, two months later, I'll repeat that process, since the new frozen milk will be approaching 3 months old.

PhillyGal34 · March 2013

apparently this is more common than I knew... by the time I went back to work when DS was 12 weeks old I had over 2200 ounces!!! It took up our entire chest freezer. What I did was I got gift bags and filled them over time. I didn't really use a lot of milk until I went back to work and I am still pumping at work (although not that often since my supply is still good and I have more than enough milk to cover what I don't pump each day). What I did was to start with the oldest milk to and then I nurse when I am home. When DH was sick or I felt like I might be getting a cold I gave him more of the milk I pumped that day and less of the frozen milk for the antibodies. Other than that he gets mostly frozen milk during the day and then nurses at night.

If you use a chest freezer the milk can stay frozen longer than if you put it in your regular freezer. This is a godsend to me because I still have a lot of milk from last summer! I talked to my LC and pediatrician and they said it was perfectly fine to use since it has been in the chest freezer the whole time. I plan on continuing to use the oldest milk first until I wean and then just give him the milk until it runs out... when he is 3 maybe? haha

CONGRATS on everything!!!

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