How to pump and store breast milk?
If you are unable to breastfeed your infant directly, it is important to remove milk during the times that you would normally feed your infant. Removing milk from your breasts is called expressing the milk. Expressing milk will help you to continue making milk.
Before expressing breast milk, wash your hands thoroughly. Only express milk when you are in a clean area. You do not need to wash your breasts or nipples before expressing milk. If you need help to get your milk flowing, placing an item of your infant’s near to you often works.
There are three methods for expressing your breast milk:
- Hand expression: For hand expression, you use your hand to manually massage and compress your breast to remove milk.
- Manual pump: To operate a manual pump, you use your hand and wrist to operate a hand-held pumping device that removes milk from your breast.
- Electric breast pump: An electric breast pump runs on a battery or through an outlet plug. It can pump milk from one breast or from both breasts at the same time.
Breast milk can be stored in clean glass bottles or hard, BPA-free plastic bottles with tight-fitting lids. After pumping, refrigerate or freeze milk immediately. You should store milk in small batches (59 to 118 ml), depending on the amount that you normally feed your infant at one time.
For refrigeration, storage for as long as 5 to 8 days is acceptable only for very clean expressed milk. If freezing, store the milk in small ( 59 to 118 ml ) batches. Frozen milk is good for 3 to 6 months. After thawing, use the milk within 24 hours and do not refreeze it because of the risk of contamination.
Breastfeeding Positions
First off, there’s no right or wrong way to go about breastfeeding a baby: “The only right type of breastfeeding position is a comfortable one that works best for Mom and baby”.
1. Laid-back breastfeeding
“Many moms and babies love the laid-back breastfeeding position because it’s so natural for baby and relaxing for mom”. To do this one, you recline back about 45 degrees wherever you like to nurse—on the couch, in bed, on a recliner—and the baby lies face down on top of your breast with their arms hugging your breast on both sides..
2. Football hold
Of the breastfeeding positions, this one—also sometimes called a clutch hold—is often the first moms learn. With the football hold, the baby is tucked under your arm off to the side (yep, like a football) and held with one arm while you support your breast with the other arm. If you’re holding a baby on the right side, the baby will latch onto your right breast while you support it with your left hand.
3. Side-lying position
For this in-bed breastfeeding position, lie down on your side with the baby facing you. (You can put a breastfeeding pillow or a roll-up towel behind the baby to support their back.) Baby nurses from the breast that’s resting on the bed.
4. Cross-cradle hold
It’s also the easiest nursing-in-public position. To use the cross-cradle position, bring baby across your body, tummy to tummy, so if the baby is nursing on your left side, you hold the baby—supporting their neck—with your right arm and support the breast with your left hand. Lots of moms use a breastfeeding pillow when nursing in this position since it can make it even easier and more comfortable.
5. Cradle hold
This type of hold is very similar to the cross-cradle, but in this one you support the baby with the arm on the same side as the breast, they’re feeding on, not the opposite arm. This is one of the popular breastfeeding positions during the first few weeks of nursing when you’re getting comfortable with your new job. Like with a cross-cradle, a breastfeeding pillow can help lift the baby and support your elbows.
We will continue to talk about World Breastfeeding week on how can a cleft cause problems with feeding, Common methods to help with feeding a child with a cleft, Oral Hygiene, and other related queries that will affect the growth and development of the baby in our next post which is the 4th part of the World Breastfeeding Week (1st-7th august).