Colostrum

Collect in 1 ml syringes, label with date and keep in a Tupperware / bag in your freezer. Collecting is not always possible before birth and you might find it hard to get much at first. Put your name on the tuppaware box / bag so that when you bring it to hospital it can be stored should baby need it. I just asked a midwife to take it down to the postnatal ward freezer for me.

Also just as my midwife told me this yesterday and I didn’t know until then, hospitals are now very strict about not allowing colostrum syringes which have caps on as there have been 6 cases in the uk sadly of babies having lids stuck in their throats after they hadn’t been removed before feeding 😢 so you have to remove the caps before bringing them in. Apparently the syringes shouldn’t leak even if you take the caps off before freezing but if you want to make sure then freeze first and take the caps off (with clean hands) once frozen 😊

My midwife gave me a colostrum harvesting info pack with syringes at my 34 week appointment. And just as the comment above suggests, recommendation was to add the syringes to a Tupperware in freezer and take that in to hospital with me morning of c-section x

With my first I was never successful at hand expressing any colostrum. It had me worried! But the midwife was able to express lots of colostrum off me after my cesarean so I think it was just me who wasn’t doing it right. So my advice is don’t be put off if you’re unable to express! With a lot of grit and hard work I was able to exclusively breastfeed.