Dear Cheriebuzz,
The first milk you have starts when you are about four months pregnant. This is called colostrum. It is very good for your baby, see the article,
What is colostrum? How does it benefit my baby?,
http://www.llli.org//FAQ/colostrum.html
Colostrum comes in very small amounts,
the average feed is only 2 to 7 mls (remember that 5 mls is a teaspoon full). Colostrum comes one drop at a time. You can see this on a video from Dr. Jack Newman at
http://www.thebirthden.com/Newman.html (Scroll down until you find the video clip entitled
Poor Latch/Good Latch 2)
As you can see colostrum comes just one drop at a time. I believe that this is so that the baby can learn how to coordinate the breathing with the sucking and swallowing with only tiny amounts. Imagine how uncomfortable the baby would get if he had a huge mouthful and it went down the wrong tube because he hasn't learnt the difference between breathing and eating yet.
Colostrum is much thicker than water. The books describe it as gel-like but I think of it as honey - it is sticky and yellow like honey too. And because it is so thick and sticky it is very hard for a pump to get out of your body. Hand expression is usually much more productive in the first few days.
But remember whether you can get any out or not you still have it. Think of a new jar of jam - just because you can't get the lid off you don't assume there is nothing in the jar. This is the same with colostrum - the baby is the best at getting the milk out and normally will manage where hand expressing and pumps fail.
You continue to have colostrum for around two weeks but between the third and fifth day your milk supply increases - this is the mature milk starting. The mature milk is much thinner and whiter in colour. For the next 10 days you have a mixture of colostrum and mature milk, we call this transition milk.
When the milk increases depends on how much breastfeeding you manage in the first two days. The more feeds you give the baby the quicker the milk will come in. We are aiming for at least 8 feeds every 24 hours. So skipping feeds, especially night feeds, tends to delay the milk coming in. Mothers who have to rely on expressing and pumping because the baby is ill also usually find that their milk is delayed because these aren't as good as a full-term healthy baby sucking directly.
Some mothers find that after the milk supply has increased and the milk thinned that pumps work fine and others still find that hand expressing is better. By about two weeks most mothers find that the pump will work for them.
But no pump is as good as a full-term healthy baby. We usually only suggest the use pumps if the baby isn't feeding well for some reason and the mother needs to help the baby stimulate her milk supply. If the baby is feeding well getting a full supply is much easier and better if the baby does the work.
Around four to six weeks many things happen. The milk supply is full established and working well. The mother's milk ejection reflex is working beautifully and can compete with the flow from the bottle. The baby knows exactly how to feed and introducing other things (such as dummies and bottle teats) don't have a negative effect. Mother tend to have a confidence that everything is going well. When these things happen if you want to express and feed the baby with a bottle it doesn't have the negative effects that early pumping and bottles have.
I'm sorry this is long but how breastfeeding works is actually quite complicated, anyway I hope this explains some of how breastfeeding works.
Best wishes,
SARAH
