Antenatal Expressing of Colostrum - My Experience of Colostrum Harvesting

Welcome to my week 40 blog entry on antenatal expressing of colostrum when I gave birth to my baby girl Alyssa. This entry has taken me about 11 weeks to write but I didn't want to do a half-assed job! Alyssa was born at week 40 plus 3 days, weighing a decent 8lbs 12.5oz. The birth was completely uneventful and I only needed gas and air to push her out. Needless to say, my hubby Steve and I are both very proud of her and amazingly overjoyed 😍 Her 17-month-old toddler brother Logan, still has plenty of adjusting to do but that will come with time and plenty of supervised interaction. We've had the standard medical checks on Alyssa and she's passed them all, so we are very happy. Her blood spot results will take about 3 weeks but the physical tests have been completed: Reflexes and reactions, hearing screening, weight and jaundice. **Update** blood spots all passed - no illnesses. While it's been a busy week adjusting to a new routine and having to go out eve

Hi everyone thanks for visiting my blog. I just wanted to document my journey on expressing colostrum before birth otherwise known as antenatal expressing from 27 weeks pregnant. This is a very controversial subject area, so I've found out online recently, but is growing in popularity according to my local midwives. However, when I have come to research this, there is a distinct lack of information in support of expressing colostrum at this stage of my pregnancy or about people's experiences generally, which is part of the reason why I wanted to record my experience here. What is Colostrum? Colostrum is a thick sticky liquid that mum's make from about 16-20 weeks of pregnancy which becomes baby's first feed when they are born. It is usually cream, yellowish or even orange in colour - this varies in all women. Colostrum has a high fat content and contains lots of other beneficial vitamins and minerals that baby needs for growth, and of course lots of antibodi