Hand Expressing Breast Milk

Why do we have such a hangup in the United States about touching our own breasts? If it gets the job done and it is FREE, why on earth don't you give it a shot?

The obvious question is How do you hand express your breastmilk?Here are the steps:

1. Cup your breast (thumb atop/fingers below) about 1 inche behind nipple.

2. Press deep into your breast tissue. (toward the chest wall)

3. Roll fingers and thumb forward toward nipple squeezing milk out.

4. Repeat procedure while rotating hand around breast in a clockwise or counter-clockwise motion.

Now for you visual learners, here is a video.

Tips for making hand expression of the breasts work:

• massage breasts prior to procedure
• apply warm moist heat to breasts prior to procedure
• look at a photo of baby crying or listen to a recording (this works amazingly well)
• experiment with finger placement to achieve maximum breastmilk expression
• use a funnel or empty into a bottle

The same storage guidelines apply to your expressed milk no matter how it is expressed. Click here to go to my article on storing milk.

Not feeling the whole idea of manual expression? I only recommend three brands of breast pumps: Hygeia, Ameda and Medela. Click here to go to my article explaining why.

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