How to hand express colostrum or breast milk
This page with the video below demonstrating hand expression is available at possums.org under Free Resources/Breastfeeding, lactation + feeds, for use by breastfeeding families.
Hand expressing can be useful right throughout your breastfeeding experience, and it's helpful to know how to do this prior to the birth.
Some women hand express colostrum antenatally. Other women never hand express, which is perfectly fine too.
About two-thirds of your milk-secreting glands are found in the breast tissue that lies within a radius of just three centimetres around your nipple and areola. This is why you need to place your thumb and forefinger about three centimetres back from, and on either side of, the nipple.
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It's incredibly important that you're gentle with your sensitive, highly vascular, lactating (or preparing-to-lactate) breast!
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Press backward a little, towards your chest wall, then gently bring your thumb and finger towards each other and towards the nipple, to press on the ducts and squeeze milk out in drips or sometimes even a spray.
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This movement is repeated rhythmically, gradually changing positions 'around the clock' of your nipple and areolar complex as you look for 'the sweet spots'.
Here is a lovely video by a breastfeeding woman demonstrating how to hand express.
We are grateful to the mother in the video above for generously agreeing to demonstrate hand expression, out of her commitment to helping further the wellbeing of other breastfeeding women.
Recommended resources
Does it help to express colostrum before the birth and when would you use it?
Colostrum: innoculating your newborn with living immune tissue
Possums Breastfeeding & Lactation Advanced
Colostrum: evolutionary origins, mechanisms of secretion, and biomarkers of secretory activation
Thinking about colostrum through a reductionist lens could worsen breastfeeding outcomes