What You Need to Know About Colostrum Harvesting

What is Colostrum Harvesting?

Colostrum harvesting, or antenatal hand expression, is the expression and collection breastmilk in pregnancy.

What is Colostrum?

Colostrum is the thick, golden milk that a mother’s body begins to produce around the 20th week of pregnancy, during Lactogenesis I. This is the first milk you will feed your baby until your milk begins to transition, usually between days 3 to 5 after delivery.

While colostrum is small in volume (for the first few days of life, your infant requires only 5-15mL of colostrum per feeding), it is full of everything your newborn needs to transition to life outside the womb, including:

• Dense amounts of antibodies and immunoglobulins to protect against infection
• Chloride, which aids in the infant's brain development
• Growth factors
• Higher amounts of protein than mature breastmilk
• Protective enzymes and antioxidants to coat and seal the newborn's gut, protecting it from infection and inflammation

Benefits of Antenatal Hand Expression:

• Small store of breastmilk to use in case of supplementation or separation from your baby after delivery
• Confidence! 
  
  • You’ve seen your body make milk! That’s a huge mental boost!
  • And you have already learned the motions of hand expression to use during your breastfeeding journey
  • Potential to decrease the time it may take for your milk to “come in.”
    
    • Typically, milk begins transitioning from colostrum to mature milk, increasing in volume - which is what is usually referred to as milk “coming in” - between days 3 and 5 after delivery. 
• Potential prevention of newborn:
  
  • Excessive weight loss
    
    • Newborns are expected to lose weight, but no more than 7-10% of birth weight). Supplementing with prenatal colostrum can lessen the amount of weight a baby will lose if the infant having poor intake or poor feedings at the breast. 
  • Newborn jaundice
    
    • By supplementing an infant colostrum collected prenatally, you can increase your infant’s intake (which will help to quickly expel the increased levels of bilirubin, which contributes to jaundice, via waste) without having to play “catch up” if your milk supply hasn’t quite adjusted to your infant’s needs. 

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Important Considerations:

Make sure you’ve discussed antenatal hand expression with your provider, and have been cleared to do so. Additionally, make sure you are at least 37 weeks of pregnancy before beginning antenatal hand expression.

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How to Hand Express:

• Check out the step by step guide to hand expression here.

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Tips for Collecting and Storing Colostrum

• When collecting colostrum prenatally, you will want to use:
  
  • A clean plastic spoon
  • Syringe to store your colostrum
    
    • Here are a few options to choose from:
      
      • 5mL syringe
      • Hakaa Colostrum Kit‍

• Once you've collected your colostrum into a syringe, label your colostrum collected with a sticker (time and date it)
  
  • This step is especially important if your baby ends up in the NICU for any reason, and you desire to supplement with your breastmilk while they are admitted. 
  • To store your collected colostrum,
    

• Storing your collected colostrum:
  
  • Refrigerate up to 24 hours
  • Freeze for up to 3 months in a standard freezer
  • Freeze in a deep freezer for 6-12 months

Do I Need to Hand Express in Pregnancy?

No!! This is not a have-to, and if you do not hand express in pregnancy, that does not mean you will struggle with breastfeeding. 

Perhaps the biggest benefit to antenatal hand expression is the confidence builder that it can be. You have seen your body produce milk, and you have practiced expressing milk all before your newborn is here, so that when the rubber meets the road in the early days of postpartum, you can lean into that confidence. 

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References:

Ablett, Lucy H, et al. “How to Promote Exclusive Breastfeeding with Antenatal Milk Expression and Implementation Science: A Mixed Methods Systematic Review.” Health Sciences Review, vol. 9, no. 9, 1 Dec. 2023, pp. 100124–100124, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hsr.2023.100124.

Bryant, Joy, and Jennifer Thistle. “Anatomy, Colostrum.” PubMed, StatPearls Publishing, 2023, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK513256/.

Chen, Sally, et al. “Teaching Antenatal Hand Expression: A Feasibility Study in an Inner Urban U.S. Hospital.” International Breastfeeding Journal, vol. 18, no. 1, 10 Aug. 2023, https://doi.org/10.1186/s13006-023-00578-w. Accessed 28 Sept. 2023.

Foudil-Bey, Imane, et al. “Evaluating Antenatal Breastmilk Expression Outcomes: A Scoping Review.” International Breastfeeding Journal, vol. 16, no. 1, 12 Mar. 2021, internationalbreastfeedingjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13006-021-00371-7, https://doi.org/10.1186/s13006-021-00371-7.

Lauwers, Judith, and Anna Swisher. Counseling the Nursing Mother : A Lactation Consultant’s Guide. Burlington, Ma, Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2021.

Wilson-Clay, Barbara, and Kay Hoover. The Breastfeeding Atlas. Manchaca, Texas, Lactnews Press, 2022.