One of the most traumatising days for me as a mum was when I had to leave my baby for the first time to continue with my usual routine of earning a living. I felt torn and apprehensive and as I walked out of my door and I actually had tears flowing. How do you cope with leaving your baby at home as you go back to work? What are the steps to ensure your baby’s safety and how do you prepare yourself psychologically for this inevitable step?
Right from the onset, you must think of how your baby will feed when you are not home. Here are a few factors that you have to consider.
Feeding your baby
• What will your baby feed on?
In Kenya, maternity leave is 3 months, however, depending on the organization that you work for, you may have more time. Depending on when you are resuming your duties, it is important to start planning from the onset.
Before 6 months
If you are resuming work before the baby is 6 months, then your options include:
- Exclusive breast milk. It is the Ministry of Health recommendation that breast milk is the ideal food for an infant’s first six months of life. In addition to providing ideal nourishment, breastfeeding provides infants with protection from many infections, including diarrhoeal diseases. It further stimulates the immune system and improves response to vaccinations.
- Mixed feeding. The breast milk is supplemented with appropriate infant formula or modified animal milk feeds.
Handling Breast Milk
The secret to having enough milk is to start expressing and storing milk right from birth. As soon as your milk comes in around day 5 after birth, start expressing the excess milk and this will help the establishment of a good milk flow that will be able to sustain your baby’s needs. This milk should be stored in the cleanest and safest way. Here are a few tips on how to handle breast milk.
- You can store in any clean container: plastic, glass or sterile breast milk bags.
- Freshly pumped breast milk can be kept at room temperature for 8 hours after pumping. If it will need to be kept longer, please refrigerate. Milk that has been previously chilled should be kept at room temperature for no longer than an hour or so.
- Breast milk may be stored in a refrigerator for three to five days. If you think that you may not use it within that period, freeze it.
- Breast milk may be stored in a freezer for up to 6 months and in a deep freezer for up to 12 months. It should be placed in a part of the freezer that will not be subject to changes in temperature as the door is opened and closed. If plastic milk bags are used, they should be doubled or protected from being bumped and torn in the freezer.
- It is best to freeze milk in feeding sized quantities. If you are just starting to pump, you may not yet have an idea of what will be the right size for your baby. You can start by freezing 60ml-90ml.
- Breast milk can be thawed in a bowl of lukewarm water in just a few minutes or held under lukewarm running water. Then it can be warmed to serving temperature in the same manner. Avoid the following:
• Never make it warmer than body temperature.
• Never use a microwave to thaw or warm breast milk.
• Never warm the milk in a sufuria or pot
• Any milk left in a bottle after a feeding must be discarded.
• Thawed breast milk must be discarded after 24 hours. Do not re-freeze it.
- If you are pumping breast milk at work, you should chill it either in a refrigerator or a portable cooler bag. A cooler bag can be used to transport it home. Studies have shown that freshly pumped breast milk keeps well at room temperature for several hours (some studies say up to 8 hours) so if chilling your breast milk is difficult, it can be stored at room temperature for several hours, and then refrigerated as soon as possible.
- Recent studies show that there is BPA contamination of breast milk leaching from certain kinds of plastic, therefore, it is important for breast milk to be stored in glass, polyethelyne (a cloudy type of rigid plastic) or polypropylene (specially designed mother’s milk storage bags) containers rather than polycarbonate containers.
