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Hello! I hand express at 37 weeks too, at 37 weeks your baby is considered full term, means baby is ready to be unloaded. You may or may not feel contraction pain at all. I didn’t feel mine with my first born and I collected 10 over like 1ml syringe of colostrum. I am currently pregnant with number 2 and I am doing the same, and yes i feel contraction pain on and off but I am not worried because I know baby Is ready to arrive and food for baby is in the making! I don’t recommend to use pump because the consistency of colostrum is different from bm. I was taught to hand express out. Using pump, the suction strength may be too strong and in turn injure the milk production duct. Try hand express, it shouldn’t hurt too much. If it hurts do it on alternate days. Remember to drink lots and lots of fluids afterall bm need fluids to produce. You can try this before expressing colostrum: - Warm shower - Massage before started to express - Sit comfortably because when you see that liquid food coming out and you got that technique right, you sort of don’t want to stop. 💕
Not sure if this is much help but for colostrum the first few days I just hand express into the syringe then changed to pump after I got engorged
I tried squeezing, but it only gave myself sore nipples lol. it's actually really difficult to express before the baby comes.
I hand expressed colostrum and store them in sterilised syringes (with cap) when I was week 37!
If u start pumping before giving birth, cramping can happen! My gynae adviced not to
prenatal massage helps