How much cream?

[mambera]

Random question, I know. It's a spinoff from another thread where a mama was worried she didn't have enough cream in her milk - how would one know anyway? How much is a little? How much is a lot? I read that human milk can vary from 5%-17% fat - that surprised me because to me, my own bm tastes much thinner (though sweeter) than whole cow's milk.

I have some 4-oz size bottles of milk in the fridge I just looked at - the line of cream is about the thickness of 1/2 oz when the bottle has 3 oz in it. Slightly more than that for a 4 oz bottle.

I'm curious to hear - what are other pumping moms seeing?

[Dmitrizmom]

I see about the same when my bm is chilled. When my sisters were pumping they had considerably less - just a thin layer. All our babies were decent size and grew on their growth curves.

[Sk8ermaiden]

When I pump to replace a missed feeding I get about 4 oz total. There will be maybe 1-2 millimeters of fat on top. Looks like skim milk, blue tinge and all.

Recently though, I've been pumping after feeds. Even though I only get 1/2 oz at a time combined, by the time I have 4 oz collected, there is at least half an inch of fat on top, and the rest of the milk looks really thick, like whole milk. Boy do I like feeding that bottle!

[mambera]

Thanks for the input. Bumping because I'm curious to hear from more people.

Also would like to know if anybody's noticed that anything they do in terms of diet, pumping/nursing schedule, or whatnot has changed the fat content of their milk.