In the first hours after birth, a baby’s stomach is tiny, breast milk supply is just beginning, and the body is going through rapid hormonal shifts. This is an important window of time, especially for establishing milk production, and hand expression can play an important role. Hand expression is a simple technique of using your hands to gently massage and compress the breast to remove colostrum. If you have any interventions with birth that might delay that ability for you to breastfeed, like y