Milk thoughts.

[rivka]

A funny thing about breastfeeding is that you don't have any idea how much milk your baby drinks. In my case I don't even feel anything when my milk lets down. So I know about how often he nurses, and I know how many ounces of pumped milk he takes when I'm at work, but I don't have any way to estimate how much milk he takes straight from the tap. It doesn't seem like all that much - we don't have marathon 45-minute nursing sessions like we did when he was younger; he's much more goal-directed about it now.

Last night we had a babysitter. It's the first time anyone but me or Michael has put Colin to sleep at night, and I think Michael's only ever done it once. So I was kind of shocked when the babysitter checked in and told me that Colin had taken 7-8oz of milk. That's not much less than he'll take in a whole workday. I wondered if he was upset about the change in his routine and drinking more than usual for comfort, because I couldn't imagine that he took that much milk by nursing in an average evening. Surely she was overfeeding him?

When we came home at midnight, Colin roused a little. I nursed him for a while and he fell back asleep. Then I decided that I really had to pump before bed, because I was pretty engorged.

And I pumped five ounces from the side Colin hadn't nursed. The side he had nursed gave an extra ounce and a half. Six and a half ounces, at a time of day when milk supply is supposed to be lowest. And when my previous best pumping session (in the morning, when milk supply is highest) was five ounces.

So, um, I guess he really does drink seven or eight ounces straight from the tap in the course of an evening at home. I had no way of knowing. After having one formula-fed baby, the not-knowing feels kind of weird.

Comments

[rivka.livejournal.com]

At the hospital where my kids were born, nursing mothers had to keep a record of how many minutes the baby fed. The nurses would come in and conscientously copy down the log, but I have no idea how that information was helpful to them in any way. I guess if there was a mother putting the baby to the breast less often than every 3-4 hours they would've said something to her, but mostly it just seemed like an earnest attempt to quantify the unquantifiable.