Every time breast/bottle feeding is debated on the internet, a domo-kun kills a kitten

[nanila]

With the subject line in view, I'm going to talk about a decision that has caused my internal guilt monitor to spike off the charts.

Since I started work again and Keiki began going to nursery two and a half months ago, the nursery staff have been attempting to bottle-feed him twice a day. It has been a mostly unsuccessful endeavour. He vigorously rejected bottles with teats. He relented toward sippy cups for a while, though he was still not enthusiastic about taking breast milk or formula from either. When I started overnighting once a week in London (my usual full-time routine) in September, he would occasionally drink 100 mL (3.5 ounces) on the second day I was away. But he seems to have figured out that I return on the evening of the second day, and he's quite happy to go on milk strike until the warm fleshy milk-production unit comes back.

He rejected his two daily nursery bottle feeds for two weeks in a row, so this week we chose to stop asking the nursery to give them to him. The reason for the guilt? He's ten months old, and according to The Literature, he's still supposed to be getting 500 mL of milk (breast or formula) a day until he's one. I estimate, from when I'm away and have to pump to keep the boobs from 'sploding, that he gets at most 100 mL per feed from me. Even with one feed in the morning, one at bedtime and one or two at night, that's still not 500 mL, and obviously he doesn't get anywhere near that when I'm away for a day and a half.

He eats all the solid food that's offered to him, and even some that's not. Yesterday he stole his sister's half-eaten cupcake. Last week, Keiki's key worker was highly amused when they set out biscuits for the babies to decorate with icing and chocolate buttons. They turned their backs for a few seconds. When they turned round again, four babies were sitting nicely with two undecorated biscuits apiece in front of them. One baby had half a biscuit clutched in his hand and a lot of crumbs around his mouth. (You get one guess which baby that was.) This was right after lunch. So I don't think there's anything wrong with his appetite, and he certainly seems to be getting enough to eat. I really shouldn't be worried, but what with all the unconsciously absorbed socially imposed guilt surrounding being a working mother and being away from my little ones and that annoying mystically calculated 500 mL amount that we're not achieving, I have to expend a considerable amount of emotional energy talking myself into remaining calm.

He's fine. He's fine! He's a happy, healthy baby. He just prefers boob or food to anything that comes out of a bottle. I should stop stressing, y/y?

Comments

[nou]

He's fine! He's healthy and happy and eating plenty of food. The NHS advice is (for good reasons) over-simplified and over-generalised.

[fred_mouse]

Is it likely that the advice is generalised for people with low access to a range of healthy foods? The comment upthread that that 500 mL offers the necessary vitamins would imply that there aren't vitamins coming in from other areas.

[recessional]

Ish.

Official health bodies write advice with a particular person in mind - to whit, a young parent of baseline education with no support network, no experience with babies, and very basic income. Everyone MAY turn to Official Advice for help, but those are the people who have no other CHOICE. And it's written with as much redundancy as possible, with the aim of the healthiest baby possible, assuming that that young, under-educated solo parent is going to have to end up cutting a corner or two just because of Life.

(nb: my mother, in her Medical Director range roles, helps set up some of these official publications, so. When I once asked her about it because I found the tone of the official literature so . . . odd, she very bluntly said, "These aren't for you. You have a vast network of relatives with children, several of whom are healthcare professionals, all of whom care deeply, and all of whom will answer calls in the middle of the night, plus you know HOW to access adequate paediatric care. This is for the seventeen year old who has none of that." As she said, they're still quite USEFUL, but they're aimed at the absolute beginner, and the beginner with very low resources to boot.)

[fred_mouse]

That makes a lot of sense - thank you for clarifying.

[recessional]

This. It's like the "you MUST sanitize the bottles!" - which advice is based on the assumption that they are not being VIGOROUSLY SCRUBBED in very warm soapy water until absolutely all trace of milk is gone and then air-dried.

Because you can't assume that, but if you insist everybody boils them for ten minutes on a regular basis, it doesn't matter if the cleaning isn't Perfect, because the relevant microbes have been killed off anyway. Same with the other stuff.

[nanila]

*nods* I remember you mentioning this previously. I dropped the sanitisation step with Keiki during his very brief stint with bottles because of it, and just stuck with washing up his bottles separately from the other dishes. It was absolutely fine.

[magister]

Pretty much this. Babies aren't really ones to suffer in silence - were there anything wrong, he'd be letting you know about it.

[nanila]

That's so very true. Keiki has no compunctions about howling when his needs/wants aren't being met.

[nanila]

Thank you for the validation! \o/ :)