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

[cmcmck]

Y!

Who are these 'experts' anyway?

[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]

500ml? ...I have never seen that advice. Interesting how different countries do different things! I don't think I've really even seen advice that if formula feeding, one should go to/past a particular time point (other than that complementary foods shouldn't start before 6 months, or if you have an old fashioned health nurse, before 4 months).

with my researchers hat on: what you get when pumping, and what the baby takes can be quite different. Very little is known about why the ratio of at the breast vs at the pump varies, and one of the researchers I work with is trying to work out what can be done better with pumps to improve.

with my parent hat on: at seven months, middle child flat out refused to take any liquid from a bottle. So, feed at daycare before I went off to work, feed at daycare when I collected zer, bedtime, however many night feeds. There were no negative effects. This child (now teen) would eat pretty much anything anywhere. And zie was a happy child.

tl; dr - yes, you should stop stressing. Baby is getting enough, or would be complaining.

[purplecat]

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.

So yes, you should stop stressing.

Though it if is of any help, does he like yoghurts? or those baby fromage frais things? or cheese? - all ways to sneak extra dairy into his diet under the guise of solid food.

[recessional]

I've known totally happy, healthy babies who were completely weaned or onto cow milk by 10 months. It's fine. He's gleefully eating all kinds of solid food, and probably nursing at least as much for Connection To Mum as for anything else, so bottles are a SERIOUSLY poor substitute.

[antisoppist]

I've never heard of 500ml anywhere but perhaps they weren't saying it between 2000 and 2007, in which case, pretend you're me and ignore it. Also your baby is a much more efficient milk extracting unit than a breast pump and your breasts are geared up to producing instantly what your baby wants (like leaking madly when you hear a random baby cry on a train, or was that just me...?) and have also probably now adapted a bit to not being required on day 1 but required more on day 2, so what you're getting from a breast pump when you're not with him might bear no relation to how much he's getting when you're back together. My dad says it's like dairy cows. When you go to three times a day milking from two times a day, they produce milk on day one because they think their calves need it (I had some peculiar bonding conversations with my farmer father while breastfeeding, including the fact that oats boost milk production in cows as well as humans).

Mine refused milk in any receptacle at nursery and stubbornly held out until it was provided in its proper form, i.e. me, mostly all night. The nursery gave them water in sippy cups and biscuit/rusk things with vitamins in, apples, bananas, yoghurts...

And advice changes. With my first, she wasn't supposed to be on solids until 4 months but with my second the advice was 6 months. However he grabbed a gingerbread man off the table on Christmas Eve and sucked its head off aged 4 months and four days so we decided to start feeding in the baby rice from then on.

Tldr: Don't worry.

[hilarita]

I think you're allowed to call it 'child-led weaning' to draw attention to the fact that you're doing what Keiki wants, rather than forcing him to take food/drink against his will in order to meet some arbitrary number.

[rmc28]

To add my 2p to everyone else: he's fine, he's cheerful, he's expressing his preferences and you're responding to them, he has plenty of food as well as the days he gets your milk. It's all good.

As someone who both fed and pumped, I don't think what you get out pumping is what baby takes feeding, if nothing else based on the way I was usually less hungry after pumping sessions than feeds.

(also also I got really fed up of pumping, especially second time around, and was really pleased to be able to arrange things so as to minimise it; so part of my reaction is yay! less pumping! go you!)

That is a cracking story about the biscuits. Go Keiki!

Oi

[ed_rex]

Disclaimer: I'm male and I've not yet been a father.

But I feel compelled to note that it kind of amazes me this is even an issue.

Isn't it obvious that (a) all else being equal, breast-feeding ('till the child is weaned and/or weans itself) is better than any sort of formula and (b) that nothing is equal, ever?

For whatever it's worth, I'm told that I, for reasons I no longer recall, made my own mother's life easy by rejecting the breast at around the age of 6 months. And I like to think the lack of the real deal hasn't done me too much harm.

Dare I suggest you follow Dr. Spock's advice (I paraphrase, based on what me old mum remembers of her reading) and follow your own instincts as to what's best in your own circumstances?

[silveradept]

He's fine, he's happy, and clearly consuming food at a happy clip. I don't think there's a reason to worry about bottles and formula.

[lark_ascends]

I have no help to offer, but sounds like you got a lot of good advice up thread. Instead, I'll just offer *hugs*.