On milk

The artificiality of my motherhood is still in place. Liftoff Boy gets breast milk, but he gets it in a bottle, usually 4 ounces at a time. Pumping is a pain, but it's tolerable. I hook myself up (I even got a hands-free bra that I use sometimes) and spend 15 minutes either online or reading, while the pump does its work. Depending on how long it's been since I last pumped, I usually get 4-7 ounces. 4 will go into a bottle and leftover milk will go into storage bags. We have about 220 ounces in deep freeze right now.

LB gets about 24 ounces of milk per day and about 8 ounces of formula, usually over two night feedings. Formula takes longer to digest, so leaves a baby feeling a bit fuller. It also contains vitamin D, which is missing from breast milk. He apparently eats more than he's technically supposed to, but if a baby is nursing from the breast they eat on demand and no record is kept of ounces, so it's hard to know. He shouldn't get more than about 27 ounces of formula right now based on his weight, so the fact that he's getting about 32 ounces of food (both kinds) per day seems high, but they said he'll spit up anything that's actually too much for him.

The milk issue is interesting to me. I've tasted it (gross? but how can you not be curious when your body is making it and you're feeding it to your baby?), and the stuff is sugary. It's also really sticky compared to formula. Something I read compared the flavor to melted vanilla ice cream and that's really close. Bottles of milk in the fridge also tend to separate - the cream rises to the top and I have to shake them before I feed LB. If he were getting the breast, the thin, skim-type stuff would come out first to quench his thirst and then the heavier, fattier stuff would come out near the end of the session. With pumped milk, he's getting it all at once.

LB doesn't nurse directly very often, but occasionally I'll try it, like when he's in the middle of a hunger freak out and his bottle is still cold, or when he's acting ragey for no reason. He'll latch on, rage, try again, finally get a good latch and then mellow out completely as he drinks. Meanwhile, bad mom that I am, I'll sit there feeling trapped with my back hunched into an uncomfortable curve, wondering how this will affect my pumping later on. I'll have my baby in my arms but wish I could spend the time doing something with my brain, like reading or surfing the net. I get bored during bfing, in a way that I don't when I give him a bottle. When I hold the bottle, I'm in control or at least we share control. When he's at the breast, he's totally in control and I feel like a milkslave. With pumping I can be away from him sometimes and measure how much he eats and I produce and feel like I can make decisions about what I'm doing. I like it a lot better, which probably makes me a freak of nature.

This is funny; it happened last night and has happened before. LB had his last bottle before bed, 4 ounces of formula. But then he was too awake and riled up and would only mellow out if he had his pacifier and would scream if it fell out. He was rooting and acting hungry. So I got him out of bed and gave him a bottle with freshly expressed milk in it. He got the nipple in his mouth, looked totally blissed out, and fell asleep. When I took the bottle out, he had drunk about 1/2 an ounce. And that was it. It was like he'd taken a hit of the good stuff and that's all he needed. I put him to bed and he sleep like 'til 4:30am. You can just see his expression, "Oh yeah, that's the stuff. Zzzzzzzz...."