Nathan is at his second day of daycare. Dropping him off yesterday caused my heart to break a little: Not because I was worried about him, or because I didn't realize how fortunate I was to have him home for six months, but because I knew I would miss him.
We were lucky to find a daycare that is on my way to work and less than a mile away from my office. So Nathan is there for about 8 hours and ten minutes. When I picked him up yesterday, he was in an exersaucer, babbling, giggling and smiling. And also, thinking he was a big boy! He was excited to see me, but not too excited. I think he knew that he would be going home to his six toys and no other little kids.
The daycare team - a husband and wife - said that he was great, especially for his first day. He ate, and ate, and ate, and omigosh - TOOK THREE NAPS! Are you sure that was my non-sleeping child? He also enjoyed the other little ones. Nathan's the youngest, but there's another baby (about 10-11 months), and the other four are toddlers. I'm sure he's going to get plenty of attention and learn a lot from the "big kids." I can totally handle this two days a week.
What I am struggling with, is how much food to prepare for Nathan. I've had a hard time pumping, so I don't have much of a supply of breast milk in the freezer. Thus, he is on formula this week. Yesterday, I nursed Nathan about 30 minutes before I dropped him off. I prepared two small bottles (four oz.) and one larger bottle (six oz.) for him with a lot of fruit and cereal for lunch. The daycare provider said that he gulped down those bottles, plus an additional 12 oz! Is breast milk more filling than formula? I looked online and found some "guidelines" and it said that 6-11 month old babies consume between 20-30 oz. of breast milk per day. He had 26 oz. of formula, plus solids, in just over 8 hours. Then he nursed when he got home, had dinner, nursed before bed, nursed again at 4 am.
He's obviously getting the nutrition he needs, as his weight is in the 50th percentile, but now I'm worried that I'm not preparing enough food for him when I'm away. What say you, experienced breastfeeding moms?
4 comments:
I'm not really any more experienced than you, but I found that last week he started drinking 6oz at a time, and while I was accustomed to having 2 pumped bottles a day leftover in the fridge, I had only maybe 4 oz leftover. So I just pumped more often, and my supply caught up with his demand. LaLecheLeague's website said more frequent pumpings seem to produce smaller amounts of milk, but it keeps the flow going, so you really are increasing the supply that way.
Also, drink more water. :)
I hope that helps.
AJU5 doesn't take a bottle much - she sips more than drinks when she has it (I am lucky to get 4 oz in that way these days). But she nurses about every 2 hours still (at almost 8 months). That is on top of 3 meals of solids - a total of 4 ice cubes of fruit/veggie, one small banana, and 1-2 tbsp of oatmeal. He is probably at a growth spurt (supposed to be one at 6 months), so that is why he is probably drinking more than normal.
At 6 months Charlie was charging through two eight ounce bottles of breastmilk at daycare (he was there 6 hours), then nursing at wakeup, when he got home, and bedtime... I assume he was eating about 8 ounces during the nursing sessions because that is what I got when I pumped, so that is 40 ounces of breastmilk a day (WOAH, I've never tallied that up before). For solids we did a "lunch" of whole milk plain yogurt mixed with a cube or two of some kind of fruit or veggie puree (mmm spinach yogurt anyone?) and a couple of cubes of something from the produce family plus some oatmeal for "dinner". We weren't very good at solids until he was older.
He was a very chubby baby, this is making sense now that I read the average breastmilk intake of a six month old.
When we did formula he drank the same amount as he had breastmilk.
Your daycare sounds awesome, by the way! Charlie loved going to daycare. It was so much more interesting than home!
My kids are teens so any info I have for you is a bit dated. I learned a lot about breast-feeding when things went wrong with my firstborn.
One learned item: a nursing baby gets more milk than when you express. The baby doctors told me this after I had tried to express for my baby; they weighed him before and after he nursed on top of examining what I could express.
Two: if Nathan is going through a growth spurt he is going to want more nutrition (i.e. milk) to help him grow.
Three: Being in daycare may make him more active and more hungry.
I think baby/daycare is harder on Moms because of our guilt, than on baby who gets the extra stimulation. That daycare would love having a cutie like Nathan around!
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