Today Liam had his first official bottle of pumped breast milk. You have no idea how nervous I was! I didn't think that I would hate giving him a bottle this much. It made me so sad that I wasn't the one feeding him. Which is funny considering the rough start to breast feeding that we had. The truth is, I love nursing him now. It really is a nice little quiet bonding time for us...and yes, it's still painful sometimes (that initial latch is killer!), but I think it'll only get better from here. Anyway, I thought we should give him a bottle before it's too late. I know sometimes if you wait too long to introduce the bottle to a baby he'll never take it. He ended up taking it pretty well. We used a breastflow bottle because supposedly it's the most like the real thing. He fussed a bit and spilled some but in the end I think his hunger was satisfied. He ended up taking about 3.5 ounces.
Alex feeding Liam for the first time.
Okay, so here's where I need some advice. How do I know how much milk to give him in the bottle??? It makes me so nervous that he won't get enough or that he may even get too much. I read somewhere to follow the "one ounce for every hour" rule. Basically if it's been two hours since his last feeding he gets two ounces, if it's been three hours he gets three ounces, etc. Does that sound right? Any other bottle-feeding tips?
Thank you in advance to everyone who responds. I appreciate the support and wisdom of other mothers out there. :-)
4 comments:
Well, I don't know squat, but my mom says not to worry about the baby rejecting you! she says babies are smarter than they look (haha) and he'll know that milk straight from mommy is way better than bottle milk. She also said the one ounce per hour is good.
With Sarah Grace, I gave her a bottle about once every couple days at first & I just took her lead & let her eat until she refused it. She wasn't a fan of the bottle for about a month to two months, though, and didn't drink near enough when I went back to work (4 oz a day). She made up for it nursing in the evenings, though. As long as he's gaining weight, I'd just take his lead. Sarah Grace still drinks only 3.5 to 4.5 oz a feeding at 7 months.
Hmm. I seem to recall that when we first started giving Lane a bottle at about a month old she didn't take more than a couple of ounces. Actually, she'd drink as much as we put in the bottle (because it was so easy) but she'd end up spitting a lot of it up. I'd try to observe how much he usually eats from you (does he nurse on both sides or just one side and is he finished once it gets difficult or does he keep working to get more) and then see how much you can pump. I could never pump very much (bad pump or low supply, I'm not sure which) so I don't think we ever gave Lane more than 5-6 ounces, even when she was 9 months old, because I don't think she got much more than that when she was nursing. Does all this make sense? Hope you figure it all out!
Just give him whatever you pump... unless you're pumping like 10 oz. or something crazy! I don't know how to prevent this, but with Gabriella she had to take the bottle for the first 4 days of her life (since she was in the NICU) and then she took it for 2 weeks when I went back to work (She was 6 weeks old) but after that she REFUSED to take a bottle. So I was literally the only one that could feed her. So we were never apart for longer than 4 hours the first year of her life.
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