Bottle time....

Bottle feed. Brentcross
18th November 2011

As time is drawing closer to my return to work in January (sad times :( ) I have begun the process of weaning Oscar from breast feeding, well during the day only. He will be for 3 days a week with a childminder whilst my husband and I work, I am slowly starting to get Oscar to have milk from a bottle. I will be solely giving him breast milk hopefully until he is one, but during the day it will be expressed and given from a bottle then hopefully a tippie cup when he gets the hang of it. I have been expressing at 11am and 3pm at the moment which gives me enough for two feeds but I need to start expressing for a third bottle. It is recommended that a baby under one has no less than 600ml of milk a day along side his solids. As I will be working, To start with I am thinking of giving the minder 3 bottles to be safe and the rest of the milk he needs will be breast feed at bed time and early morning hopefully. Oscar has been really good and taken a bottle straight away, I have heard lots of story's about breastfeed baby's not taking a bottle so thought I would start in November by replacing firstly the mid morning feed with a bottle and we have now replaced mid morning and mid afternoon breast feeds with bottles which is great, I guess I was lucky. I originally brought a hand pump to express milk but I found it really hard work and wanted something that was a lot quicker and not so hard on the hands, as when I return to work I will be expressing two or three times a day their. I have invested in the Medela Swing which is an electric pump which I find really good I have also brought some extra bottles and I am finding as long as you express roughly at the same time each day I produce the same amount each time. I need to express a third time so I am going to have to trick my body into producing more by starting to express at another time I'm thinking 11am, 2pm and 5pm? but it may have to be 7am, 11am and 3pm we shall see!!!