Operation Milkies

Another little project that Emily and I are working on right now is Operation Milkies... getting her to drink from a bottle in preparation for me going back to work and someone else feeding her during the day.  Emily has never had a bottle till 2 weeks ago!  I guess I have just wanted to be really selfish and feed her myself, and haven't been that keen on expressing milk or using formula either.

However, needs must, and so we attempted this recently using formula at the 10.30am feed.  When I went to buy the bottles at the Baby Factory, one of the staff said it would be very hard for Emily to take the bottle as she has never had one and now is an 'older' baby (older??  But she is still my little poppet!).  Oh dear I thought.  How hard is this going to be?!  I had not anticipated having any struggles at all, Emily is such a darling and nothing has been hard for us with her.  We feel so lucky about that!

But, blow me down, she was intrigued by it all and even on seeing the bottle's teat in the kitchen, separate from the bottle, she opened her little mouth like a little bird, ready to eat!  Phew I thought, hopefully we won't have any trouble.

Mmmm... Milkies!

And amazingly, she accepted it fairly willingly!  There is definitely a fair bit of mess with it all but she is drinking around 100mls a time, which seems to fill her up enough to last to the next feed, so we are thrilled about it!  I definitely felt much more relaxed about her going to a carer/daycare as she drank so well.  In fact, I initially started this post as a draft a week ago or so, and Emily is hungrier now and recently drank 150mls 3 days in a row, like her life depended on it!!  Which is great news, so we are really relieved it's all working well. 

I am also giving expressing a go..... so strange!!  And expressing a little, around 50mls, at the 10.30am feed, to eventually drop this 'breast' feed altogether, and manage to go from the 7am breastfeed to the 2.30pm breastfeed without breastfeeding inbetween.  I'll probably express for a few more days and then I plan to drop the 2.30pm breastfeed in the same way and replace it with a bottle of formula, again in preparation for returning to work.  So far so good which is great!  Well done my Angel!