We slept separately at the beginning and I did all the nighttime stuff because it worked best for us to have one person be well rested, and I don’t really need as much to be functional. As soon as he got up (he’s an early riser), he would come take the baby away and give me a few solid hours of sleep without a baby nearby. Those were my best hours of sleep because he was on entirely so I slept deeply. He also did all washing of bottle parts, pump parts, etc and any freezing/labeling of milk and snack/water staging for me as @Bracken_Joy noted.
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We didn’t do any bottle feeds in the beginning and we set up our room so the bedside bassinet was next to my side of the bed, but we put all of her diapering things on his side of the bed. So when she woke up in the night I would grab her, feed her and then he would hand me the diaper stuff I needed and take away her dirty diaper. It didn’t make sense with our setup to have him bring her to me or do her diaper changes himself - not to mention with his vision it would have required him to turn on all of the lights.
He was also in charge of making sure I always had enough water and enough calories so he brought me snacks in bed at night if needed and breakfast in bed every morning. In the early mornings after she woke up to eat he would take her downstairs until her next feeding so I could try and get a little more sleep.
I went back to work at 8 weeks and he is a stay at home dad so from that point on he was completely taking care of her all day.
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Oh, and +1 to him doing all of the bottle and pump part cleaning. Once I went back to work and started pumping he was 100% in charge of cleaning all of that.
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Cleaning pump parts and doing the bottle feeding is a really good option. He also did nearly all the diapers, and to be honest, I was still doing much more care, so I think having him do nearly all the diapers can be an easy way to do some balance. I did end up doing diapers at night after a few weeks because he had so much trouble waking up once he was back at work, but if he was awake and at home, he was responsible for diapers, cleaning, bottles, everything until I stopped pumping/nursing.
For what it’s worth, we ended up transitioning back to exclusive breastfeeding when we were able to after the NICU and I wish we’d left some formula in the mix, like maybe one bottle a night that I could sleep while he fed him. I had heard so much about needing to pump anytime baby had a bottle to keep up your supply and didn’t realize that if you’re using some formula, you can cut back the pumping. Having that one bottle would have both helped my mental health and helped us see sooner that he had reflux issues (instead of spending a couple of months seeking lactation support to figure out why he was losing weight. When we finally went to bottles after that, we discovered he was refusing to eat and realized something else was going on). I’m now a combo feeding convert and I think all newborn care/birth classes should teach about how to combo feed instead of making it seem like introducing any formula could ruin breastfeeding.
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Thanks @nickybecky1 @economista @rocklobster @Bracken_Joy for sharing. It seems we have a little while before needing this, anyway.
Baby Spore’s final criteria for coming home is to take all his feeds from breast and/or bottle. He fed pretty well straight from the tap this morning, and took bottles from spouse & nurses for his 12p, 3p, and 6p feeds. When I went back for his 9p, I couldn’t wake him up at all. He would latch and then immediately pass out. I unwrapped his shirt, tickled his arm, even tried to gently pry open his eyelids… NOTHING. He would just stretch and then fall right back asleep. We hung this one by tube 
. Silly baby!
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Day 11 postpartum and all pain is gone. I’m still bleeding a tiny bit but a panty liner is sufficient. I know every birth is very, very different and I think I’ve been pretty lucky. Riding my bike to the hospital takes 12 mins at a walking effort, gets some sun on my face, and avoids parking garage nonsense. Nurse practitioner said traditionally they said you can’t exercise for 6 weeks, but they are saying it’s ok to gradually dip a toe in after 2. I’m going to leave it at the 2 very short bike rides until bleeding stops entirely.
I’ve been doing ~5 hour visits to the hospital which covers 2 feed attempts from the tap and some cuddle time in between. Spouse does the other 2 as bottle feeds. It leaves me with about a half day to pump, eat, nap, and do about 1 hour of work-related stuff as I transition to leave.
All the bottles, nipples, and other flotsam that I panic-ordered last week have arrived and our house is smothered in cardboard boxes.
The baby’s face is unsmooshing and he is very cute! Two of his roommates (25-weeker twins) might be going home today after months and months in the hospital. I’m so happy for them.
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This sounds entirely reasonable. Do you have a pelvic floor or women’s health physiotherapist to see around the 6 week mark? They’ll be able to give you some guidance on how to increase your exercise after that point without increasing risk of prolapse etc.
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I do! I got a referral after all the endorsements of pelvic floor PTs here last month.
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I caved and bought a little Ikea cart for pumping. Food, water, and stuff to read go on the top shelf. Each set of parts is in a loaf pan.
My agricultural work is 1000% improved.
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That looks perfect! Such a good idea! I love it
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On pregnancy vs. postpartum: for me, pregnancy was constant low-grade discomfort of one sort or another but I could mostly get on with life. Postpartum my body feels way better, but I have a lot less time.
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Would anyone be up for sharing your nursing/feeding experiences? I don’t have any acute questions right now but I’m very interested in general stories & advice.
Context:
I am in a weird limbo – Spore has “graduated” to an ad lib feeding schedule in NICU which means we basically wait around the hospital all the time and see if he’s hungry. Great for him! Kinda terrible for us! I guess it’s like being on a real newborn feeding schedule.
Nursing is going pretty well now that he’s matured enough to stay awake. He’s got a good latch now and it all feels very feral in a sweet way. I find it much less of a PITA than pumping and hope that’s still true once he comes home. I’ve read that breastfeeding til 6 mos is great for immunity, so shooting to do that if all the bodies involved are amenable. He also takes bottles (combo of breast milk or fortified breast milk per doctors’ orders) pretty well so I’m hoping to keep that flexibility, and not be a total stickler about breast milk.
Also, when did you decide to transition off breastfeeding? What worked for you and what didn’t?
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We did exclusive breastfeeding until 11 months and then did a few weeks of switching between breastfeeding and formula, and then a few weeks of just formula. For the past week (at 12 mo 3 weeks old) she has been 100% cows milk.
The whole time we did nursing on demand, so whenever she was hungry she got to eat. There were definitely times when she seemed to eat more/less often than what the guidelines said for whatever her age was, but it worked well for us and she stayed right on her growth curve without going above or below.
I was quite exhausted with nursing her when I still went into the office and was dealing with pumping, but the first week of March I went full time work from home (she had just turned 5 months old) and from that point forward it was so nice to not deal with pumping supplies or bottles anymore. When we hit 11 months I was done. She was so big and it became painful again just because she sucked so hard and she started thinking it was funny to bite me. At that point I was just physically and mentally ready for her to move on.
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I’m interested to hear what others are doing or have done as well.
We did all formula for the first two weeks, and I pumped 6-8 times a day. I had a scheduled c-section for a breech baby and I really think I just did not produce any colostrum. I managed to produce a few drops of breast milk in the pump around Day 3 or 4, and then it slowly increased from there. After ~2 weeks or so I was able to slowly replace formula with pumped breast milk, and also try and breastfeed as much as possible.
TMI on nipples
I used nipple shields for the first two months due to my flat nipples. At some point baby sucked my nipples into the end of the nipple shields which is kinda painful. At that time we transitioned off the shields.
I stopped pumping when husband went back to work, and I was at home solo. Which, in hindsight might have been a mistake. He started refusing bottles, and there was a period of dancing around singing to him to get him to eat. I was planning to breastfeed for 6 months and then supplement with formula so I didn’t need to pump constantly. A month into returning to work, we went to 100% WFH so I stopped pumping and exclusively breastfed. We’re coming up to 1 year now, and I’m thinking of weaning soon, but haven’t really made a firm decision.
Baby is very into breastfeeding, even though there’s sometimes some biting and rubbernecking with nipple in his mouth. Part of me really enjoys breastfeeding, but part of me would also like my body back, and not be tied to a feeding schedule… so, I’m wavering…
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I just stopped nursing Bobbin about a month ago, she will be 2 one month from now. We had a rocky start with nursing, mostly I think because her ped kept moving the goalposts on her weight gain and that I didn’t insist on getting a weight after her first 12 hours of life. She had soooo many poops in those hours that I think her true birth weight was more like 5lbs than the 5lbs 13.8oz they recorded at birth, which changed all the calculations. All of that changed when I switched peds after a series of bad interactions.
So all that and a tiny tongue tie reversal aside, she nursed really well and it was something that just worked for her and I. I nursed on demand for the better part of 2 years. She took to solid food very quickly around 6 months which cut back on the nursing somewhat (but she was still a very enthusiastic nursling) and then over the last 3 months there were days when she wouldn’t ask to nurse at all. As those became more frequent I decided to make the shift. It was really peaceful for us which was my aim. I just said “no, we’re not nursing today” the few times that she asked and now she doesn’t ask, instead she comes to me to snuggle when she’s looking for that closeness and comfort. She was also getting to the point where she was constantly yanking at my shirt/bra and when I’d nurse her she would hardly even latch. I was getting frustrated with constantly being yanked at. It seemed like she was testing whether the communication was working rather than wanting to nurse, so I shifted to snuggling or reading a book when she did that which did the trick. She wanted closeness.
We did try to separate nursing and sleeping a little, so that there wasn’t as much trouble there but this is different for every kid. Once she was eating solids I would feed her solid food at dinner, give her a bath, nurse her, then burp/sing songs/read a book and then into the crib. Some people prefer solid food, then nursing, then bath, then bedtime stuff for more separation. Bobbin was always absolutely covered in food so I wanted the bath to happen before snuggling and nursing for my own comfort and laundry. YMMV.
Some particulars about my situation: I run my own businesses and WFH even in non covid times while watching Bobbin, so maintaining my supply and stopping to nurse was much more simple than it would have been if I’d had work outside the home. If pumping were part of the picture I don’t know that I’d have gone on this long. I really didn’t love pumping when I had to do it.
My biggest feelings on all of it is that you have to do what works for you and the little one together. Your needs matter and if any part of the routine is not working for you physically or mentally it is the best choice to change it and anyone who gives you any crap about it can come to me for detailed instructions on where to stick it. For me, having the knowledge that “ok this is working for now that’s great” and “if anything changes or becomes intolerable I can make a change” was so freeing and helpful.
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I nursed Pebbles until 13 months and then she just was gradually over it, and we switched to almond milk. I went back to work at 6 months pp. She had a bit of formula worked into the schedule at daycare probably starting around 9/10 months just for convenience sake. I didn’t nurse her to sleep very often except when she was really tiny, so it never became a sleep/nap aid which was nice.
Otherwise I don’t think there’s much to tell, it was pretty uneventful. She latched well, it wasn’t painful, we both enjoyed it, and my supply was good, so it was very much a series of fortunate events. I don’t expect #2 to be that easy, so I will just follow along here and we’ll see.
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We did the whole nurse on demand thing. It was tortuously painful for 10 weeks with shooting nerve pain through my neck and shoulder. Up to 3 months lots of duct pain and then mastitis and then ABX and nothing more than a minor clog since.
2 weeks ago we switched up the nurse on demand thing so that overnight we aim for 5h without nursing so I can have a break to sleep. The goal was 7h but he’s actually ravenous at 5 hours and it’s easier to feed him than make up a bottle of formula. In the early days we supplemented formula or pumpedbecause he’s ravenous, and I wish we’d kept it up. I quit pumping because it was annoying, and I stopped responding. But the hakka thingy was great for the beginning. Occasionally I am so exhausted I need a full night of sleep, and then he gets a formula bottle. Next week (8.7 months) he’ll be at grandma and grandad’s one day a week while I work, and he will get formula because I’m not pumping. If I do pump, I will probably just feed it at home. He eats 3-4 meals of real food a day now, and started on baby cereal at 4 months.
Today looked like
6am - ravenous bf
730- ravenous bf
830am ravenous bf and up for the day, poop diaper
9am almost a whole banana
920 half a poached egg, 1/4 gf english muffin
Playtime
1030 poop diaper, ravenous bf, nap
11am hahahahaha awake, casual bf for an hour
Stories
Super active play
1245-230- forest walk and play
230- diaper (why poop?), ravenous bf
3-330, standing playing while I cook
330, barely any tuna salad, 6 green beans, cheese arepa, water
More active play
It’s 5, and he’s still going, I’m going to try to get him to climb the stairs, do a diaper and nap, so I will bf him to sleep.
I usually bf him to sleep, otherwise I dance or walk him to sleep.
Weaning plans are to introduce more and more formula, as we approach one year, aiming for a morning and bedtime feed. Who knows if it will work
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Yay! NICU steps are big! I would be happy to share! I learned a LOT so this is a novel.
We started out exclusively nursing and then ended up in the NICU after 3 days due to some mostly unrelated issues and had a feeding tube then bottle and nursing combos while I pumped. When we went home, we did a combo of nursing and a bottle while I pumped. If I could do it over (and maybe when we do if we have another one) we’d do that bottle formula and just combo feed the whole time., but I’d never learned anything about combo feeding and I worried my supply would drop if I wasn’t pumping all the time (I mean it would some, but I had a well established supply and it’s okay if it drops if there is formula replacing it! I think weak supply can be an issue but if it’s not, it’s okay to not pump during a regular bottle feed!)
After a few months it seemed easier to just exclusively breastfeed so I did that, and then about a month later he started doing shorter feeds AND refusing bottles. He started dropping percentiles in weight and we kept getting referred to LC’s who thought all was well and to just keep on doing it and I worked SO hard to get him to eat until we were both completely fed up. We decided to try doing more combo feeding and when we discovered that he also hated bottles, realized there was something more going on, and it was silent reflux. By the time we got the reflux under control, he and I were both really really over breastfeeding. He wasn’t a spitter or a very unhappy baby so reflux didn’t come up, but it turns out he was perfectly happy as long as he could eat less than he needed to be eating and stop the minute his tummy hurt.
I pumped for a month while we saw a feeding therapist and then ended up quitting and going to just formula. We spent the remaining time on formula supplementing the calories with the help of a pediatric nutritionist and feeding therapy team.
If breastfeeding had been like it was at 2 months, I would have breastfed much longer. But the frustration wasn’t worth it. I was done breastfeeding at 7 months and quit pumping at 8. I knew breastfeeding could be hard to start but didn’t realize that once you got going okay it could become problematic again!
My take away from talking with lots and lots of people about their feeding experiences is that there’s no perfect way. A lot of people have trouble weaning when they want to because their kid is so attached, and some people wean earlier than they wanted because it’s not working for them or their kid or their family. There are people who have a great experience and love it, but I think for most people, however they feed their kids, there is some (or quite a lot of) frustration involved at some point.
But that said, I think I waited too long to demand more help. And my region is very breastfeeding friendly and it wasn’t until I was saying things like, “I will lose my mind if the suggestion is to keep trying. We are either getting real, actual help with this that recognizes the problem is not the latch or how hard we are trying or we are quitting breastfeeding today,” that our providers looked for solutions beyond “try harder.” I did want to make breastfeeding work, so I think it took me too long to recognize that it was no longer working for me. I’m so glad you’re already using “if all bodies involved are amenable” as one of your yard sticks. While I had imagined breastfeeding longer than we did, I’m glad I didn’t have a specific time in mind because I think that would have made it even harder to let go.
P.S. Our NICU referred us for early intervention when he left and we didn’t understand why so when they called to set up the evaluation we basically declined. After months of feeding frustration, a new pediatrician recommended EI and it was one of the best thing that ever happened to us. If we’d had an evaluation earlier, we would have had a lot more support (we had PT and feeding therapy and are now getting evaluated for speech too) and our experience would have been better.
If you get referred to EI, I recommend doing the evaluation! Looking back I wonder if some of his medical issues were evident to the folks in the NICU and not well communicated to us, or if they really do just refer everyone in the NICU for EI.
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I had a boob-monster with a tongue tie and dairy allergy. We got the tongue tie snipped at 2-3 weeks old. Then he was feeding 2 hourly round the clock. I “exclusively” breastfed until he started solids around 5 months, same time we got the dairy allergy diagnosis and had to upend my diet and work out what to feed a baby at the same time. (Technically we never used formula so by some people’s standards I exclusively breastfed the whole time) He was more interested in boob than food. I did not cope well and would have done better mentally on a mix feed but learning pumping and formula were beyond me. There’s not much support for pumping here if breastfeeding is going well. Physically, we were “perfect breastfeeders” and I hated that we were pointed out as such by the midwife who ran a breastfeeding talk while we were in the hospital because we hadn’t done anything special to achieve it and it helped nobody to point it out.
He finished weaning last year at 2.5 years old, after a long slow decrease in nursing and swapping to more comfort than needing to feed. I was done by 12 months but he had huge tantrums and it was the only thing he chucked a tantrum about. We also fed to sleep for ages. He got soy and almond milk during the day when we were away from each other after 11 months.
This go around Ponder is in charge of picking bottles and formula and I am in charge of arranging a pre-birth chat with a lactation consultant about pumps.
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I completely jinxed it!
After a week of easy breastfeeding, right after I wrote this he had a HOT MESS of a feeding session where he freaked out every time I got him sideways. I suspected something with his belly but couldn’t burp it out of him. Eventually the nurse suggested that we give him a small amount in a bottle, enough to take the edge off his hunger, and then try again (it was breastmilk but I would have taken anything). Well, he slammed the entire bottle in about 5 mins and passed out. After all this I’d gone 7 hours without feeding or pumping and my shirt was soaked with leaking milk. I pumped in the pumping room and then tried to dry my shirt with a bathroom hand dryer. Cool.
Then for his next feeding he would gum on but not actually latch, and then start crying. The nurse eventually suggested a nipple shield to mimic the rubber bottle nipple. That worked right away, woot.
Still don’t know what caused this. It could have been his car seat test causing reflux (preemies of a certain age have to sit in their car seat, monitored, for an hour before release). But I’m going to sleep and trying again tomorrow. The silver lining of NICU is the ability to (1) get expert help immediately and (2) walk away at the end of the day.
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