in panic mode – over milk.

meet my milk monster. make that a breastmilk monster.

 

I would never have thought I would land myself in this situation today – having not enough breastmilk to feed my child. never ever.

 

especially since I had soooo much excess supply barely 4 months after I had jerry previously.

 

but things happen and yeah. I am now in that situation.

 

my mum called me today in the evening, just when I am on my way home.. urgently asking if im coming home soon. because baby has no milk to drink. easy peasy right? there’s always formula milk to save the day. thing is, my mum said he has been rejecting the formula milk for the last 3 feeds! the last feed of ebm was at 1pm.

 

uh oh.

 

there are a couple of reasons that lead to the lack of milk.

 

for today, it was because the husband wasted a full bottle of fresh breastmilk in the wee hours because he thought the baby would wake and drink so he didnt keep it in the fridge (and baby didnt wake till 7am in the morning) so we deem it bad and didnt feed it to the baby anymore.

 

other reasons? I have been a damn slacker, expressing milk only every 12 hourly, 300ml each time.

 

just a bit of a background.  when jerome was born, he was identified as having g6pd and having v high jaundice levels. he stayed in the hospital for a week after I got discharged so during the time where I wasnt ard with him and there isnt enough colostrum to go around, the nurses feed supplemented his feeds with formula. I was pumping at every 4 hourly.

 

back at home, his jaundice level didnt clear so the pd recommended feeding formula milk first to help bring down the jaundice levels so I just pumped and stored away.

 

and since he has been on formula milk for some time and resumed total ebm only when his jaundice cleared, I wasnt too diligent in expressing milk for a couple of reasons.

 

1. I was still expressing more milk than required and I decided to give myself a little bit of life and not get stuck to the pump forever so I relaxed a little on the pumping schedule to 5-6hourly.

 

2. I dont have fridge space. my breastmilk freezer  has been terrorised by my mum after jerry started on partial formula milk when he turned up 1yo so I dont have space for the milk.

 

on the weekends, when we go out for long hours, I do feed jerome with formula milk as well after the freshly expressed milk runs out, simply because of convenience. no need to bring ice packs and the hassle of finding enough hot water to warm the milk. and afterall, he doesnt have a record of being on total breastmilk, so it didnt really matter to me what milk he is taking so long he’s fed and happy. 

 

so this went on for a while. and the breastmilk supply was sufficient.

 

I then stretched my expressing schedule to 6-8hrly. I still had enough, supplementing 1 or 2 of the night feeds with formula more for convenience sake (since its much faster than warming up the milk). I did notice that the baby doesnt really like taking formula tho. he guzzles 120ml of ebm easily but cannot finish 70ml of formula. I also noticed this happened only after we swapped out the brand of his formula to help with his eczema.

 

at 4 months when I returned to work, I stretched the expressing schedule to 12hrly just so I dont have to express at work. too much of a hassle and just too busy at work to leave for the nursing room. I pump daily before I leave for work and the moment reach home. and it has been good so far. until today.

 

so now. I am in a fix.

 

which is why I am up at this hour and blogging this while I pump. 3hrly schedules, here I come. I’m sure I can get the milk going somehow.

 

for the uninitiated, ebm is an acronym for ‘expressed breast milk’.

 

p.s. I called my mum back today 2 minutes after her phone call to remind her there are still some packets of frozen breastmilk in the freezer.

 

p.p.s. sorry guys (if there is any one else reading other than my husband), I know you really didnt need to know the explicit details of my pumping schedule for milk.