Advice on routines of meals and milk ??

[Fiona]

I am planning to go back to work 3 days a week when Grace is 6 1/2 months old. Dh and I run our own business and we are going to do 3 days a week each ......... so Grace will have mummy 3 days and Daddy 3 days............

what I am not sure about it how much milk I will need to express for Dh to give Grace when I am at work.

Grace will be weaned by then but realise that she will also need milk, but I want to still BF and was wondering how many times during a day do you think she will need milk and how many oz ???

I don't tend to express much at the moment as Grace is always with me and I am happy bf in public.......... so am a bit concerned that I don't have any stocks of milk and I will need to spend the next couple of months pumping away morning, noon and night

Can I ask those of you with babies 6 months plus, what your feeding rountines are like ??

thanks

 

[Nicky_Jones]

What times will you be apart? Also what is your current feeding routine. About 2-3 months before I went back to work I started expressing every day after Ellies breakfast to build up a supply in the freezer. To start with I only got off about 1oz, however that went up and up quite quickly and I was getting of 4-5oz reguarly. Once a day between now and going back to work will be absolutely fine.

I drop Ellie at nursery at 8am and pick her up at 4pm. However I was able to go back on shorter days to achieve this. This meant that she only needed 2 milk feeds when she was 5months. So I was only needing to express twice a day when I was away from her. I fed her at 7:30am and then as soon as we got in after nursery. When you go back to work you will need to express at the times she would normally take a feed.

When Ellie was about 7months IIRC (might have been 8months) she dropped her mid-morning milk so since then I have only been having to express 1 bottle. Recently she has been semi-reguarly refusing her afternoon milk so I think she will drop this one completely soon.

 

[Nicky_Jones]

Ellie didn't take the bottle well to start with and was only drinking approx 1oz from each bottle. Once she started taking it well she was drinking around 6oz per bottle. However as weaning progresses this has been going down, however we do get odd days (there was one last week) where she drunk 7oz completely (that was all I had expressed), whereas often she will drink between 2-4oz.

Have you been giving her EBM in a bottle? If not I would try and introduce it now if you can. I left it too late really. She had been taking a bottle interchangeably with the breast happily when she was 1-2months but I just got lazy and had stopped giving her a bottle reguarly.