When Gwen was first born and until she was 5 months old, I had an over active milk letdown. While this meant that she would often choke once every 30-60 seconds each time she ate and she learned to gulp her milk to keep up with the flow, it also meant that I was able to fill a bottle when pumping in 3 minutes flat. Sometimes I would fill a bottle before the letdown phase on my pump ended (2 minutes). I called a lactation consultant for solutions to Gwen choking while eating. She asked me how quickly the milk came out when I pumped. When I told her that I was able to get 5 ounces in about 2 minutes and she responded with "whoa!" I knew I had a bit of a feeding problem.
Right around the time that Gwen turned 6 months old my letdown slowed down. Thankfully my little monster stopped choking while eating. Unfortunately, she had grown accustomed to the quick speed of milk consumption and had partially corrected for it. When the milk slowed, Gwen was not a happy camper. She wanted her milk and she wanted it NOW!!!! My once frantic eater now had to wait patiently, a fact that did not make her happy. With each feeding, she would turn into a grunting, growling milk-eating monster until her thirst was slated. My mother-in-law, a former pediatric nurse, said she had never heard any baby react that way to breast feeding.
When my milk slowed I also noticed drastic changes in pumping. What once took 2 minutes was now taking 20. But Gwen didn't need bottles as much anymore so I eventually took a 3 month break from pumping, hoping that I wouldn't have to return to it until baby number 2.
After a few months, we had to put Gwen back on Zantac. This meant two bottles a day. I also was giving her Tylenol and Motrin with increased frequency due to pain from teething and diaper rash. Around the same time, Gwen also suffered from 2 ear infections requiring 2 antibiotics. The antibiotics gave her diarrhea, resulting in a need for her to take probiotics. All this meant that she needed quite a bit of expressed milk since she spits out medicine that we give her by syringe or dropper.
I am very thrifty with milk in bottles. I don't want to put her medicine in several ounces of milk because then you run into the problem of baby not finishing her dose of medicine. So I put all of her milk in 2 ounce portions to freeze and thaw one bag a day. Each time I give her a dose of medicine I give it in one ounce (about 30 ml) of milk. On a regular basis this results in a 32 ml bottle: 30 ml of milk and 2 ml of Zantac. This week she has been receiving a cocktail of medications: 3.5 ml augmentin, 4.25 ml Tylenol, 4.25 ml Motrin (note: if your baby is in serious pain, as Gwen currently is with her diaper rash, you can give both Tylenol and Motrin. Tylenol is metabolized by the liver and Motrin is metabolized by the kidneys. I only do this occasionally as I try to avoid giving Gwen unneeded medication. However, when she is suffering as she has been this week, I will give both at the same time), 2 ml Zantac, and 1 packet (250 mg) of Florastor Kids probiotics. If you do the math you will see that she is taking 15 ml of medication in 30 ml of milk. She has not been happy about the taste of her last few bottles. She will drink them, but it usually takes some coaxing, especially since florastor is yeast and so her bottle smells liked warm yeast.
Even though I am thrifty with my milk, I would go through it all in about 2 months if I stopped pumping completely. Gwen might need to be on Zantac for several more months, and I want to keep a small stockpile in case of babysitters, so I continue pumping.
Gwen, always the one with a strong opinion that she makes known, has taken to standing next to my chair, clawing at my leg, and crying bitterly each time I pump. She can be the happiest baby in the world, playing nicely on the floor just after eating, and she will abandon everything in order to protest my pumping. I've calmly explained that this is where all that milk comes from that she eats in her bottles, but this logic does not appease her. While Keith was home on vacation last week, I would have him play with her while I pumped. But she managed to weasel out of whatever game they were playing, crawl to mommy, and sob as her precious was pumped into a bottle. I don't know if she hates the fact that I am unable to play with her at that moment (a fact that was not important to her mere moments before as she played alone or with daddy) or if she is upset that I am stealing her milk. Since she was not daunted in her mission to complain by Keith's distractions, I am going to assume it is the latter. As you can imagine this is a little stressful, thus slowing milk collection even more.
Despite all of these problems, there is something that is addicting to me with pumping. It is a bit of a game: how much more milk can I pump each day than I use? How much can I stockpile? I just feel so accomplished each time that I am able to fill a bottle. I guess this is a better addiction than betting on the ponies.
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