Tuesday, October 18, 2011

the big thaw...

It happened yesterday. I knew it was coming, but I was saddened nonetheless. The babies officially outpaced me. The milk I pumped in 24 hours made 6 bottles each, and yesterday they took 7 each. This morning, I thawed some of our precious frozen milk to make the final bottle in this 24 hour period.

Despite my dread, I hastened this a bit. Until last weekend, the little ones were on a four hour feeding schedule. It was working so well, and it gave me time to get things accomplished between feedings. Recently, though, we noticed that they were starting to sometimes sleep more than four hours at a time. I am obsessed with them getting enough ounces/calories per day, so in anticipation of them sleeping longer stretches we are feeding them slightly more often (every 3-4 hours). This change upped our bottle consumption and pushed the little ones beyond my production. They are now eating around 48 ounces combined per day, and I'm producing around 42ish. Not quite enough.

It's incredible that they are eating so much and growing so well, but I wanted to sustain an exclusive breastmilk diet as long as possible. Now that we are starting to use our frozen supply, I'm not sure how much longer we will make it. I've been making very short-term pumping goals, and my most recent one was 2 months. Somehow that's only 6 days away! At least I know we can make it that far with nothing but mommy's milk!

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