EBM Anyone?

Hi Baby,

Mommy still writing up our holiday...

In mean time, there is this...

When we got back from our holiday, you and I had an extra couple of weeks at home together, so the need to express and the need to take EBM from a bottle wasn't required. It was all nursing on demand, and sometimes mommy pop you on the breast because you're at the age of forgetting to nurse because you're too distracted.

Then, mommy's leave from work ended and it was back to expressing for me and back to the bottle for you.

On day one, mommy had a hard time trying to fill one bottle in the morning, and according to nenek, you refused the bottle completely and went without milk all morning. Good thing mommy came home during lunch time. And you went without milk again in the afternoon. Nenek said you were really angry whenever the bottle tried to make its way to your mouth.

So in the first week, you hardly took any EBM when mommy's at work or spin class and my own expressing sessions wasn't yielding much either.

Before the break, mommy can get up to 6 cups of EBM a day, and you can drink on average of 4-5 cups a day. After a break of three weeks, I'm surprised how drastic the change was.

On top of that, there are EBM that is coming to the end of it's shelf life (3 months) and since you refuse to take any, mommy been offering them up to anybody who want them just to reduce the stock until you start taking them again. The criteria is that it has to be for baby girls because of religious reasoning (sesusuan - if babies of opposite gender to each other are sharing the same produced milk at that time, they are considered as siblings and not allowed to marry each other) and I'd like to have the cups back that they came in thanks.

I asked contacts to the NSICU at the hospitals if they need it, because breast milk are excellent for preemie babies and help reduce their stay in the hospital, no reply so far. I asked friends who's babies I know could do with breast milk because of their allergies, no one came forward. I'm at a stage of finding recipes I could use the milk with. Auntie Elaine said to mix it up with your porridge (which you don't take) and mashed potatoes (which you haven't had) to use it up. Just to throw away breast milk because they expired is so wasteful when it could've helped other babies out there.

Slowly you are starting to drink the EBM again, a cup a day, if we're lucky two cups (technically it's one and a half, nenek decided since you already sucked on the bottle and didn't want the rest they went down the drain). So now we are a few days ahead of the expiration date of the ones that are at nenek's house, only a dozen left now. The rest of the EBM are at home in the deep freezer and those have a shelf life of 6 months.

Mommy is slowly increasing EBM output from 1 cup a day to 2 and a half cups a day. It's all about the let down, the breast may be full but if the let down isn't happening nothing or very little is coming out. Like this morning for example, mommy was pumping for almost an hour when suddenly the let down happened. I almost decided to stop just before that as my hand was cramping up, I have a motorized pump but I never really need it until now.

Another factor is the deep freezer, just yesterday mommy checked and did a space count, there is room for about 30 cups left if the existing EBM stock isn't moving yet. Do I up my pumping schedule to increase supply or do I leave it? Because if I run out of space to store them then the next space available is the fridge freezer with the 3 months shelf life. Then it gets complicated...

Hmmm, probably all that is a bit difficult for baby to understand, because as far as you're concerned right now, have mommy have milk straight from the breast, you're not that interested with EBM...

Love,
Mommy