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V is 9.5 months old and goes to group daycare 2 days a week.

At home, he still does a lot of breastfeeding although his food intake is steadily increasing. (See a typical day here.) At the centre I think he takes somewhat more food than he does at home: they spoon feed and at home he eats finger foods.

During the daycare periods, I still pump three times and get at least 450mL (15oz) and 550mL (18.5oz) is not unheard of, and this is without the really rigorous style of pumping: I stop as soon as the flow has really dropped rather than wringing every last drop out. I definitely can not stop pumping entirely: I need at least two pumping sessions or it gets painful.

But he no longer consumes anything like 450mL when he is at daycare. 200mL is more typical. He doesn't really make it up at night on those nights either, I think the solids they give him are substituting. (I have no idea what his intake when we're together is like, but it probably is similar to what I pump.)

I realise that this is something of an anti-problem but it makes me sad to throw out that much milk (as we have to if it is thawed) and soon we are going to run out of room in our freezer if my supply keeps exceeding demand.

What do you think? Should I pump less? Actively encourage my supply to drop (somehow)?

There are no milk banks that accept donations from a woman in Sydney, NSW. I cannot donate the milk. (And even if there were, milk banks in Australia seem to prefer donations from women whose child is under 6 months of age.)

rmc28

(Cross-posted to my journal)

Charles has just finished his 4th week of nursery and seems to be settling in ok. He's making some friends and talking about them by name, but sadly he is also getting occasional physical attacks from other children: biting, pinching, hitting. The nursery takes it fairly seriously, so I know about it because I get told about it each day something happens, and sign a form to say I've been told. (The parents of the child doing the violence get a different form to sign too, I gather.) The nursery policy is that staff can't tell me who the assailants are, but Charles tells me anyway when talking about it, so I know that it's limited to two boys, and it's always a result of disputes over favoured toys.

I am wrestling with angry mama-bear "so this is what people mean by nursery-will-teach-social-skills is it?" and not wanting to overreact (it is relatively minor stuff, it's taken seriously and stopped asap by the staff, he is building friendships there too). But I feel a need to do more to ensure Charles doesn't think minor violence every few days is ok or to be tolerated, and to give him non-violent tools to handle it.

After yet another incident on Friday, yesterday morning I talked with Charles a bit about saying loudly and firmly "No! Don't pinch me! That hurts!" and similar for biting, etc. Charles turned this into a game where his toys bit/pinched/hit me and I protested loudly and he came and stopped them, and then they bit/hit/pinched him and he protested loudly and I came and stopped them. He played the game much later in the day too, when Tony was around and could join in too. (In passing, I find it really interesting how his instinctive response is to turn tricky things like this into games to practice/play out the new concept.)

We talked about how if he speaks out loudly then the nursery staff, or other people around him, will know what is happening and can come and help. We talked a bit about maybe walking away from people who are hurting him, and how he doesn't have to play with them or be their friend. And I emphasised that it's absolutely not ok to hit/pinch/bite back (at least he hasn't done so yet - a small bit of pride I can take from the situation).

Is this enough? Too much? I think the setup at the nursery is such that this will be positive, and give the staff more warning when stuff is happening. I also hope that the loud "no, don't bite me" might just have a direct effect on the attacking child.

Suggestions/comments/experience welcome.

puzzlement

I have a long running case of gastroenteritis (will see a doctor when it's Monday). This appears, probably understandably, to have affected my milk supply.

It doesn't seem to be too bad, as in the baby is happy during the day and not himself showing signs of dehydration. He's 9 months old and will finally reliably accept food so he also has some alternative sources of nutrition.

But it's making nighttimes hellish, and of course, this is on top of me being pretty sick myself. He usually peacefully nurses to sleep both at bedtime and after all nighttime feeds. But it seems there isn't enough milk for him at the moment. He suckles fast and firmly for ages. He has both sides offered twice or three times. Some nights we're having to break him off and let him scream himself (in someone's arms) to sleep because I'm too sick to spend such a huge amount of time feeding him, and, frankly, after an hour of tug-tug-tug-tug-tug on my nipples I do go a bit mad. He then wakes a lot in the night, feeds for a long time and is difficult to resettle then too. (He doesn't seem especially unhappy though, he seems... over happy? Very excited and squealy.)

It's a really raw deal that my being sick causes him to sleep badly and then make me sicker, too.

Is there something I can do? I am reluctant to supplement much at all because I figure with the damage this has apparently done to my supply, the last thing I need is to add a decrease in demand too due to supplementation. That change might be the kind of milk supply change that brings on a nursing strike or a permanent change in our feeding unnecessarily.

I'm staying as well-hydrated as I can, I think.

puzzlement

I'd appreciate people's general thoughts on the issue of babies, children, sleep deprivation and family schedules.

This is inspired by a casual mention else-journal of a chronically sleep deprived one year old. I'd really like my poor baby (currently 8 months old) to get the sleep his body wants to do, but with adult jobs and baby daycare it's increasingly likely that sometimes we are going to wake him well before he would wake himself. (For the last few months he's tended to have a sleep in in the morning, at least by baby standards.)

We haven't even solved this problem for his father yet, who needs an alarm to be awake by 10am. (I'm the kind of person who quickly trains to be awake 2 minutes before the alarm, or 2 minutes before the baby, I have no idea what my natural waking even is. I have the morning-person pattern of a very regular bedtime instead.)

ailbhe

I have mildish flu. My five-year-old has a temperature and a cough and is on Tamiflu, and the almost-three-year-old developed a cough just about an hour after the older child's Tamiflu prescription was brought in. Everyone has the dire rear.

Somehow, I'm ok until the children need medicine on prescription or treatment outside the home. Then I feel like I've failed them by allowing them to need, er, something I can't magically provide with my mother nature hippie knitting skills, or something.

And my own illness isn't helping.

I hate households full of ill people.

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Plan: Survive

Recent Entries

Wasting milk

Tools for handling violence from other children

Temporary(?) supply problems and the annoyed baby

Waking a sleeping baby...

Yet Another Failure As a Parent Moment

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