Lesson Learned-- Bottle Feeding

Yay! Bryce is three whole weeks today! And, at the weekly breast feeding class I attend, his weight gain this week was 10 whole ounces! Wow! So the week before he gained 12 oz and this week another 10 oz! This puts him at a whopping 7lbs 14oz! And, he's definitely getting longer too-- it's amazing how we can just literally see him growing before us.

Today was also another milestone because it was time to introduce a bottle to him. Apparently, this is how all this bottle feeding works (or this is what 'they' tell me):

1- Breast feed for the first 20 days-- your baby needs to get to know you and recognize you and also be able to latch well in order to get good nourishment.

Check. Nourishment is not a problem with our growing boy. (But you would be amazed at how many women and babies have this problem...we are certainly lucky and blessed that all is going well.)

2- Start pumping once a day at day 14. So, basically, I have to pump after Bryce eats once a day in order to build up a small supply.

Check. What a friggin hassle.

3- At day 21, let someone other than mom feed him via a bottle once a day. 'They' tell me that if you do not introduce the bottle as early as 3 weeks, then it's possible that the baby will never take a bottle. And, and if you plan on going back to work and pumping while at work, then you are out of luck if your baby doesn't take the bottle. So, to say the least, it's VERY important that Bryce take a bottle. Otherwise, we're screwed.

Check-- sort of. Let me explain the drama. At 5:30pm today, we decided to cross the bottle feeding milestone. Sean was going to have his first feeding! So I took one of the storage bags out of the freezer and defrosted it. I kept the milk chilled upon defrosting though, because 'they' tell me that babies really don't need warm milk unless he/she is just picky. Easy enough. Next, I put the defrosted milk in one of these nice and 'top rated' Dr. Brown's bottles that I got at one of my baby showers. I'm very excited because this is supposed to be so much fun for me and for Sean. (Freedom for me and bonding for Sean.) So all went well upon Sean feeding him except for one small hiccup. You see, it takes me nearly 25 minutes to feed Bryce. It took Sean five minutes (and that's generous). Yes, five short minutes. Bryce pretty much gulped the bottle. Hmmm...So, I did what any other new mom would do-- semi freak out, and then get on Babies R Us.com to look up these so called 'top rated' bottles. Sigh. So no one ever told me that I needed to order specific nipples for specific ages. The bottles that I received at my shower where 'standard' size, which means it was meant for babies 6months-12months. The difference between these and nipples for newborns is that the milk flows a lot slower through the nipple. So, it should still take Bryce at least 15 minutes to eat-- not five. I'm guessing that most of the milk just went straight down his little throat without even sucking.

We are still waiting for him to throw up...

Off to Babies R Us tomorrow for nipples...we'll retry again. I'm glad that it went well and that Bryce actually took a bottle, I just hope that we can get this bottle flow thing figured out.

Ugh. This new mom, new learnings thing is starting to get a little old.