It's Bottle Time

During Week 3 of DJ's life, my body couldn't take the lack of sleep anymore and I came down with a cold. This convinced Steve to go get a can of formula and start bottle feeding DJ until I had built up a supply of breastmilk that we could also bottle feed him. That couldn't have been a better move; DJ took to the bottle like a champ, wolfing down formula like it was going out of style. Lo and behold, he also started sleeping more than an hour at a time, too.

Here we are at Week 3 of Elektra's life and although I think I'm in better shape than I was with DJ, I have started bottle feeding Elektra. There's a learning curve to feeding for babies. It took a good number of days for her to figure out how to latch on to the breast, and so it's no surprise that it'll take her the equivalent number of days to learn how to take a bottle.

The upside to her taking a bottle is that now Steve (or anyone else) can feed her, too. The downside is that she doesn't fall asleep on the bottle so we have to take the time to help her fall asleep. This will cut into sleep time for me during the late night hours. Nevermind that I have to pump at every feeding. Today was teh first day I started this with her so my dilemma is: do I breast feed her during the late night hours or do I strictly bottle feed/pump instead?

There are other issues, too, like, what happens when she hits a growth spurt and I'm not making enough milk? Typically, if I were breastfeeding exclusively, she has a way of telling my body to make more. But if I'm pumping, my body won't get that message. Also, I have heard stories of babies not liking the bottles they were offered if they didn't transition to bottles until later. We have too much invested in these bottles to have her reject them!

So we'll see how this goes.

Currently, Elektra is a happy little girl sleeping on Daddy's chest, and Daddy is a happy man sleeping on the sofa. It's the way life should be. :-) Unfortunately for them, I'm going to have to wake up Elektra in about 25 minutes for her next feeding to stay on the 3 hour schedule... Sorry!!!