"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." -Winston Churchill

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Pumping and doing the math.

Got almost 2 oz. while pumping just now. Of course, it's been a good 3 hours or more since our last nursing.
So, I think I have it figured out. If I average 1.5 oz. every 3 hours, I should be making between 8 - 12 oz. a day. And, according to kellymom.com's milk calculator, babies need an average of about 25 oz a day for the first 2 months (longer for an exclusively breastfed infant*), whether from formula or expressed breastmilk. So I make about half, or a little less than half, of what Lola needs a day.**

*In exclusively breastfed babies, milk intake increases quickly during the first few weeks of life, then stays about the same between one and six months (though it likely increases short term during growth spurts). Current breastfeeding research does not indicate that breastmilk intake changes with baby's age or weight between one and six months. After six months, breastmilk intake will continue at this same level until -- sometime after six months, depending in baby's intake from other foods -- baby's milk intake begins to decrease gradually. http://www.kellymom.com/bf/pumping/milkcalc.html

So, I've been sitting here, with the pump still on me the whole time I was writing this, and thought I'd give the "let down" button a push, just for fun, and I had a (very) brief second let-down! It didn't give me much more, but it did get it up to a good 2 1/8 oz. Little victories.

** I know babies are more effective at removing milk than a pump, but Lola sometimes loses interest at nursing before she's really "emptied" me. 

1 comment:

  1. Just remember what the pump gets out- your baby gets about half to 2 times MORE THAT amount.

    ReplyDelete