once upon a norza

It was a 3 days of assignment for me last weekend starting from a maternity studio session on Fri, a birthday party on Sat and a wedding on Sun. It was pretty challenging for me this time because I am still bfding Sarah. I have to make sure that I expressed enough bottles of milk for her especially for the wedding which was about 8hr long. I expressed milk everyday for her to get use to bottle-feeding while I'm away and she has at least 1x of ebm everyday.

The research tells us that exclusively breastfed babies take in an average of 25 oz (750 mL) per day between the ages of 1 month and 6 months. Different babies take in different amounts of milk; a typical range of milk intakes is 19-30 oz per day (570-900 mL per day).

We can use this information to estimate the average amount of milk baby will need at a feeding:

Estimate the number of times that baby nurses per day (24 hours).
Then divide 25 oz by the number of nursings.
This gives you a "ballpark" figure for the amount of expressed milk your exclusively breastfed baby will need at one feeding.
Example: If baby usually nurses around 8 times per day, you can guess that baby might need around 3 ounces per feeding when mom is away. (25/8=3.1).

from kellymom

For Sarah's case, she takes an average of abt 80-120ml every 3-4hrs and I gotta prepare at least 8 bottles of 1-2ounces of milk each. I started preparing for the day by expressing more on Friday since fridged ebm is best consumed within 48hrs in our climate. Small amounts are preferred as sometimes Sarah can refuse to drink huge amounts at one go. But that's not all. Sometimes Sarah just like to 'attach' herself to me for comfort nursing which a bottle can't replicate, of course. :)

Baby's need to suck. Babies have a very strong need to suck, and the need may be greater while mom is away (sucking is comforting to baby). A baby can control the flow of milk at the breast and will get minimal milk when he mainly needs to suck. When drinking from a bottle, baby gets a larger constant flow of milk as long as he is sucking. If baby is taking large amounts of expressed milk while you are away, you might consider encouraging baby to suck fingers or thumb, or consider using a pacifier for the times when mom is not available, to give baby something besides the bottle to satisfy his sucking needs.

from kellymom

But Alhamdulillah, despite the worries I had, she passed the test (with flying colours, I must say). The only thing thats a pain in the a** is the engorgement while I'm on assignment. Even though I carried my pump, I only have like 10-15min in between breaks to relieve the engorgements. Ok, its better than nothing.

And then there was the issue of storage. I stored my ebm directly into the Pigeon FTG bag but when I got home, everything was not cool as stated on the packaging of the bag. I was disappointed because I had done my research and this bag is supposed to be what I'm looking for. However there was a period of time when I noticed the zip has been opened. I will have to run more tests to see whether this is due to the bag or a negligence on my part.