Babies Born March 2008

Prama - happy birthday - hope you have had a wonderful day, first birthday as a mummy :) Re: medicare card, I thought that would just come out when you sent in your baby bonus form? or did I read the form incorrectly. I will have to go to Medicare at some stage to claim back anethesiast bill anyway so will do it then. Need to make sure I have him on my medicare card too :)

Lisa - re: expressing, I am expressing 3 times a day as well. This morning I expressed 240ml in one sitting from both breasts. I expressed 140 ml this afternoon and I plan to express some more once DJ has his feed. My breasts are soooo full at the moment, so looking forward to emptying them once he wakes up. He was a bit restless earlier, we had visitors all afternoon and he didn't sleep much so finally getting a good rest.

Jade - sounds like you have your hands full. Hopefully DH can be around to help you out. At least it is the easter long weekend, so that will help you get some well deserved rest if he can look after the kids while Ryan is asleep. I have drinking lots of water as well, so dehydrated. After every feed or expressing I do, I am absolutely starving or thirsty. It is like a gym workout without any running around haha

Jess - I express 3 times a day purely to give my nipples a break sometimes, especially for early morning feeds, I find it easier to heat up a bottle of breast milk then breastfeed coz I am sooo sleepy and I don't want to fall asleep while feeding him. And also my hubby wants to share the load and feed him once in the early morning for me so another reason why I express.... And I plan to buy some ice-cube trays for breast milk so I can freeze it for emergencies.

Question - if you express, how much do you feed bub? I was told by the lactation consultant to give DJ only 60ml, but he is still hungry after his feed, so I have increased it to 70ml because he seems to be more content after his feed if I do this. I know he is probably getting alot more when he feeds from the breast, so I just wanted to find out what others are doing. I plan to bring it up with the community nurse once they have called up to arrange a time....


My mum and brother moved in this morning, my brother has gone camping and probably won't be staying here until Sunday or Monday night..... It has been soooo good having my mum here, she is nursing DJ heaps and giving me time to rest or just relax. She is staying for 4 weeks and is off work next week as well, so that will help with stuff around the house. Tomorrow, we are off to get some much needed groceries, being off from work made me forget it was good friday today haha I lose track of time.....

Well girls, I better get going. Hope everyone is well.

Shell xxxx

Thanks Nikki, Jade, Shell. I had another 1.5hrs sleep this afternoon so that was really wonderful. it was a nice quiet day. it was cold in sydney. i just wanted to stay indoors.

Jade - Dont feel bad, hun. It's hard when you have a newborn that needs your attention 24x7, plus 2 other young kids totake care of. But you have eat, you burn abt 500 calories, i think from 1 bf. can you order some takeaway the night before and reheat them for lunch? or can DH make something, for you? You have to take something. the midwife told me yesterday to take some sustagen while bf-ing. can you take that?

Shell - the form only allows you to put bub's name on one person's card. We both have separate medicare cards and wanted to put lakshman's name on both our cards so we ahd to go in. we were told to get all our 3 names onto 2 cards, one for steve and me. but apparently for some reason, they couldnt get lakshman's name as teh 3rd member cos his surname was too long. he will get his own medicare card. and now we have to wait for our cards.
I was major pi$$ed off, the physio we saw at westmead sent us a bill!! no one told us it was extra. i thot i was part of the whole care at westmead. altho it was $50, but still!!!
Well done on expressing, thats amazing. for me to get 70-80ml sometimes takes 3-4 expressions.
you can work out how much to feed DJ. when we were on formula, we were give this ratio .. baby's wgt x 150/no of feeds.

question 1
When you're out and giving bub EBM, if it's already like 3 hrs since the last booby feed, do your boobs feel really full and feel they need to be emptied. What do you do when you;re out and dont want to bf. i find it hard when we go out and altho i have his EBM, my boobs are so heavy and uncomfy. then i just want to go home and express. so wahts the point of going out...

question 2
it was cold here in syd today. i wasnt sure how to dress lakshman. we went out for a bit this evening. i had a full bodysuit and wrapped with a thick wrap.. wasnt outdoors, just walking out of the car to where we wanted to go, maybe 5 mins.
should i put a jumper over his bodysuit with pants? or just a jacket?
How many layers should i put. what do you put over a bodysuit. what kind of bodysuit do you use? i used a cotton one.
i dont want to under dress or over dress him. i wasnt sure if i needed to have mittens and socks etc. if we werent going to be outdoors.

Prama,

My breasts only feel really full when I don't express overnight...but I am not feeding directly off the breast either so I don't know if that makes a difference or not.

This morning I got 180mls out of one breast alone!!! Does anyone have a breast which produces more milk than the other one???

As for how much per feed to give the little one, I feed on demand and Jake will take between 80-125mls per feed. I don't perscribe to the set amount per feed theory, if the baby is hungry feed it, if it's not dont. They will eat what they need and no less...Jake will spit the bottle out when he's had enough, usually I burp him, change him if he needs changing and then offer him the bottle again to see if he is still hungry, sometimes he take it and sometimes he doesn't. I figure he knows how hungry he is and no one else is able to know as he can't talk!

As for clothing, check to see how warm he is Prama, slide a finger down his neck, if he's sweating he's hot if he's nice and warm he's fine and if he's feeling a little cool add another layer.

Wow, I envy you ladies that have such a routine down pat for feeding already!. Lila is feeding every 2 - 3 hours and at night, at around 7pm starts what my midwife called 'cluster feeding' and has another feed at around 8 then 10ish... she then wakes up at around 1 then 3 then 5 or 6. She is only feeding for 10 - 15 mins but seams to gulp it down!.
I guess all our babies are so different, but I do wish her feeds were longer and further between. Is anyone else's bub feeding as often as Lila?
How much sleep are they having too? Lila tends to fall asleep at the breast (she latches off with a big deep breath then rests her head on my boob - very cute) I give her a burp, but she is always so sleepy, so we put her to bed. On the odd occasion she is wide awake and we play with her, yet this only seems to happen twice a day. I just am not sure if she is sleeping to much!!!!!!!!

Prama usually bub needs one more layer than you are wearing. So on a hot day I just put Patrick in a singlet. As the weather gets cooler I add a layer.

Thanks girls. it gets confusing, i do give him an extra layer when he's sleeping but when we're giving him cuddles etc. we take off his wrap, so gets his warmth from us. it's going out in the cold that confuses me. i will use a jumper/jacket over his coverall, bodysuit and some leggings. We went to look for pants/leggings but they only seem to sell them in sets.

Lisa thats a lot of milk! See, the LCs told me you cant get a lot of milk by just expressing but thats not true! I dont think i'll ever get that much milk, oh well. i wil have to do with what i have.

just when i start typing.. hehe, his highness beckons lol

Try ppatch for leggins. I got given a pair when patrick was born, not part of aset. They're great for putting over short all in ones when it's cool in the morning and taking off later in the day.

kanda your little one and mine must have been talking! Patrick's feeding pattern is pretty similar. Those cluster feedings are nipple killers :doh:

Kanda that sounds exactly like Madison. Short feeds more often. My Miss 3 used to feed for an hour every two hours! Maybe its because they're summer babies and get more thirsty.

thanks teach mum, will go check it out. we've been doing most of our shopping at Target.

Lakshman sometimes has 4hr feeds in the day and then gets hungry quicker at night, with 2.5hr feeds..

Prama KMart has some pants, check out one close to you, they have different things in different shops though, i saw last week they have some with feet and some without and some lighter and some warmer fabrics. Summer gets quite hot even though today is cooler when we went out this morning she had a footless cotton suit, singlet and socks and just a cotton wrap over her. Layers are good and things that are easy to take off or put on.

Kanda, Summer is feeding more often now and she only feeds for 10-15 minutes most of the time too. She is also cluster feeding anywhere between 5pm and 9pm sometimes every hour, even less at times. She is waking anywhere from 2.5 hours to 6 hours during the night. I've been taking each day as it comes.

Went shopping this morning for the hunt tomorrow and the shops were manic only went to 2 shops and it took 2 hours of mainly waiting at the checkout. It always rains on the Sunday so it looks like the e bunny will be delivering inside again... It is so much fun at these times i love seeing the girls so excited when they are hunting eggs....

Is anyone else constantly hungry?? esp in the afternoon/evening? So glad i am going back to the gym next week.

time for a new thread everyone :)