The First Time Mum

Hayden has told me I’ve come back down to earth. So now I feel like writing about something different, other than feeling like I’m on planet Mars.

I’ve already touched on where the milk comes from but now wanted to talk about how I get that white stuff into Peggy without her spewing it up, after all it is very precious stuff!

When I started pumping and feeding through a bottle, my midwife spoke to me about pace feeding. I had always thought that feeding through a bottle was just a case of in the mouth and tip up, hey presto. And yes, of course they will drink, but most of it will just come straight back up. Peggy has certainly inherited dads fast drinking skills and feeding her like this would just make her chuck it all back up again. This is where the pace feeding comes in.

My midwife told me how to keep the bottle horizontal, so only half of the teat is filled with milk. This way she will have to work a little harder for a drink, rather than it going straight down. I guess this is also trying to mimic feeding from the breast. When she was really young, she would try to drink so fast that we had to slow her down with a mixture of pace feeding with the bottle horizontal and then tipping the bottle back down, so she wasn’t getting any milk at all, give her a break and go again. Now she is older, she doesn’t get in such a panic that we are starving her! And so, the bottle is horizontal in her mouth throughout the feed. With the bottle horizontal, it also means she can easily turn her head away when she has had enough or wants a break.

When the midwife first showed us this pace feeding technique, we questioned how much air she would be taking in from the bottle. Being farmers, I think we’ve got it drilled into us to make sure lambs don’t take in air when bottle feeding… but turns out Peggy is a human, not a lamb and she’s quite happy with a bit of air.

By feeding Peggy through the bottle, she can drink a lot more in a shorter space of time than she could from the boob. So, I generally try and burp her every 50mls or so. She’s a good pooer and burper which also makes life a little easier!

I’ve always found it quite hard to watch other people feed her. Feeding through a bottle gives you the luxury of anyone being able to feed, but exactly like we were at the start, everyone will generally give her the bottle and tip it straight up. She will handle this much better now she is older, but I find myself worrying like hell but trying to look very calm and collected!

Monday was also a big day for Peggy… she had her first night in her own room. She slept as she usually sleeps with a 3am/4am wake up, so I’ll take that as win. She is growing so fast and now at three months, we are already onto another phase of her life. Crazy how time flies when you’re having fun!