The Baby Expert: Got Milk?

Caitlyn’s back to being a finicky eater again. During the night, she will consistently down 120 ml of formula, but during the day, it’s anybody’s guess as to how much she will drink. Sometimes it’s 30, 60, 90 ml, or nothing at all. Dreams of a consistent, 4-hour feeding cycle have been tossed out the window.

Because of her growing concerns over Caitlyn’s reluctance to eat, the wife took her to visit the doctor two weeks ago for a check-up. While she’s now dipped down to the 15^th percentile in terms of weight, the doctor still assures us that she’s developing normally and that every baby has their own eating habit. We’ll see what he says when she gets into negative digits, because that’s where I feel we’re headed if Caitlyn keeps this up.

Around this time, the wife also gave up on breastfeeding. It was more or less a mutual affair. The baby wasn’t showing much interest in her breast milk anymore, and the wife was tired of constantly pumping her breasts only to get a measly 30 ml each time. I’m just happy that I don’t have to constantly wash her breast pumps with all their nooks and crannies.

Without the wife’s breastmilk, we switched strictly to formula for Caitlyn. I was admittedly a bit crestfallen over this because I know there are certain nutritional values in breastmilk that can’t be replicated with formulas. However, about a week ago, Jessie’s mom mentioned a relative who recently had a baby and an overabundance of milk. This person had offered to donate her extra milk for us to use.

I’ve read about milk banks where women can donate their extra milk for other people to use, but never really considered that as an option for us. There’s just something about having our baby drink someone else’s milk that makes me uncomfortable and uneasy. It’s Rebecca De Mornay in The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, feeding her breastmilk to an unsuspecting couple’s baby. Creepy.

People share things all the time like clothes, but wearing someone else’s shirt is a bit different than wearing underwear that they’ve donated. It’s just a bit too intimate. Likewise, producing milk for your baby to drink is also an intimate affair. But I suppose if you look at it logically, sharing milk is really no different than taking a cow’s milk and drinking it for ourselves.

On Saturday, we got our first package of frozen, expressed milk. There were a total of 24 packets, with about 120 ml of milk in each. I can’t even begin to fathom someone having that much extra milk to spare, but I’m already thinking about how much money we’ll be saving from not having to purchase formula.

I worried about whether or not our baby would take to a stranger’s milk, but my fears were put to rest on Sunday when we tried feeding her the milk for the first time. There were no strange or puzzled looks of surprise from Caitlyn as I thought there might be. She drank a scant 80 ml and then began fussing to stop. Both perfectly normal behaviors for her. Looks like this could work!