Mad husband

Throw3ks · September 2013

Not sure if I should post this here or in breastfeeding but here goes: my husband is lovely, he loves our LO and is with us in the NICU as much as he can be. LO is taking breast/bottle feeding well and when it's time for her feeding we fight about how to feed her. Whether it be breast or bottle. I figure since I am available she should go to breast and he feels she should have a couple bottles thru out the day-basically so he can feed her. This literally causes a huge fight. He gives her 1 bottle at 9am and somedays more. What do you ladies think I should do?

jbranden12 · September 2013

How is your supply? Does LO drain you? Do you pump after each feed?

Sorry you guys are struggling with this. I think the answer is so individual. The last few weeks of Anna's NICU stay and the first few weeks at home, we traded off. I wanted to BF but knew she would need to take a bottle as well since I was returning to work about 4 weeks after she came home. Plus, the NICU used a chart of minutes to count each feed as partial, half, or full but we didn't know exactly how much she was getting from the breast so we wanted to give her a few bottles a day to make sure she continued gaining weight (BM only, we d/c fortifiers when she was a couple months old).

This being said, we roomed in the entirety of Anna's NICU stay so we had 8 feeds a day to split up. If you are only able to participate in half the feeds, it important for your LO to be on the breast as often as possible to build/maintain your supply. I would say your DH should continue to give at least 1 bottle a day, but the rest should be breast.

When we first came home, we did the same thing, trading off bottle and breast to give me a break and occasionally let me sleep longer than 3 hours. Also, Anna still wasn't draining me and it was exhausting to feed her then pump and repeat every 3 hours, so sometimes I would just pump while he fed a bottle because by that point my supply was pretty solid.

Throw3ks · September 2013

I would like to EBF but being in the NICU she has to have some bottles, I can't be there 24/7. I make every feeding except for the 3am and 6am and the occasional 9am. My supply is good, my LO and I are jiving together with breastfeeding. But my husband doesn't feel she is getting enough and with the bottle we can keep track of what she gets. If she nurses for 5minutes straight they call that a "full" feed. So he is nervous she really isn't getting the whole amount.
Maybe this will pass and it's just an adjustment thing for now. Thanks for the advice ladies!

jbranden12 · September 2013

Glad things are going so well! I am on mobile so can't see your ticker but how old is your LO? I am surprised they count 5 min as a full feed. For us, 8 min was a half feed and 15 was a whole! But it really doesn't matter as long as your LO is gaining weight. If your neo isn't concerned, I would keep aiming to BF as much as possible but let your DH bottle feed once or twice a day so he is comfortable feeding.

PhillyGal34 · September 2013

For us we eventually moved to ebf'ing because it made no sense for me to be heating a bottle and then going to pump when dh was feeding him. Dh did take a night feeding with a bottle once a night so I could get some more sleep at the beginning and would bottle feed if I wasn't there of course.

I think it's natural to worry they aren't getting enough because you can't see how much they get. Can they do some weighed feedings to assure dh?

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