Last night was… interesting. As with all things at the moment, my life revolves around my boobs and my baby’s mouth/stomach. In keeping with the trend of the day of eating again approximately an hour after finishing her last meal, Daphne had her last meal of the night before I head to bed at – we thought – 8:30-9:30p. I encouraged her to take her time, go for repeated letdowns, and stay nice and relaxed. And then I headed to bed for the “hurry up and fall asleep already” rush (which, I might add, is not really all that conducive to falling asleep.) 11:15p rolls around, and I wake to the crying of a baby, and commence eyerolls and groans.

Jason and I had a deal – if she went less than two hours before wanting more food, he was going to defrost the frozen breast milk, that I had managed to pump in the past few days (I pump for about 10 minutes after a feeding once a day – not really trying to increase my supply so much as save up a bit of milk for this scenario), and feed her while I continued to sleep. Only I woke up before he got to it, and opted to feed her anyway since it was so close to two hours. So, her last feeding of the night before I head to bed (we still hoped) was more like 11:30p-12:30a.

I thought it went well. Granted, less than two hours doesn’t give me much time to restock supplies, but boobs aren’t primarily milk storage devices, they’re milk production devices. Babies get the bit that’s stored to get them started, then they have to work to get the milk in the real-time production mode the boob goes into. So, I again encouraged her to take her time. She spend almost 30 minutes latched on to each side. She wasn’t the voracious eater she can be, but she seemed to fairly consistently wait for let down, drink fairly efficiently, and then wait again. As best I can tell by the sucking of her tongue and sound of her swallow, she ate fairly well. I kept my fingers crossed that I wouldn’t be up until 3:30a for the next one. (Yes, I was praying for a three hour interval. Really. Seems sad, but it’s a dream I hope to some day achieve.) Jason, trying to get me a break from what had been a mentally exhausting day, kept on for another shift with her. (He is a life-saver, sanity-saver, and all around hero, quite honestly.)

But no. 2:30a rolls around, and I am again awoken to the sound of a crying, hungry baby. My breasts were still not replenished, but it’d been two hours, so I headed out of bed to feed her. This time, however, I was too late, and Jason had gotten out the milk and set her up with a bottle. He was moments away from sticking it in her mouth, actually, when I got to the nursery to ask if she was looking hungry. Tired, and seeing he was already set up, we both decided that he’d take this feeding, and give her the four and a half ounces (well, probably three and a half or four after he spilled some trying to get it in the bottle) that were in the freezer. She took about 30 or 40 minutes, but ate it all. And then slept until 6:45a.

If you know much about breastfeeding, you probably realize that *I* didn’t sleep until 6:45a, since I woke up with implant-simulating breasts, quite filled, and not the texture you expect normal breasts to be. I thought about trying to go back to sleep, but I was probably half an hour away from a rather uncomfortable engorgement, so I got up, expressed about a quarter ounce (between both sides) by hand, and by then, she was starting to stir. Quite reasonably so, I thought, and I’ve got a pretty big bevy of food for her to partake in; this should go fairly well. So, 7:00-7:30a she ate, and – again as far as I could tell – ate well. Not much sleeping, not much pausing, but a lot of swallowing. Ok. Back down for a little while. Maybe until 11:00, if I’m lucky, I thought. But no, less than two hours later, she wanted more. I don’t even remember when she finished, sometime around 10? I pumped afterwards, since I want another supply in the freezer and she didn’t seem to really drain me (she seemed to mostly want to snack and then sleep – I spent 20 minutes trying to wake her up, accomplishing it only by putting her down in her crib!). And I’m hoping we can go until 1:00p, so I have some supply built back up.

This could be a growth spurt. They come about every two weeks, and she’ll be four weeks on Monday. It could be a day time supply issue; perhaps I make enough milk for her throughout the day (she’s gaining weight just fine), but not in the time pattern she wants. It could be something else entirely, I suppose. It’s nice to know we have a partial solution (bottle feeding expressed milk) but it’s frustrating to know why we suddenly need to do this, how to avoid nighttime engorgement without losing supply, and if there’s any way of not having to go through this every night.

I suppose it’s not a lesson yet, but I’m certainly sitting at my desk, watching the chalkboard carefully.