Putting my 7 wk old in daycare part time

[audmommy]

I have a few questions for the mommies who have gone back to work with a LO so young.

1. How often did you pump at work?
2. How much ebm did you send to daycare for your LO?

I know I can pump during my lunch break and I plan to feed him right before he goes to daycare and feed him right after. But I am really clueless on how much to send for him to eat for the day. I am building up a nice freezer stash and he will only be in daycare 2.5 days a week, but I still want to make sure we can nurse for a year - any thoughts or tips would be appreciated!

Thanks!

[YummyYarnAddict]

I went back to work 3 days a week (24hrs) when my dd was 6w old. How much to send and how often to pump will vary from baby to baby and, likely, from week to week depending on growth spurts and how well your baby acclimates to being fed expressed breast milk and other factors.

With my daughter, I would nurse her first thing in the morning on one side while pumping on the other side and I would get about 8oz on that one side. I would nurse her again on the walk to the sitter in the sling and what I would leave her with was the 8oz I had expressed that morning plus two-4oz bottles. I always kept frozen breast milk at the sitter for back up. So that was 16oz (fresh-not-frozen) for 8.5hrs and she would nurse like crazy as soon as I picked her up. Some days that was okay, and other days she wouldn't finish that. On average, IIRC, I think she went through about 20oz of fresh breast milk during 8.5hrs which wasn't a problem for me because I was very fortunate to be able to pump three times a day at work (my boss and two other nurses were pumping as well and I had/have a great supply and could easily a lot in a relatively short amount of time).

There were a couple of times when my dd was going through a growth spurt and she needed more breast milk and I'd get there to pick her up and would be told that she went through all the fresh and frozen on hand so I had to stock everything back up the next day, and then other days her favorite person wouldn't be there and she'd barely finish 12oz.

I think the most helpful advice I received at the time was to store my breast milk in small batches so that none would go to waste if she didn't finish it (or very little would go to waste) and I would always send some frozen as a back up.