It's a bottle strike kinda day, I guess... should I be worried?

[Lyndzies]

(cross-posted in Breastfeeding)

Hi all!  TIA for your experience/feedback.

I am away from my 5.5 month old baby and in the office (or on my commute) from 7:00 - 6:00 each day. My MIL watches her while my wife and I work.  She (very consistently!) eats four 4-oz bottles of expressed breast milk while I'm away, and I typically nurse her at 6:00 a.m., 6:00 p.m., 7:00 p.m. (bedtime nurse to sleep) and once during the night, usually around midnight-ish.  Fridays - Sundays she nurses.

Well, this morning my MIL called, concerned, at 11:15 and said she had only eaten 2 oz of milk so far.  She's gone on bottle strikes before, but that was right when we first started bottles.  I do think she may have eaten more than usual this morning, because when I went to pump this morning at work, I got about 2 oz less than usual. 

I told MIL not to be worried, but of course now I'm second-guessing myself.  Lol.  DD will be okay if she goes on a bit of a strike today, right?  :-)  MIL has tried feeding her in every position, and even out of her sippy cup (which she usually loves) but apparently the mouth is clamped shut, and she is fighting her usual late-morning nap, too.

I guess I'm just looking for reassurance.  I'm thinking it can probably be chalked up to teething or some developmental thing, but I hate the thought of my baby being hungry while I'm away...

Thanks, all!

[Mosaic]

Don't worry! It's way too early to even call it a bottle strike, in my opinion. Sounds like she tanked up before you left this morning, and likely 2-3 hours from now she'll be famished and will suck that second bottle down in no time. And if she has a day or two where her bottle intake is down, that's not an emergency, either: it could be she would rather play now and nurse with mommy later.

[ProtoLawyer]

My 8-month-old does that on occasion. Some weeks, he drinks 4-8 ounces all day, every day; other weeks, it's 20. Regardless, he wants to nurse right when I get home, and he's more prone to reverse-cycling (nursing way more at night) on the low intake days. My supply stays pretty consistent at around 14-16 ounces pumped per day, so I freeze the excess from the slow weeks and use them for the hungry weeks.

[Knitting Mama]

I think it's totally normal to have lighter days and heavier days (sounds like I'm talking about AF! ) I use an SNS to provide supplemental breastmilk to my girl, and I notice some days she empties it and some days she can use the same 6 ounces for 2-3 feedings. She's a year old now but it has always been like this.