Not In Kansas Anymore (NIKA)

Breast vs. Bottle

Aside from all the raging health debate about whether to feed babies breastmilk or formula, I have to say that breastmilk is great from the father's perspective. Why? Because 1) it means Dad isn't the one doing the night-time feedings (unless it's expressed milk, as I've been finding out the last few days), and 2) it comes pre-heated. Whenever Dorothy wakes up and starts fussing for food in the middle of the night, Elizabeth can just get up, get Dorothy, and boom! start feeding her. Neither of them fully wakes up, and they're done in 5 or 10 minutes.

When the breasts aren't available (because, for example, they're in the hospital), though, things get more stressful. As a father, I'm less attuned to my baby's noises at night. (I'm not spouting off something I've read in some dumb book; on nights when I've been awake late working, and come to bed just at the time that Dorothy first gets up to nurse, I've seen Elizabeth wake up while Dorothy is barely making noises I could hear; that's why I generally haven't woken up the last few months when Elizabeth nurses. And these last few nights, I know Dorothy has been making relatively loud noises (although not yet to a full-fledged cry) by the time I wake up.) So rather than getting up, giving the baby a breast, burping her, then climbing back into bed, the last few nights have instead been a process of getting up, trying to give Dorothy a pacifier to calm her down while I go start heating the milk (I generally don't bring her with me to the kitchen, because although that would calm her, it would also expose her to bright lights, which Elizabeth says makes Dorothy really wake up). I get out a bottle (or put some milk into a bottle if I didn't prepare one in advance), turn on the bottle warmer, and stick the bottle in. Then I go back to Dorothy and continue calming her, usually by picking her up and rocking her. Roughly 8 to 10 minutes later, the milk is warm enough to drink. Then I give her the bottle.

Of course, if I'd thought that she'd only want 2 ounces, and I was wrong, then I have to repeat the above process as I heat more milk. (We don't like to use more milk than she'll drink, because Elizabeth's daily production is not infinite. Normally we're pretty close, at around 3 or 4 ounces, but Dorothy's not completely predictable, surprisingly.) When she's done eating, then I can burp her and put her back in the crib to sleep. All in all, I don't think Dorothy and I have gotten back to bed in less than a half hour for night-time feedings the last three nights.

That's why I give a strong, whole-hearted vote for breast-feeding.