Bfeeders - how do you define a 'feed'?? can you have a schedule?

[sophielouise]

Hi all, I am EBFeeding my 4 month old dd, and worrying about returning to work in Sept. when she is 6 months. To prepare my boobs I plan to drop a feed in August,eventually getting down to morning / evening feeds only. I'm a teacher and can't be bothered won't be able to pump etc at work. My problem is how do you define a 'feed'? DD feeds on demand through the day and tends to take one boob when she wakes up, then later on before napping has the other one. Sometimes she has some inbetween too! Because you can't tell how many oz she's had it's hard to define a 'feed'... e.g. is this three feeds, two feeds or one? So when people talk about "8 feeds a day" and "dropping a feed" I don't know where / how to fit into this. I don't even know how to start. Do I need to have a schedule? Is it possible to have a schedule when breastfeeding?

forgot to add that from Sep I plan to get the nursery to FF during the day along with any weaning that' begun.

I define a feed as when dd is satisfied.

Everything will have chaged by six months. At four months I was the same as you, feeding on demand etc but now we've started weaning a routine has formed itself. She has a big feed (both breasts) first thing then a snack and water at about 10:30 then lunch and a big feed around 1pm and a snack and water at 4pm then big feed before bed.

Will your dd take a bottle or a tippee cup?

she was refusing bottles but we've not tried for ages. I figured she would by 6 months or if not a sippy cup.

If there aren't obvious feeds, it might be easier to just pick a time to do a bottle feed - say 10am - and then next time she wants a feed offer a breastfeed. After a week or so once the 10 am feed is established, offer a bottle for the next feed after that too, and continuing with one more bottle feed a week til you're down to breastfeeds just morning and night.

As roundabout says, everything will be different at 6m, honestly. At 4m, my DS was still doing a more "newborn" pattern of feeding, it was all very random. At 6m he was much more on his own little schedule, and it was much easier to define a "feed" - even more so once you add solids into the mix. I don't think it's something you need to think about until much nearer the time you come to return to work.

thank you for your encouraging comments- I suppose to me 2 months seems nothing, but in reality so much will change!

I really understand what you are saying here. I used to think: ' 'a feed' . What's that?'

There seemed to be no real beginning or ending to a feed and certainly no pattern to DS's feeds. The whole idea of 'dropping a feed' also seemed impossible as every day was different and so wouldn't know where to start. As it happened, I never had to as DS just naturally started to request feeds less frequently as he started to eat more solids, more regularly.