breastfeeding nannies?

[whenwill]

Hi, I am a nanny about to go back to work with my 7.5 month old and we are breastfeeding. We had a rocky start with seemingly every problem going. On top of (because of?) that dd is very distractable when feeding and will really only happily feed in non-stimulating places e.g. silently side lying in quiet room or in sling with consistent noise levels and absolutely no talking from me- i get bitten, hit or nursing strike. The plus sides are she is a quick feeder and doesn't feed much in day at the mo. but I will be looking after a (non-napping and normal playful) 2 year old and trying to work out how to juggle this. Apparently distractable baby is common so anyone had experience of this?

Yes, but I am not sure how you deal with it as a nanny, because it basically involves prioritising the baby for those feed times and occupying the toddler any way you can - e.g. cbeebies. Not sure you ca do that a number of times a day at work?

If you can do sling I suggest you try that. She is about the age where you could start to offer feeds at reasonably consistent times, so might be able to judge and get your mindee doing an activity where feeding from the sling would be ok?

Yes, I did this for a while when ds was the same age, looking after another same age baby. I only generally fed him 2-3 times in the day though, and some of these coincided with the other baby's bottles so I could feed them both to sleep at the same time if I propped us all up on a sofa with cushions! I did have to do a bit of feeding one handed while lugging ds after the other child at toddler groups though.

feeding at a toddler group would never work for us! would have to go outside for a walk.

Yes, the plan is sling with tv (mostly so there is minimual talking) but just concened about if needs feeding and is sleepy; these can go on a bit longer and prefers to be in bedroom i suppose. I think i was ignoring this issue and assuming it would be fine because it has to be. Doesn't often need feeding at sleep time but maybe in strange house...

Feeds are shockingly inconsistent despite my trying to organise them for months. However, since solids they tend to only be 2-3 times during work time and max five mins.

It did occur to me that bottle feeding would take longer than this and dd still really distracted with expressed milk too- though takes forever to express these days so don't really bother. It's something about breastfeeding though that makes me feel guilty because I'm at work but have to almost not be for that time.

i do hope this doesn't come across as rude to you as it's not intended to be, but at the end of the day, you are being paid to care for someone else's child in their home so really your dd is going to have to slot it with your work rather than the other way round....
at 7.5 months, she is not going to starve. i think you need to stop being quite so indulgent with the breast feeding to be honest. she shouldn't really need complete silence when feeding!
i assume you are going back to the same family rather than a new one? does your employer have any views on the situation?

I have to agree with Reet - if you were going back to work in any other environment then your DD would be going to a CM or nursery and would therefore have to be a little more accomodating.

If I were paying your salary, I would not be happy with my DC being ignored / shushed / taken away from toddler group / left in front of the tv so you could feed your child. Very different to a mother juggling her own two DCs

Isn't there legal right to breastfeed at work? Employers have to provide facilities for breastfeeding to continue? I might be wrong, O know this definitely applies to expressing milk but not sure about bf though

I kind of agree with other posters that your dd will either have to get the hang of feeding on the go/in a sling/at toddler group or if she is too distracted to feed you'll just have to give her a rice cake and beaker to occupy her. She will probably just make up for any missed feeds when you are at home and will adjust during the work day, so I wouldn't worry too much about it though.

I think you are going to have to stop hoping this will sort itself out and face the issue head-on. You are not legally entitled to breastfeed at work but employers ARE legally obliged to provide suitable facilities for breastfeeding mothers to "rest" which is when people generally express milk or breastfeed if their baby is in a workplace nursery, for instance. As your baby is at work with you, I suppose it could be construed that in your case your right to "rest" is almost the same as the right to breastfeed your baby as she will actually be attending work with you. The problem is that in a normal workplace you would be doing this during a break and not simultaneously be trying to operate machinery, teach a class, operate the checkout or whatever but in your job, you will still be trying to look after an active two year old.

How often do you think your dd will feed during your work day? How will your employer feel about this? Agreeing to it is one thing but she may not be happy if the reality means that her child gets less outings, trips to toddler group, park playtime etc because you need to stay close to home to provide a quiet atmosphere for feeding.

I think it would help if you had some plans in mind to deal with this which you could present to your employer - will your baby feed while you have story time with your charge, could you have more nanny friends over to play so someone can keep an eye on the two year old while you feed your baby? Actually scratch the first suggestion, I have just realised you said you can't even talk while feeding your baby. I am struggling to come up with suggestions as to how this will work but I do think you need to come up with some because if you were my nanny and I felt that my child was spending time in front of Cbeebies or constantly being shushed while you were lying down feeding your baby, I would be really unhappy.

at that age mine could go without then cluster when we got home or on quiet days off

it isn't really necessary to stick to a feeding routine with a 7.5 year old, they can have other food/drinks and they make up for it when you have time. DS could feed when he woke up, go all day without then have a massive feed on the sofa in the evening (and he BF till 14 months). from my very limited experience I don't see why a 7.5 mo must be BF 3 times within working hours - lots of BF babies that age don't!

It would definitely ring alarm bells for me as a parent, not only because I would be very unhappy about my own child being shushed or stuck in front of the telly, but also because the whole thing would make me wonder if my child was going to come second from now on. The very fact that you are wondering how you can change the environment to suit your child, rather than wondering how you can continue to carry out your work responsibilities without compromising them, speaks volumes. I don't mean to sound harsh, but a 7 month old is hardly going to be playing with a 2 year old; the children are at quite different stages and I think you'll have to work quite hard anyway to prove to your employer that your standard of care , stimulation etc is up to how it was before you were caring for a 7 month old too. So if you go in with the approach that the toddler has to fit in with your child on this issue, tbh I'd be wondering where else he might be having to fit in

Sorry if this sounds harsh- I'm sure it is do-able in some situations to combine caring for your own child but I imagine you have to be extremely careful about to manage it

Hi, thanks for all the posts. Unfortunately I have tried since day one to feed 'normally' but have had no end of issues. Although many bf mums seems to have a similar ditractions issue I take the point they are not working and so can prioritise their own baby over their own toddler. Which is why i'm posting really to see if anyone else had this experience at work and if/how it worked out?

I actually never asked to go back with or without dd but was asked (though I am happy to), so on some level employer aware that I will need to change, feed, interact with dd at some point, and with a 2 year old anytime I do those things will be eating into his time/attention iyswim. But mb had bottle routines so i want to make this reality as smooth as possible so what she wants for her child isn't compromised.

I have done keeping in touch days with my second job and bf hasn't been a problem as house layout is different and charges a year older (plus mb pregnant so thinks its good practice; tv not anathema etc.). tbh dd gets ignored by me most of the day there except bf. So not like if she was a charge at all BUT bf is total of 15 mins a day exclusively with dd.

I can feed out and about e.g. pushing buggy, at park or walking and in quite noisy places. Just not with random loud/close noises.

I have really tried to stop this problem but just get bitten or bitten and refuses to latch the next few times hungry so not keen to persevere with that!

I would never get angry or anything and if interrupted dd would have to wait but until when? Just looking for ideas.
Interesting about going whole day (11 hours though) without feeding. Maybe this might be possible to work towards. Maybe I'm being precious about frequency of feeding as I had low milk supply due to refulx and tongue tie but these things have been resolved in past couple of weeks.

not sure about legislation but it's more of a work relationship-logistics issue at the moment.

well the majority of BF babies I know don't/wont actually take formula OR EBF at nursery/childminders and are fine on other fluids and snacks until their mum has finished work and it doesn't impact how long they've continued to BF, some well into toddlerhood! frequency of milk feeds was only something I worried about before 6/7 months, after that I felt "free" to go out and leave DS with DH with finger foods and water without worrying about getting back for a feed. IMO your breasts change at around 6 months and produce much more on an on demand basis rather than building up a store in between if that makes sense, they become more like a tap than a resevoir! So you can go a full day with no feeds then do loads the next day. At 5 months I had to express if I was away from DS and wasn't feeding because I'ld get full, but by 7 months I didn't need to

that's the other alternative - EBF bottles, but breastfed babies are even less likely to take that from their mum than from someone who's not the "real thing" IYKWIM