The great transition

To whole milk that is. Warning: This post is about boobs and how mine worked as God intended. Just sayin.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we switched Emily over to whole milk a few weeks earlier that we (and our Pedi) had planned. The main reason is that all my hard work spending hours and months pumping paid off. I was able to feed Emily only breast milk for the first 10.5 months of her life. My freezer stash actually would have lasted until about 8 days before her 11 month birthday. This was HUGE for me. Now, don't get me wrong, I have no issues with formula. AT.ALL. As long as you feed your baby, I don't care how you do it, but I was determined to make breastfeeding work. Back story:I breastfed Em exclusively, with the occasional bottle until she was 3 months old. Then she started daycare and I fed her only at night. I had a brief drop in supply by the end of the day (my supply was much larger in the mornings and I could still pump 32+oz a day, but by dinner I could only get 4 oz)and we had to do bottles at night instead of nursing. From that point on (around 4 months)she decided she preferred the bottle. This was devastating for me at first because that was mine and Emily's alone time, but we did what worked for our family, and I still got my snuggle time in giving her bottles at night. This was also around the time she dropped her bottles during the middle of the night. If she woke up during the night, I would still nurse her, but that was getting rare by this point. So I pumped and pumped and pumped. Everyday, several times a day till she turned 9 months old and ended up with 2 months of milk in the freezer. That's a lot of milk y'all. Like over 1,400 oz. It was hard, but worth it.

Anyway, our pedi and I were not on the same page for the transition. She was dead set in her ways that she didn't want Emily to have ANY whole milk until she was 11 months old. Not one drop, but on her 11 month birthday, she had NO problems with her having only whole milk. I was very determined and dead set in my ways not to switch her to formula for a whole 8 days and then switch her to whole milk. It just didn't make sense to me that there was a magic switch that turned on exactly at 11 months that made Emily ready. So after ALOT of discussions with other mom's and our daycare, we decided that mommy instinct ruled out in this case. I knew Emily and her tolerance for dairy has always been good (the girl loves her some cheese and yogurt). So we made the switch slowly. Starting on 10/19, we slowly started adding 1 oz. to each of her bottles for a couple days, then 2, then 3 and so on. In the end, I started earlier than I needed to and I didn't need to add it in that slowly, but she never had any problems. It has made her a little constipated,(Maybe I should have put a warning that this post was about poop too. haha oops) but we are getting through that. I don't regret starting early. I even mentioned it to the doctor when I took her in for her cough and she seemed totally fine with it. Meh. Anyway, the transition went good and Emily has been drinking all whole milk for a few days now. During the transition, she dropped another bottle, so now she is drinking about 12 oz of milk at best. I wish she would drink more, but milk in general just isn't her thing. She has always been below the norm in how many oz she drinks. We will make sure she gets all the calcium she needs and let her lead us in how much and how often she eats. So that is that!