Taking time to get the drinks down

So – it turns out Jack has a few traits of mine in the drinking department.

He’s becoming a bit slow in getting his drinks down him and loses interest in the last 40mls or so. He almost needs a break in the drinking, so that he can have a burb or two – then, he eventually gets a second wind and then can sometimes carry on. He really is a chip off the ol’ block!!

As he’s sleeping lots more, and we’re not waking him up at ten-ish, he’s not having as many feed-stops in a given day and, therefore, he’s not having as many opportunities to have the same amount of milk. The idea is/was that he' makes up for the missing milk during the day and has more – but he’s had a few days where he’s dropped the amount of the milk he’s been having in the day. (We know this, as we’re still playing ‘milk-monitor’ at home, which is where recording the amounts that he has comes in useful, as we’re able to see a difference in quantities.)

I know this sounds strange, but if Claire was breastfeeding him directly instead of expressing into bottles, how would we even know if he’s had anything to drink at all? And how many times a day would he need to keep having a bit of milk, as from what I can understand, babies have a bit of milk here and there when breastfeeding (unless I am misinformed) – at the moment, Jack has a whole bottle of 200mls +/- 20mls each time; how do you tell the quantity of milk he would have had by the breast? Measurement of time?? Is that a reliable means of testing?

Feed times are going to have take a bit longer than normal from now on, in order to allow Jack his time to be awkward, and then giving him the time to return to finishing the last little bit off. Not massively longer, but I think beforehand, we’ve just assumed that he doesn’t want the rest of the milk and then we’ve been surprised that he’s not had much to drink!