Back To Work Planning

Back To Work?

One of my most popular follow-up visits is for back to work planning! Ideally, families have been moving along with breastfeeding, have practiced pumping and baby has practiced taking a bottle, and now they are ready to return to the office. I tend to get a lot of questions like - "Will I make enough milk?" "How do I know how much to send?"

Also, really common - "Daycare is saying to send more milk, but I am not producing as much as they are asking for! What do I do now? Does my baby need formula?"

Sometimes, in these scenarios, the parent IS producing enough, and some tweaks can be made to the management of what is sent, and the misunderstandings related to appropriate volumes for breastmilk vs formula. I like to look at the whole scenario - is baby being paced fed a slow flow bottle? how many total feeds are they taking these days? are solids in the mix, or on the horizon? The full picture helps us to see if more milk being sent is an appropriate request! I want to encourage everyone to take a step back and look at the full picture before jumping to "my milk supply is too low!" And, if it truly is lower than expected, there are strategies for that as well. The approach to these very common questions is not one size fits all!