The Formula Diet

For four months, Ellie pumped breast milk. I encouraged her to pump as much as possible so we could create a stockpile of frozen excess in six-ounce plastic bags for future use. When the twins were newborns, they ate little and Ellie had nothing to do but recover from pregnancy and pump, so I could freeze three or four bags every day. As the twins ate more, I could only freeze a couple bags a day. When Ellie returned to work, it dropped to a bag a day. When Ellie started getting sick of pumping, it fell to a bag every other day. When we ran out of freezer space, I encouraged her to slow down. The end result is a chest freezer filled with about 200 six-ounce bags of breast milk, and not much else.

For the past couple weeks, we’ve been holding steady with Ellie pumping exactly how much the twins ate every day. A few days ago, everything changed as Ellie stopped pumping. This occasion came several days after Ellie said she would stop pumping, but she continued pumping “one last time.” Apparently accumulating a pound of breast milk in your boobs is a painful sensation that can only be relieved by pumping. This makes pumping a difficult habit to break, like heroin except heroin addicts at least have Methadone to help ease the transition.

Ellie is officially done pumping now though, which means I need to break into my frozen hoard. To make it last as long as possible, I’m only feeding them breast milk for two of their six daily feedings. I use formula for their other four daily feedings. They have to eat the special* hypoallergenic formula known as Nutramigen or Alimentum depending on the manufacturer due to their sensitivity to cow’s milk. The twins like this stuff much less than the breast milk, possibly due to its unique “moldy cabbage” odor. They eat their formula slower than the breast milk, but I compensate for their reduced sucking by using the fast flow nipples with holes big enough to pass a pacifier if need be; the formula dribbles into their mouths regardless of if they suck, and they’d better start swallowing if they want clear breathing passages.

We should have enough milk frozen to stay on this breast milk-formula-formula pattern for the next couple of months. At that time they’ll be a couple months less fragile and better prepared to deal with the inevitable colds that will come knocking without breast milk’s immune system boost. They’ll also be starting solids by then, so they’ll still be drawing nutrition from sources besides formula. Of course the solids I plan on feeding include spinach and broccoli, which will make an all-formula diet seem mighty tasty. We’ll be out of breast milk at that point, so they won’t have much choice in what they eat. It could make feedings more challenging, but at least I’ll be able to dig a pound of hamburger out of the bottom of our freezer again.

* When I say “special” I mean “expensive.”