Please help!

[Anonymous]

OP, when I had my first baby and my first nanny, it took me awhile to figure out how to be a MB. When I started working again (at 6 months), it got easier. She is likely feeling strange and guilty that she's home, but someone else is there to soothe her baby.

Some things that helped me start to separate enough to let the nanny do her job: the nanny always offered to take him for a diaper change after I fed him. She would plan to take him for walks regularly. She would occasionally suggest that I take a nap or go out myself.

Is the MB pumping in preparation for going back to work? You should also point out to her that a lot of babies have trouble taking a bottle if they've been exclusively breastfed. She needs to start letting her baby practice now. If she can get a bottle ahead, you can try to feed the baby while she pumps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is horrible advice OP, ignore it! Breast feeding is good for a baby, and a mother who has made the choice to do so will not take kindly to a suggestion that she stop. Just give it time and keep doing a good job.

BF is fine if you SAHM. It seldom works if you work. Its unfair to the nanny too! MB can barely produce enough so you are rationing it out to a hungry baby. Its harder to prepare. You have to warm it a certain way. Eventually, MB will need to supplement with formula. Its not good for the baby to keep going back and forth. Once supplementing was introduced, I would just dump the BM in the sink and bring my own container of formula to feed formula all day.

If I caught you dumping my breastmilk you would be fired immediately. This is outrageous.

+1.

Going back to work does not mean one can no longer produce breastmilk! Rates of success are lower for employed moms than for SAHMS, but it is certainly not impossible. I pumped successfully while working for almost a year, and while my production did slowly drop off, my baby ate 90-75 percent of his fluids in breastmilk for his first 11 months. So it is not impossible or rare, as you suggest.

Anyway, pumping took about 2 hrs out of my day, gave me a sense of connection to my child, and provided him some additional health benefits. So if we had become aware that a caregiver, whose express and only responsibility was taking care of DS's needs, was unceremoniously dumping out the breastmilk, I would indeed have been furious.

And puzzled. Why would you do this? It is so unnecessary. It's not hard to handle breastmilk. Take it out of the fridge, drop it in warm water bath for 2-3 mins, and feed. This is "too hard for the nanny"? If you thought that was too hard, I'd wonder about your care in preparing formula in a sanitary manner, too.