Friday, June 09, 2006

Weigh - Feed - Weigh

The lactation center at the hospital where all 3 girls were born was very into doing weigh-feed-weighs if you were at all concerned about how much milk your baby was getting in a nursing session. What you do... you weigh the baby, then you nurse the baby, then you weigh the baby immediately after feeding and that difference between the weight at the end minus the weight before feeding is approximate to what the baby just ate.

For a first-time Mom who is breastfeeding this can be very reassuring. You have a way to figure out how much your baby gets in a nursing session! You are empowered!

I decided to recreate this, but to weigh me to see what gets sucked out of me in the morning... I'm nursing two little ones right now K (2), and T (9.5 months). I've always guessed that in the morning K takes about 8-10 ounces and now T does too.

Yesterday morning, I weighed myself before they nursed and then right after they nursed. I was 1 pound lighter when they were done with me.

I'm estimating that I'm making (on heavy nursing days) about 70 ounces of milk a day. T still mostly just nurses. She sometimes eats a little food, and is getting more into the idea of food, but most of her calories do come from me. (70-80 ounces of milk = about 1500 calories of food... That's why I eat so much and still lose weight. It's all getting sucked out of me.) (I'm guessing T takes in about 40-50 ounces a day and K takes in 10-20 ounces.)

Pretty crazy!

So the official weight loss record since our trip in mid February is 8 pounds. I've lost ~18 (including that 8) since November-ish. I've lost all the weight (plus 3 pounds) I gained when I was pregnant with T. (I also lost ~16-ish after her birth and before November). I gained right around 30 with T, but I was still up 10 pounds from K's pregnancy ('cause I was only 6 months post-partum when I got pregnant with T).

I'm closing in on those last 5 pounds that are so hard to lose. We'll see what happens since I'm still nursing two though.

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