I Thought I Was Saving with Breastmilk

The Other Half

I had full faith in it.

I have been doing this for two weeks now and I would squirm with secret pleasure knowing that I could give my son something of me (even though I am not by his side) every other hour of his every day.

And what’s not to love?  What I am giving him – breastmilk – is natural and healthy and free.

Did I mention free?

I cannot lie.  The free is what gets me to smile most days.  From the time I took care of my eldest (she’s now 9) to today, baby formula has become so alarmingly expensive.   Add diapers to that and little pleasures like restaurant trips may have to disappear.  (and they cannot disappear, I need my little pleasures)

So I religiously pump.

One Saturday, I noticed that the formula I just bought (in case baby is hungrier than usual and the ref was out of breastmilk) was almost all gone.  I asked his nanny how and why and she told me that she puts formula to my breastmilk.  For about two weeks to the day.  And wasn’t she supposed to do so?

My breastmilk as water for the formula.

I almost went ballistic.  Almost. (I stopped myself because good help is hard to find these days).  I asked her how in the world could she think that and tried to think over and over in my head what instructions I gave, where I had gone wrong, what she previously said she did (one time in the past, I asked her to demonstrate heating up the breastmilk because I suspected something was not being done right) and whether formula figured in her explanation or mine, or (again) where I had gone wrong.

She explained that my baby did not like the taste of the thawed breastmilk so she adds the formula.

Something like pain shot in my heart.

And then I realized the little clues – my baby is chubbier when breastmilk-fed babies should be leaner, his Wilkins mineral water was getting depleted, and of course, the formula is almost all gone.

And then there is the issue of the too much protein that my baby has ingested for the past two weeks.

I do not know what my lesson here is.  I thought I was saving with breastmilk.  I was not, but it was not the breastmilk that was the problem but human error, and I am sure it is partly mine.

Now I think the nanny is doing it right, but what happened has given me doubts.  I will probably install a videocamera to monitor them, not for anything, but just to make sure that my baby, my precious, is okay in her hands.

The lesson here I guess is to be thorough, to refuse to assume that people know because they don’t some of the time, and you cannot leave that “some of the time” to chance.

Article by Issa. Art by Danvic.  Copyright 2010.
Website: www.YouWantToBeRich.com
Email: issa@youwanttoberich.com

[ad name=”HTML-2 Subscribe 2 – After Article”]

[ad name=”HTML-2 Blogher Before Comment”]

[ad name=”HTML-1 MoneyDoctors”][ad name=”HTML-3 Logolopolis”]

[ad#Google Adsense-1]