My daughter is nearly 6 months old and frankly I'm tired of pumping twice a day at work. I've resolved to drop a pumping session and provide just two 4oz bottles of breastmilk for her to enjoy while I'm away. I figured Daddy or her daycare provider can give her a bottle of formula once a day as a supplement. Sounds like a plan, right?
Not when your daughter can smell the Enfamil a room away. We've tried giving her bottles made up of half expressed milk and half formula, but she gags, bawls and pushes it away. Today my husband called me to report she'd refused a bottle made up of 3/4 breastmilk to 1/4 formula. I could hear her wailing in the background. We're dipping into my frozen stockpile of milk to get through this transition, but my hopes of part-weaning her at 9 months so that I can give up pumping altogether are fading fast.
Have any other mothers dealt with this? Do infant formula brands taste substantially different? Is it true soy formula is sweeter than the regular cow's milk stuff? I want to continue the nursing relationship, but on my terms. I don't want to be a slave to flanges, valves and cold packs--particularly as I'm finding it harder and harder to duck out of meetings to pump.
Cross-posted to Chicago Moms Blog
