Bringing the R.I.N.D.S. backup system online

Chloe has graduated Rice Academy and moved on to Oat High. Last weekend she suddenly seemed to understand how to eat; she swallowed the food, then gulped it greedily and reached for the spoon. We gave her another couple of days with rice cereal, and now she's on oatmeal. We figure once she's past the oatmeal gauntlet, it's time to start vegetables and fruits.

This is good, because I went to daycare at lunch today (as I usually do) and Miss Mindy told me that Chloe had already had two bottles. "I’m really sorry," she said. "But she was screaming and screaming. And after her first one she was already screaming, like she hadn't had enough. She cried herself to sleep."

"She's a growing girl. Maybe four ounces isn't enough," said Miss Linda, who was nearby.

"She's at four and a half," I replied, because it's annoyed me that they always write "4 oz" on the daily sheet, even when they tell me she drained her bottle, or that she left an ounce.

"Have you considered cereal?" she suggested. "Just a spoonful twice a day?"

"We're already doing that," I said, then realized she meant in the bottles. We've been told not to do this, and now that she's working on cereal by the spoonful it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. Also I don't know why adding cereal would be better than just adding more milk. Also I resent the implication that we've been starving her for weeks. She's been at daycare having these same bottles for the past few weeks and done just fine with them. And yes, she's a growing girl (16 pounds 4 ounces and 25 inches as of Monday's checkup), so eventually she'd outgrow this size, but we don't feed her bottles at home so how would we know today was the day to move her up?

(Actually, I guess I can excuse that. They're not used to having a breastfed baby; their other two get formula, and one gets a bottle as thick with cereal as they can make it per his mother's request. It probably doesn't occur to them that I wouldn't know how big a bottle she needs day by day.)

So she'll start getting five ounces, and starting next week we should be able to send along some jars of baby food in case the bottles aren't enough. Getting her on solids was already making me excited, and now I'm doubly pleased. Moving up to five ounces means the R.I.N.D.S. need to go back into training--I've been keeping up with her daily daycare feedings by pumping, but just barely, and we've been using the occasional bottle from the frozen stash. I had stopped pumping after every feeding at home, which has been lovely, but it looks like the break is over until production has increased. (The beatings shall continue until morale improves.) So having solids as a second food supply will be a good thing.