My New Favorite Number

18.

That's how many ounces my sweet baby girl gained in TEN days! So bad math be damned, it worked. I asked the pediatrician whether I should alter the recipe so that the intended 28 calories/ounce is actually obtained and he said no, because he actually wouldn't want to see Ellie gaining weight any faster than she gained this week! So we'll stick with 24 calories per ounce, but I'm going to use an actual 24 cal/oz recipe because I enjoy precision (even though the lack of precision is obviously working fine for Ellie). He said he didn't necessarily care about the precise number of calories, so long as her growth is appropriate. This, to me, is the most logical approach.

He also said that since her growth is so great with the added fortification, there's really no reason I can't add in some more flexibility with the number of times per day that I breastfeed her. I noted that during the week I would really only get one more BF'ing session in anyway, so I was less concerned about that, but on the weekend, my preference would be to breastfeed her most of the time if possible, and he said, "so if she doesn't grow as much on the weekends, so what? She's growing plenty during the week to make up for it." I love him!

Finally, he said he would leave it to my discretion as to whether I even need to follow up with a GI doc at all at this point. He'll see Ellie again in a week to make sure she's still on track, and if she's really struggling at that point, he'll help me get in to see Dr. D. But otherwise, he's not super-stressed about continued follow up with the specialist, as we seem to have found the answer we need for the moment.

Meanwhile, the scale I ordered for Ellie arrived, so that I can make sure she's taking in enough when she's breastfeeding. I weighed her on it when we got back from the doctor's office to make sure that it's accurate and then just for fun, I weighed Sam and Abby, too!

Sam: 11 pounds 1 ounce! (Admittedly, he had just eaten, so he's probably actually a little under 11 pounds)
Abby: 9 pounds 14 ounces!
Ellie: 8 pounds 10 ounces!!!!! (can you believe it!?)