The Trixie Update

(Part 4 of a 4 day series)

The inevitable result of collecting milk 3 times a day into 6 or more storage bottles (depending on overflow) plus transferring milk from the storage bottles to 6 feeding bottles is a lot of dirty milk stuff. Our current arsenal consists of 12 VentAire feeding bottles, about 32 miscellaneous storage bottles, 2 sets of pumping equipment for home and 2 for the industrial behemoth at the office.

We didn’t always have this much equipment. In the beginning there was just a single VentAire as we introduced Trixie to the bottle. But washing out that bottle 3-4 times a day got old fast and so we added another half-dozen to the rotation. We also bought an extra set of pump parts so that Jennifer didn’t have to wash them every time she pumped.

Why was washing such an ordeal? Because everything had to be scrubbed — not just dunked in some soapy water — and in some cases sterilized. The pump parts required daily sterilization consisting of boiling for 20 minutes. The bottle nipples and rubber vents are supposed to be sterilized at least once a week. Having extra parts meant we didn’t have to go through this 5 times a day.

Our new acquisitions put us in pretty good shape while Jennifer eased back into work. However, once her hours and the number of feedings increased, I kept running out of bottles. So we added more. And then Jennifer was issued a set of accessories for the pump at work. And I started running out of bottles again. And so forth. It was around this time that we realized we had so much equipment that it made sense to start running the dishwasher.

At first, I threw the bottles straight into the dishwasher with only a cursory rinse. We quickly discovered that they weren’t coming out clean, especially after they had sat on the counter for a day or so. While the dishwasher had sterilized everything, it didn’t do much good since there was still milk grease on the inside of the bottles. We had to backtrack a little and reintroduce some scrubbing, but finally arrived at the current cleaning protocol:

1) Soak everything in hot water.
2) Hit the bottles and pump parts with a quick brush.
3) Load everything into the dishwasher for sterilization.
4) Unload to the racks to finish drying.
5) Repeat in 48 hours

With all the bottles, caps, nipples, vents, bottle brushes, test tube style drying racks, tubing, connectors, diaphragms, and funnels, our kitchen looks like an industrial laboratory.

So finally, after the collection, the transportation, the inventory management, the feedings, and the sterilization we reach the end of the day. It’s late and the house is quiet once again. Like a factory, we shut down for the night and go to sleep (if Trixie will let us), but know that at 6:00 the next morning, the whistle is going to blow and milk cycle is going start all over again.

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(Part 3 of a 4 day series)

If you were to take a peek in the fridge, you might think we had a tiny little cow out back judging by all the miniature bottles of milk carefully lined up inside. But, of course, we keep no livestock at the apartment, and all those cute little bottles are actually the result of Jennifer’s dedicated, hard work. Still, at a glance it looks like our little operation could qualify for small agribusiness subsidies. Well, maybe if we lived in Wisconsin.

The milk inventory is in a constant state of flux. Sometimes Trixie drinks more (or less) than we expect. Sometimes pumping is less frequent on the weekends. Sometimes I drink one by mistake when I’m trying to grab a beer. On average we try to keep 12 bottles in the milk line — enough to feed her for 2 days. The stock rotation is very straightforward; new bottles go the back of the line.

We use a two-tiered system for milk processing. No-frills bottles are used for collection and storage, and fancier “VentAire” bottles designed to reduce spitting up and discomfort are used for feeding. When it’s milk time, we warm a bottle up to room temperature, transfer it to the VentAire, and Bottle Log it. [Click here to see a demo version of the Bottle Log that you can play with!]

Once logged, the bottle is good for 2 hours. We arrived at this length of time through trial and error. Initially, we thought we were playing it safe by retiring bottles at 3 hours. One day, however, Jennifer taste tested some 2+ hour old milk that Trixie wouldn’t touch. I can’t really describe the face she made, but I can see why Trixie wasn’t biting. As poor Jennifer discovered, the milk had spoiled and spoiled bad.

In retrospect, I guess it shouldn’t really have come as much of a surprise. Jennifer milk is whole-fat, vitamin-rich, and unpasteurized. It’s not designed to exist at room temperature at all, and once it’s out of the fridge and warmed up, the bacteria get to work. So now we draw the line at 2 hours. Keeping track of the time is extremely important because if you forget, you either have to throw the bottle out early or resort to a taste test. Both choices are unpalatable, the latter more so. We use The Bottle Log to track the expiration time in addition to the amount of milk Trixie is drinking.

Currently Trixie is drinking between 5-6 bottles a day. There’s a 6am (prepared by Jennifer for me to deliver and then fall back asleep), 10am, 1pm, 4pm, 7pm (optional because Trixie has probably been breast-feeding) and a 10pm (that puts her asleep for a good 5 hours.) From these 5-6 bottles she’s getting an average of 18-19 oz. a day. This is about 70% of the 26 oz. we estimate she needs daily. The rest comes from breastfeeding.

Finally, Trixie has had all she can drink. She’s sleepy, fat and content. End of story, right? Not quite. Come back tomorrow to find out about clean-up in the final part of our series: After the party’s over.

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(Part 2 of a 4 day series)

3 days? 5 days? 10 days? Exactly how long is the milk good in the fridge? How about at room temperature? How about when it’s warmed up? There is no consensus on this topic. Depending on where you look, you can find that the “safe” range for expressed milk varies from 2-8 days in the refrigerator, and from 3-10 hours at room temperature. We choose to err on the conservative side, with the goal of providing Trixie with the safest, freshest milk possible.

There’s an inherent trade-off between giving Trixie the freshest milk, and keeping a supply in reserve to protect against unexpected demand or interrupted supply. Businesses in the late 90’s learned to deal with this situation by introducing the concept of just-in-time supply chain management, where they reduced the amount of inventory kept locally in favor of trying to better predict inventory needs and improving distribution. Managing Trixie’s milk presents a similar problem.

Jennifer usually pumps more milk than Trixie is going to drink. So we could just let the bottles line up in the fridge, ensuring there will always be a bottle waiting as well as several days in reserve. However, this works against the goal of giving Trixie the freshest milk possible. Plus, we would soon run out of storage bottles, leaving Jennifer nothing to pump into. At the other end of the spectrum, I would like to give Trixie the milk that Jennifer pumped from the previous day, but that would leave me without any reserves if a bottle gets spilled or Trixie has a growth spurt.

In the end, we decided to keep a 2 day supply in the fridge. This puts her milk on the safest end of the storage range, and gives me a 1 day buffer to manage the supply. It might seem like we’re cutting it close, but we’re able to carefully track the milk demand with a web-based “Bottle Log” application [see screen grab below] specially developed to measure her daily milk intake. I can give Jennifer about 36 hours notice if there’s an indication that Trixie’s needs are ramping up.

In addition to making sure Trixie’s needs doesn’t exceed the supply, I have to make sure the supply isn’t outstripping what Trixie can drink. It kills Jennifer to hear this, but I pour bottles out when there is an over-supply and the front bottle is more than 2 days old. It sounds wasteful, but if you give her one old bottle, you are ensuring that all subsequent bottles will be old as the next in line is pushed back, and the one behind it and so forth. These small shifts would rapidly accumulate, leading to 3, 4 or 5 day old milk. So to prevent this from happening, I have to pour some out occasionally. (I just usually don’t tell Jennifer about it — and she appreciates not knowing.)

So while it does take a certain amount of planning to manage the milk supply, there’s a payoff in seeing all those tiny little bottles lined up and ready to go. Come back tomorrow to find out if our small-scale milk operation can apply for federal agribusiness subsidies in Part 3 of our series: The Dairy in the Fridge.

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(Part 1 of a 4 day series)

It’s early. Most people are still asleep and it’s dark outside. But inside Jennifer is already hard at work. The quiet humming and mechanical wheezing stand out against the pre-dawn silence. It’s time to make the milk.

This is what keeps Trixie alive, healthy, and gives her a strong immune system. Welcome to the milk cycle. It begins every morning before work when Jennifer collects about 8 oz. to add to the stock in the refrigerator. She’ll make another collection at the office and once again at home at night.

Why does Jennifer need to pump so much? Trixie requires between 2 and 2.5 oz. of milk per pound of body weight per day. She weighs about 12lbs now so this translates to 24-30 oz. a day. Fortunately, Jennifer doesn’t have to collect this entire amount because she still nurses her after work and during the night.

At home Jennifer uses her Medala Pump-in-style [above]. Without the attached accessories, it’s simply an unassuming black bag. However, the first time I saw the assortment of tubing, valves and conical shields that plug into it, I was perplexed. Witnessing the actual milk collection was equally bizarre.

The hospital-grade pump at work, of which I have only seen photos, is fantastically industrial [below]. If I were handed the machine without explanation, I would go try to find space for it in the control room at Hoover Dam. The tubing and accessory set-up is comparable to the home model, but the piston-driven pump cuts the pumping time by approximately 33% — a boon during busy work hours.

It’s ironic that the process of ensuring Trixie uninterrupted natural sustenance is so mechanical.

Once the milk is collected, the precious cargo is packed up for transport back home. We treat it pretty much like we would a kidney or liver tagged for organ transplant (well, actually, I never treat livers quite as well as the milk.) While this may seem excessive, it doesn’t take long for unpasteurized milk to sour. Given the time and energy that goes into the production and collection, you hate to lose even one bottle.

The end result? A steady supply of fresh milk replenished each and every day providing the raw material for the rest of our story. Come back tomorrow to learn how feeding Trixie is only slightly less challenging than running a distribution warehouse in Part 2 of our series: Bottle Management 101.

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Neither, thanks to your great ideas! We received a TON of them, and I wish they could all be winners, but we had to do some editing (to separate the losers from the winners). So how did we choose? Technically, we had to be able to visualize the costume, and be able to make it in relatively short time. That criteria satisfied, there were just some that struck a particular chord with us, and our personal bias played a part. Of course, there are some we really like but just don’t have the time or energy to make it happen, but don’t feel bad - there’s always next year. Now, Go Vote!

 

include_once "/home/trixie3/public_html/poll/booth.php";
$php_poll->set_template_set(”plain”);
$php_poll->set_max_bar_length(125);
$php_poll->set_max_bar_height(10);
echo $php_poll->poll_process(6);
?>

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Trixie has started to communicate verbally. Now, I’m not talking about when she screams because she’s hungry, tired, dirty or startled. She’s also not even close to being able to talk. What she is doing is repeating phonetic sound clusters over and over and over again. Examples include:

aaahh-ruuu [rhymes with Peru]
hi-eelll [rhymes with Isle]

It’s incredibly interesting to watch her create these sounds and to think about the context. This is the genesis of language. This is the defining trait that sets us apart from every other species on the planet.

She mostly practices these sounds at diaper changing time. She’s comfortable and relaxed because she’s just gone to the bathroom and she’s lying down and doesn’t have to worry about balancing herself. So she’s free to play with her mouth and the noises it can produce. (Listen to a 60 second sample below in QuickTime or MP3 format.)

You can see in her eyes that she wants to communicate. She’ll open her mouth, accidentally make a noise and then try to repeat it. She’ll spend time forming her mouth in different shapes trying to make something happen. Her tongue trembles and wags all over the place, often getting in the way of the noise that she’s trying to get out.

We encourage her by mimicking the sounds she makes and exaggerating the mouth form. It works. She watches carefully, and tries to do it again until she just gets too excited to make any noise except a sort of baby howling.

Do the noises she makes mean anything? I definitely don’t think so. Some sounds are just easier to replicate than others, and these are the ones she repeats. For example, the “ahhh” sound is one of the least sophisticated sounds we use to communicate. Your mouth just basically has to be open; it doesn’t have to be drawn into any particular shape and your tongue doesn’t have to do anything. Long “e” in contrast requires the tongue to be pressed to the bottom of the mouth and the lips are drawn out. Try saying “ahhh” and “eeee” out loud; while you might accidentally stumble across either one, it’s a lot easier to repeat the first.

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Trixie pulled a new trick on us in the bathtub last Thursday. About five minutes in, we catch a fleeting expression on her face and then watch in initial confusion as billowing, mustard-colored clouds rapidly spread throughout the water. Like an octopus or squid employing an ink screen in self defense, I think her plan was to disappear behind the plumes of poop, but alas, the bathtub was neither large enough nor deep enough for her to escape. We had to start the bath over from scratch at that point because the situation was about as sanitary as if we had just rinsed her off in an unflushed toilet.

[A note about baby poop: It’s a liquid. Milk-fed babies do not ever have solid poop (until they switch to regular food.)]

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That’s when we changed Trixie’s 800th diaper. The good news is that her usage rate is slowly and steadily decreasing. The 2-week moving average now hovers just above 7 diapers per day.

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Don’t feel bad about the changing pad cover getting ‘wet’ this morning. Turns out, Trixie was just getting warmed up. She actually had to get a bath after her encore presentation around 10:00 that left her clothes, the sleeping pad, the sheets and my boxers all in the laundry basket.

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