November 16, 2008

Let me piggy back a moment on my post about my wonderful milk supply. I figure out, quite on accident, the other day something I thought I'd share.

As you all know, the boys had some substantial feeding issues in the NICU. Their feeding issues were likely what caused them to be hospitalized for such a long period of time. Their neonatologist highly suspects that BOTH boys likely have a true milk protein intolerance. I have REALLY cut milk products from my diet. I do still eat it when it's mixed into things, but no longer drink milk, eat straight up cheese, yogurt, or ice cream to help them out.

So...SHOULD the boys be switched NOW to formula (which obviously we won't be since I'm still happily pumping for them and it's going well..but just pretend if you will), we'd likely need to put them on Nutramigen, the hypoallergenic formula. It ONLY comes in small cans, that cost about $25 each, and make 113 oz (I looked up how much they made on the Enfamil website). Well, let's do a little touch of math here:

Evan eats 4.5 oz 8 times per day equalling 36 oz per day
Alec eats 4 oz 8 times per day equalling 32 oz per day
Both boys then eat 68 oz total per day right NOW

Nutramigen cans make 113 oz, so figuring on the LOW side, it would last us 2 days (really less than two days). Still, 68 oz per day for 30 days is 2040 oz per month, divided by the 113 oz that the can of the Nutramigen makes makes our need sit at about 18 cans. 18 cans at approximately $25 per can puts us as ROUGHLY $450 per MONTH of formula.

Holy friggin crap. Now...if THAT is not incentive to keep pumping, NOTHING is. That's on TOP of the diapers and wipes that we go through in truckloads.

I'll keep pumping if for no other reason than I cannot fathom $450 in formula per month on the LOW side. Holy moses.
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Ohhhh and I didn't have a chance to weigh the boys today. I like to do every other day, but we had a hectic, busy day and I like to weigh them before feeding and well...today it just didn't work out. Tomorrow I'll weigh our little pork chops. Any guesses that Alec COULD reach the 8 lb mark and Evan the 10 lb mark???? You should SEEEEEEE them now...they're positively plump. Even Alec has CHEEKS now!!! He's soooooooooooo cute.