Many mothers do seem to "hit a wall" with regards to pumping for fulltime
separations from their babies at that four/five month mark.  I would
encourage the mother to have an honest and straight forward dialogue with her
caregiver, too, to see what happens in that baby's day that leads to the baby
taking larger quantities of milk bottles, depleting mom's stored supply.
Moms do get really anxious about the baby going short of milk (the threat of
getting abm if there isn't enough pumped/stored milk) in a day.  Does the
caregiver give the baby a bottle to put him to sleep with?  That could lead
baby to drink much more milk than he might otherwise require, as he needs to
suck but he doesn't actually need all that milk with his sucking.  If baby is
nursing to sleep when he is with mom, he probably does lots of "flutter"
sucking after his tummy is full which he just can't do with a bottle of milk.
 With a bottle of milk, it's either suck and swallow or drown in it!   *Some*
caregivers will not be able to take the time to gentle a baby to sleep
without a bottle.  As a former caregiver to a bottle-fed baby, I had a very
hard time getting the baby to sleep (even in a sling) without a bottle,
because she was used to going to sleep in just that way.  This baby was put
to sleep with a bottle from the day she was born and still is, almost two
years later -baby bottle mouth be damned :-(
  My point, and I do have one, is that the baby might be drinking more
bottles of milk with his caregiver than he really needs to have!  It also
does seem possible that the mom can start thinking about solids (around the
middle of the first year of course) being given when baby is with caregiver
to take some of the pressure of Mom to produce X number of ounces in a day.

Lisa Jones, LLLL in Wellington FL

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