Jessica, I'll tell you what my local LC told me when I was in EXACTLY your
shoes with my first child.

First, she will be unhappy if you need to leave her, but she won't be in
danger.   Facing real thirst or hunger, she will almost certainly drink
enough to alleviate it, even if she doesn't get much comfort from it.

Second, don't ever force her to drink from the bottle, but do make it a
regular part of her world.   Every day some bottle should appear in her
vicinity, and either she drinks it, if she chooses, or she doesn't.  Either
way she sees that it appears frequently, that it doesn't mean you aren't
coming back, that it doesn't force itself into her mouth but does keep on
passively, quietly, appearing, especially when you don't.

Using these two principles, I and Avital eventually fell into a pattern of
taking maybe a quarter once at a time -- just enough to take the edge off --
apparently hoping each time that I would come home before she needed yet
another quarter once.

She also learned to take other comfort, in snuggling, from her father and
babysitter, which is not in itself a bad thing.

It also meant that my pumped supply didn't have trouble keeping up with her
bottle drinking, since she always drank less when I was away than she would
have nursed in my presence.

And the 6pm nursing, when I came home each night, was the last to disappear.
 But that's fine.

Good luck -- it's so stressful, but not the kind of stress that puts people
in the hospital, if you know what I mean.

Elisheva, NYC

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