Since the beginning, Chris has taken the lead in managing the baby’s feeding, from her schedule to what she eats (breast milk vs. formula) to the amounts she has per bottle. He also has been maintaining a very extensive Google Sheet that documents all details of her inputs (feeds), as well as her outputs (poops and pees). Though endless apps exist to track all of these details, Chris insists that he enjoys updating this and that he wants to own the data. Each evening at around 8:30, when we are preparing the baby’s bottles for her 10pm, 3am, and 8am feeds for our night nurse, I am usually pumping or arising from taking a nap to pump, and he is at the kitchen counter, taking a look at all my pumped milk bottles, emptying them into Avent bottles for the baby’s feeds, and figuring out much more I need to pump before we can reach the ideal amounts for her to eat during each of these feeds with the night nurse (or ourselves when she’s not here). I thought about this while getting ready to pump this evening and started laughing to myself, and I told him that he’s basically the Milk Manager.

“Yeah, well, someone’s got to make sure that this shit gets done,” he responded proudly. “There needs to be data integrity and accuracy!”

He doesn’t seem to trust the night nurses when it comes to their reporting on how much the baby has eaten at a feed. This has happened a few times when we have asked how much the baby has eaten, and they have claimed she ate a certain amount, but the difference remaining in the bottles we see is far greater than what it should be if what they said was true. He also, annoyingly enough, doesn’t trust my judgment and nitpicks at me for 5ml here and there.

It’s okay. I’m happy for him to take the lead as Milk Manager. That’s just one less thing I have to think about.