The Mental Mindgames of Measuring Milk
When my son was eight weeks old, Medela, Lansinoh, and Maymom were playing mind games with me. I was breastfeeding and pumping, and every time I’d move milk from a tube to bag or a bottle, the volume measurement would change. Sometimes dramatically — 1.5 oz is very different from 2 oz when you’re feeding a tiny human.
I talked with some other new moms who had the same frustration (well documented in our WhatsApp group). So, four months later when I saw a post on NextDoor from a mom who had tried more than 20 different bottles and was giving them away, I did what a new mom should not do when she’s recently returned to work: I decided to collect some data.
I picked up the bag of bottles from the lovely neighbor, collected a few others from friends, and added my own to the sample. Equipped with 25 bottles and bags, two glass graduated cylinders ordered from Amazon, and vague memories from doing bench research in college for a year, on August 9, 2019, I spent an entire evening measuring water volumes. (Which means it only took another six-plus months to finally getting around to sharing my findings.)
