Using Your Pump
We have a teal Moog Infinity EnterLife pump, it has the autoprime feature. There are some settings, but it’s always too loud, even on quiet mode.
The only useful setting is if you want it to beep when the feeding is done or not.
We flush it by maxing the rate to 600 and letting it go wild with clean water. We double filter our tap water through a zero pitcher and then a zero countertop tank.
Our surgeon said we could aim for a 30 minute feed but our dietitian said 45 minutes is more realistic.
You can use any formula in the pump, the teal one is formula only, the orange model also does breast milk.
Change your bag every day. We soak our extension in vinegar every night and change it out every week for a new one.
We keep our bag & pump in a backpack customized for this usage, but it is still sometimes difficult to keep the tubes from getting kinked when we move it around.
When we left the NICU, the hospital had us on a schedule of 5 “bolus” feeds per day plus an 8 hour continuous overnight feed. Under advisement from our surgeon, we eliminated the overnight continuous feed and moved to 6 larger feeds per day. Then we moved to 7 slightly smaller feeds, then to 8. The total volume per day has steadily risen the entire time, that has always been the primary goal, approximately 120 kcal/kg for a newborn but we are usually closer to 100, she is a big kid.
We raise the dose & rate almost every single day, sometimes +1/+1, sometimes as high as +10/+10 or more, and often changing each a different amount. Our goal is a 45 minute feed or faster. At time of writing this, we are at 90 dose and 104 rate, currently raising +1D/+3R, transitioning to start raising +4D/+12R starting tomorrow, for 5 days, with a goal of 110 dose and 165 rate, which translates to just about 120 kcal/kg with eight 45 minute feeds. She is 10 weeks old and about 6 kilograms. Feel free to check my math, the formula ratio should be 24 calories per ounce.