When we took Gavin to Dr Lam for his second pneumococcal jab today, I took the opportunity to grill Dr Lam on a few more subjects. The following is what I learned today - straight from the horse’s mouth…

On separation anxiety (since we will be leaving for Shanghai in a little over two weeks time):

Babies only develop separation anxiety at six months when they start to develop a preference for the people who carry them. Since Gavin will only be four and half months by the time we leave for China, he should be fine without us for a day.

On bottle feeding:

I mentioned to Dr Lam that we were still quite unsuccessful at getting Gavin onto the bottle and I was concerned Gavin would go hungry while we were gone. Dr Lam recommends that we resolve this problem by spoon feeding or cup feeding. The other alternative would be to force the bottle, but he doesn’t think it’s worth the while since we are only going for a day and I will be resuming breastfeeding from the breast once we returned.

On breastmilk storage:

I also mentioned my experience on storing breastmilk. Dr Lam’s breastmilk storage recommendations are as follows:

• Always freeze breastmilk whenever possible and minimise milk storage time at room temperature
• If you intend to keep milk that is not consumed during one feed, it should be refrozen for the next feed, not kept at room temperature or in the refrigerator
• Milk in the freezer should be okay for up to three months
• Maintain sterile conditions when expressing milk for storage (i.e. containers, breast pump, clean breast) to minimise bacteria in the milk

The reason we can’t follow the breatmilk storage advice from the books is because we live in the tropics.