40 hours a week, every week, for 2.5 years?
I haven’t had a child, but from looking around google, I’m seeing various estimates. A session can vary from 10 minutes to an hour, and can be needed 8 times per day (every day, not just weekdays).
Another site is claiming about 1,800 hours per year is spent feeding (a full time job is about 2,000 per year)
So based on that it seems very plausible, actually. Especially if you have more than one child, which is not uncommon.
Thanks for your comment. Excellent point about weekends as indeed, there isn’t a day off.
It’s often more than 8 in the early stages, it’s 8-12 feeds a day. For my son he was a slow eater (or perhaps I’m a slow producer, or both!), needing 45+ min feeds 9-11 times a day. Going down the middle at 10 feeds a day and conservatively saying all feeds were 45 mins, that was a 52.5 hour “work week” for me in the first 4 months. Realistically, it was probably closer to 60. (This doesn’t factor in cluster feeding, see my other comment in the thread for more info on this).
Thankfully, they start getting more efficient and drinking quicker as they grow, and ofc once they start solid food they have other sources of nutrition. So that would indeed bring the average down to around a 38 hour working week over 2 years with one child.
Several sources support the math that a conservative estimate is 1800 hours in a year (all babies are different ofc). A 40-hour a week job with 3 weeks of vacation, is 1960 hours a year. It’s possible that the woman in this tweet could have fed multiple babies with the number she calculated.
The above number is literally just the time spent physically feeding your child. This doesn’t include the time to pump extra milk, maintain any equipment or pumps; washing and sterilising pumps and bottles, storing expressed milk safely, etc. However, some of this can be helped out by others.
Personally, I’ve found that I’ve spent countless hours on other areas too. Such as researching and purchasing pumps, nursing clothes, vitamins, creams, ointments, physical aftercare (breastfeeding HURTS until you’re “broken in”), breast pads, storage equipment, support devices etc. I’ve also researched, planned and prepared a diet for myself that promotes the best possible milk for my child. Not to mention the time spent “troubleshooting” when you are having problems; reading books, participating in forums, classes, parenting groups, travelling to and from to attend lactation consultations at your hospital, etc. Thankfully, some of this I’ve been able to multitask and achieve while being stuck under a feeding child. 😊
A major factor in such a surprisingly high number of hours per year is something called cluster feeding. Multiple times throughout your breastfeeding journey, typically before big growth spurts or developmental leaps in your child, they will have a period of intense, non-stop feeding. This is to get extra milk ready for their leap and also to signal to their mother that her milk supply needs to increase and/or change its contents (breast milk is different for different aged babies). Cluster feeding can last for several days. My personal experience with this was being trapped on the sofa feeding for hours and hours barely able to go to the bathroom or get myself enough food and drink, I definitely spent more time feeding in a few days of a cluster than I typically did for a couple of weeks combined.
Welp, this ended up a whole damn essay. I hope it helped to demonstrate the time and energy many mums put into breastfeeding.
TLDR; There’s a reason rich ladies of yonder past hired wet nurses to feed their kids - it’s hard work. :)
As a very rough estimation, I probably breastfed my youngest more than 3,000 hours over the span of 19 months. It was a ton of work and determination.
Well done you, Mama! It certainly does require a lot of determination. I’m still going with my firstborn at 25 months but we are currently weaning (he is not happy with me).
