My baby is almost a year old, and I went back to work when she was 8 weeks, which means that I’ve been pumping for… 10 months now?
At first it seemed like a sweet gig. I got to take 20 minute breaks from work twice a day to go sit in a room by myself, plug in my headphones without any fear of looking like a slacker, distract myself from the monotony of office life, and provide food for my daughter.
Early on I was getting 2-3 oz per pumping session, which is pretty modest. Occasionally I got 4-5 in a single session, which I was pretty proud of. I would pump once in the morning, and bring that bottle home with me at lunch. That single bottle would become one or two feedings that afternoon, and then my afternoon pump session would provide for the next morning. Golden. Every so often we’d have a little bit extra, and on Friday I would freeze whatever was left over to build up my fairly substantial freezer stash.
Life was good. But then several things happened all around the same time and threw a monkey wrench into the system. First, Agnes started going to the babysitter a couple of days a week, so she wasn’t at home when I came home for lunch during the day to nurse. Instead I got an extra lunchtime pump session (yay).
Next, my first postpartum period came, and with it, hormones. I’m not the only one whose milk supply absolutely tanks during their period. It takes a second week to build it back up. Then it dips a little bit during ovulation, and by the time it’s back to normal it’s time for my next cycle to start!
Finally, the baby turned 6 months old and started eating solid food. She took to it like a champ! Of course, the more calories she gets from table food, the fewer she needs from breastmilk. And while I’m still convinced that she’s going to be nursing until she moves out for college, (she’s a little milk fiend) it’s become more and more for comfort rather than for nutrition at this point.
So my body is just not making at much milk as it used to because it doesn’t need to. Plus, the pump is never going to be as efficient as a nursing baby anyway.
As a result of all this, from around the beginning of this year, my freezer stash began to dwindle. I was sending 8-12 oz with Agnes to the babysitter every day, and only pumping 2-3 oz at work. So the 90 oz I had saved up quickly evaporated away.
I tried power pumping. I tried extra sessions. I ate my weight in oatmeal and drink my weight in water, but it wasn’t long before I was browsing the aisles at Target to buy my first formula.
Side note: why don’t they tell you how many ounces a container of formula is going to produce? I stood in that aisle in Target for about 15 minutes trying to find where it said how big a “scoop” is! Anyway.
It took me a while to be okay with it, but by now she’s 11 and 1/2 months old and I’m working to convince myself that I’m not even concerned about my milk supply.
As I say, Agnes loves to nurse and so I trust her to keep up whatever supply she feels like she needs from me. But I feel fine sending the formula with her to the babysitter’s and pumping what I can when I’m at work.
To be honest, I’m really only pumping out of a stubborn sense of accomplishment at this point. Today at work I pumped less than half an ounce of breastmilk over the course of the day. That’s obviously a new record low for me. It would honestly make so little difference at this point if I just quit pumping cold turkey, but now I’ve got my project and I set a goal.
If it’s written in my planner, it’s going to get done!
I’m using Peanuts Planner Co’s DR-34 insert “Goals and Rewards”. I’ve used this insert before, and it’s a really fun way to motivate myself to complete a project. I just split my goal into 50 equal parts, and then I get to color in boxes! There’s nothing more motivating than getting to color in a box.
Now that I’ve started working on this insert there’s no way I’m going to stop until I reach my goal. I’ll let you know if I still feel like a human by the end of this.
I made a video a while back about how I was keeping track of my pumping output and stash size. Check it out:
