Saturday, January 12, 2008

Update to the pumping situation:

I realize that I had written that I was going to stop pumping completely. Well, that didn't happen. But what did happen is that I quit trying to pump every three hours during the day and have gone to a three times a day total schedule. So what I do is get up in the a.m. and pump (after I've nursed Benjamin on and off during the night), then four to four and one-half hours later I pump again, and then four to five hours after that I pump one more time. That's it. No pumping at night (which is a time that I really, really despise the breast pump, for whatever reason). No more freaking out and stressing about whether or not I have enough milk. No more being stuck at the house because I'm scared I might not be able to pump if I go out.

I'm still able to get anywhere from 16 to 24 oz. of breast milk in a day this way, so Benjamin's diet can remain majority breast milk (there are some nights where the last bottle is formula-only because he's such a piggy little eater that he went through the entire breast milk stash earlier in the day), but even if my supply goes down and we end up doing more formula than breast milk I will still feel good about the fact that for three solid months he was mostly breast fed.

Bottom line is that doing things this way makes me a much happier, less stressed out Mommy. I'm feeling good about things. That's important.

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