Milkin’ Mama

Or Moo, as R likes to say. For you see, I breastfeed D. Wait, I guess I should put a disclaimer here:  ** This post is all about the wide, wacky world of my boobs since D was born. So if you don’t care for that subject, please turn back now. For the rest of you, let’s break on through…. **

To breastfeed or not is probably one of the first questions on most new moms’ minds. And sometimes, it’s not entirely up to them. The baby may not latch on right, the milk supply may not be there, and honestly, it’s just not for everyone. From the time I found out I was pregnant, though, I knew I would give breastfeeding a shot.

I was never one of those women who was adamant either way on the issue, but I just felt it would be right for me to try. I actually was somewhat expecting it not to go smoothly for me since I am not, how shall we say, well-endowed in the chesticles region. 😉 Why I thought that would be an issue, who knows. I’m weird, you should know that by now.

Anyhoo… Fortunately my worries were quashed practically immediately after D was born, for as soon as they got her out and cleaned off in the delivery room, they positioned her on my chest and she started sucking away. (see, if you were one of those who turned back, that image probably would’ve grossed you out. hence, the disclaimer) I kept thinking what in the world good is that doing? There’s nothing in there, I can’t tell if anything’s coming out, and these things are so little there’s no way they’re providing her any nutrients whatsoever.

The nurses reassured me, though, that even though I wasn’t producing milk yet, the colostrum she was getting those first couple of days (fancy medical term essentially meaning pre-milk) was basically liquid gold to her body and was all she needed. Ok, if you say so. I’ve never done this before so I’ll trust you guys.

Fast forward a couple days to a day or two after we got home from the hospital, so either 3-4 days after she was born, and VAVOOM! These babies filled up like you would not believe, and I was shocked to see myself in the mirror that day. I even made R come into the bathroom to take a look, because it’s nothing he’d ever seen with me before. 😉 I said look at these! Don’t they look like implants?! They totally did too – perfectly round, just stuck right on there all perky for the world to see. Hey, I could get used to this; now I see why some chicks get the surgery.

And ever since then, I have been Mama Moo. R jokes that we should just go up to the farm and he could hook me up to the cows’ milking machine. Um, NO! I don’t want them to get ripped off, thankyouverymuch.

Everyone has their own personal reasons for choosing whether or not to breastfeed their babies, but my main criteria were thrice:

1. It’s free
2. It’s the best thing for her, so if I am capable of producing it then why not give it to her?
3. It’s been easy and pretty convenient for me

Oh real nice, SM, you decided whether or not to breastfeed based on economical reasons? Um, yes. Please revisit #1 – it’s FREE. Have you priced formula lately? That shit is expensive! So if I am physically able to provide my daughter my milk at no added cost to our family, why wouldn’t I?

And I know formula is not harmful to babies (duh, or else it wouldn’t be out there), but I have never heard anyone say that formula is better for an infant than breast milk. I do personally believe there is some truth to the saying “Breast is Best”, but again, I’m not one of those staunch exclusive breastfeeding moms who looks scornfully down upon anyone who formula feeds. No way, none of that crap going on here. This is just what I chose.

And as for #3 – breastfeeding has worked easily and comfortably into our schedule. For the first couple months that’s all she did was nurse, no solids yet. So it was great – she’s hungry, I’m full, let’s do this. And believe me, when I say full, I mean FULL. Man, if she didn’t eat for one reason or another or I didn’t pump for too long at a time we were talking some serious swelling going on.

Remember the implant day? Yeah, they tend to get back to that status after too many hours of no sucking, whether it be from D or the milk machine. And dude, it hurts! I never would have thought boobs full of milk would be a painful thing, just more like a squishy water balloon or something, but boy was I wrong. The only thing I can even think to relate it to, and having no personal physical experience with this I can’t confirm for sure, but is when a guy hasn’t, well, um, you know…. released?

The one thing I really haven’t had to deal with is nursing in public, thankfully. For the most part we’ve timed outings so she’s either fed before or after we go, or we take pumped bottles for while we’re gone, or whatever. If we go to friends’ or relatives’ houses I’ll obviously just nurse her there if we stay long enough, too.

And I have nursed her in the back seat of the car, but never just right out in the open in a public setting. I do have a nursing cover for such instances, but I still think I’d feel a little weird. I’m pretty private like that, and I don’t really want people watching when I’ve got things hanging out, cover or not. In fact, the only people I’ve actually nursed in front of are R, my mom, and one of R’s sisters-in-law. They’ve got kids, they don’t care. 🙂

I was a little anxious to see how pumping was going to go once I went back to work, but so far it’s been no trouble at all. I have one of the good double electric pumps, so I only have to do it once a day, and it only takes about 20 minutes total from the time I step off to the time I’m back at my desk.

And I don’t make a big deal about it with fanfare and an announcement that I’m going to go relieve by breasteses or anything like that, I just discreetly step away and return. I figure if anybody has a problem with it, screw them. D comes first now in every aspect of my life, and anyone with kids (which is practically everyone with whom i work) should recognize and respect that.

It works out perfectly, too, because we send the two bottles I pump at work each day to daycare with D for the next day. Actually, I pump 3 bottles a day, because in the morning I need to pump the side on which she doesn’t eat, too. Ok, so 3 bottles go to daycare, and then sometimes we get a backlog so I’ll freeze the morning ones. This kid gets lots of milk. 🙂

I actually started pumping and freezing milk a while before I went back to work, just in case my supply dwindled too soon, or pumping during the workday ended up being a bust (ha! no pun intended), or things just didn’t work out for whatever reason and we would need some back-up reserves. Fortunately we needed not worry there either.

When I said R says Moo about me, he’s not that far off. I seriously make enough milk for a couple babies. We have a freezer-full of bags in the basement, a freezer door-full of bags in the kitchen, and a couple bottles chilling in the fridge on a daily basis. Yep, I’ve got milk.

I’m planning on breastfeeding D for the whole first year, which, judging by how well my supply has lasted for almost 8 months so far, should be no problem whatsoever. It’s what I’m going to do when I want to stop that kind of frightens me. I don’t get quite as engorged after long periods of no relief as I did in the early months, but these suckers still get quite enlarged and painful if I do go too long.

So what am I supposed to do when it comes time to stop if I’m still producing this much? Do I just pump little bits at a time less frequently to trick my body into thinking I don’t need to make that much? Do I suck it up and just sit in pain for a few days until they go down? (that last notion scares the shit out of me, because i’m not kidding when i keep saying these things hurt when they’re full!) Eek, we shall see.

One nice side effect of BFing that I’ve experienced is that it has served as my *exercise* for going on 8 months now. I’ve read that it burns like 500+ calories a day, depending on how much you produce, and I believe it. Without substantially changing my diet at all (and actually eating crappier than usual sometimes) I’ve been able to lose all the weight I gained during my pregnancy and then some, and I credit 100% of that weight loss to BFing.

I haven’t worked out regularly since shortly after D was born, and even then I was just taking her for walks. Before that, it was a good couple months since I’d followed my normal workout schedule, so it’s pushing a year now that I haven’t exercised like I’m used to.

I haven’t gone this long without regular exercise since high school, and I really need to get my butt back in shape. I’m still contemplating trying a half marathon this summer, so I need to do some serious work to get my cardiovascular stamina back up. I’m not gonna lie, I am a big fan of the BFing weight loss, but I really am wimpy right now in the fitness category.

Oh, and I forgot to mention – nursing releases some hormone that has a calming effect on both baby and mom, so yeah, I’ll take that too. And now that I think about it, never once have I felt nervous or antsy or rushed or unsettled at all while breastfeeding D.

Moo.