Day: May 11, 2011

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Milkin’ mama no more (almost)

As you know, D decided to stop nursing a few weeks ago. And since then I’ve kind of been struggling with wanting to keep up my supply to get her to the 1 year mark on my milk vs. dreading pumping. I truly enjoyed nursing her, but I detest that pump. Not that it hurts or anything like that, but I’m just sick of doing it. I am now down to pumping once a day, in the morning before work, and I think even that may be phased out soon. So I’m only producing 2 bags of milk for her each day instead of the 4 I was making right after she stopped nursing, so we’ll see how long I feel like keeping that little bit up. I’m pretty confident that when I decide to stop now it won’t be as big an issue as I had originally feared. My body has learned to gradually produce less, so my nightmare of exploding boobs fortunately won’t be coming true. It’s pretty cool how nature just kind of takes over. Good thing, because you know I’ve been clueless throughout this whole pregnancy/birth/baby process. 🙂

At D’s 9 month appointment last week I tried to get her doctor to relent and say it was fine to switch to cow’s milk right now, but she just started laughing. 1 year is the steadfast guideline, but our pediatrician is so cool she wasn’t overly concerned about it (if anyone is looking for a fantastic ped, let me know. i highly recommend Dr. C). She said it’s definitely not her recommendation, but we can switch her now since she’s pretty close if that’s what works. I told her how I’m so sick of pumping, and she said well then stop. Ok, but I really don’t want to have to switch D to formula for only a month or two if I stop pumping and we use up the rest of the stockpile of frozen milk, and she said she honestly wouldn’t be surprised if D wouldn’t even take formula now. I never even thought about that, but her doctor said oh yeah, it tastes totally different. Ok, so what if I stop pumping and the frozen stash is gone AND D won’t take formula? Then what? Ok fine, then you can switch her to cow’s milk. But make sure you give her vitamins if you do switch, because the lack of iron in cow’s milk is the big reason babies shouldn’t drink it before age 1. Cool, that’s the answer I was looking for in the first place. 😉

She was right about the formula too. Sweet! So now I don’t have to lie to her at D’s 1 year appointment about when we switched to cow’s milk – D really didn’t take the formula. 🙂 She gave us a container of it to try so I didn’t have to buy one, I made D a bottle of it the next morning to test it out, and sure enough, she took one drink and then refused it. Maybe she wasn’t hungry, you say? No, I heated up a bottle of my milk for her right after that, which she promptly gobbled down.

Sooo, long story short, I may soon be a milkin’ mama no more, well before my goal of the 1 year mark. That’s ok. D’s happy and healthy, I will be very happy when I don’t have to pump anymore, and even her doctor said that it was very nice of me to keep pumping this long after she stopped nursing. She said 9 months so far is great, and it’s still continued past that. So I’m not worried. We’ll have about 1-2 weeks’ worth of frozen milk to use once I’m done for good, so D should be able to make it to at least 10 months on the Mommy nectar.

My other reason for writing this post was to guide you current or soon-to-be milkin’ mamas to a great post I found today on another blog I follow. Jenny from What the Blog? (over there —->) opened up a thread today for breastfeeding moms to leave comments with their suggestions/recommendations/tips for others based on their own experiences. I know every woman’s body is different, and one mom’s BFing must-haves may do nothing for someone else, but I thought it was a really good resource for anyone new to the milky boob game. She just has an excellent blog in general, too, so check it out:  http://jennandtonica.com/2011/05/for-to-be-breastfeeding-mothers/

 

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Take me out to the ball game

Last night was D’s first Brewers game, and she had a ball! We seriously could not have ordered a more well-behaved baby for the evening. I picked her up early from daycare so I could get home, bathe her, and get a quick jog** in before we went, and thankfully she cooperated and napped for an hour right before we left. We got to the stadium at 5:30 and didn’t leave until just before 10:30, which is a good 2-3 hours past her bedtime, but she was awake and happy the entire time. I figured her 6 teeth weren’t quite sufficient to handle a brat, so I fed her some delicious jars of turkey and mixed veggie dinner and peas and rice (both organic, kudos to Roundy’s) while R fired up the grill. She was all done and ready to soak in all the tailgating action by the time the adult food was ready, so that worked out perfectly.

We had ridiculous seats – 4th row, directly behind the Brewers on-deck circle, which made for some great viewing pleasure. R snagged a Fielder-foul-tipped ball that was tossed into our section by one of the bat boys, so he graciously gave that to D as a souvenir of her first game. And then I prevented her from putting it immediately into her mouth to try and lick off all that good diamond dirt. 🙂 Shockingly enough, I caught another one later in the game, which I gave to our friend S. No need to be greedy. It was cute, too – R took D over to the guest relations booth shortly after we got there, and they printed up a little “My First Brewers Game” certificate for her. It wasn’t anything fancy, we just fill in her name and date and stuff, but still a nice gesture for the littlest Brewers fans on their first appearances.

It was an awesome night all around. Good weather, the roof was open (which made for some chilly wind by the end of the night, but better than rain), great friends were able to join us, the Brewers won, and little D once more made us so proud with her smiley, happy, easy-going spirit. She had made friends with everyone in the seats around us by the time we left. R joked on the way home that maybe we should just stop at one – D is so good we have to have used up all our good fortune in this kid. Will all of the bad stuff we’ve so far avoided with her be channeled into the next one if we give her a sibling? Or is she just saving it all up for the teenage years? Oh please god, not option #2!

The only lowlight of the night came at the end of the game – we were hoping to get a picture of D with R’s cousin who plays for the Brewers on the field, but he didn’t come over our way after the team victory handshake. R was pretty bummed, because he thought his cuz for sure saw us a couple times during the game, so I felt bad for him – I knew how much he wanted that picture of little D on the field with a Brewer to cap off her first game. Hopefully sometime this season we’ll be able to get one to make up for it.

I had to snap a picture to document D’s first baseball game, but it was on my phone so it’s not the highest quality. R took many, many more on his good camera, so I’ll have to get some of those up here once they’re uploaded.

I love the Brewers!

 

Go Brew Crew!

**run stats – 1.44 miles, 11:23, 7:55 pace. holy smokin’ fast! i’m not going to count that as my normal pace because it’s a really short route and i was in a hurry last night, knowing we had to leave shortly after i got done. i am encouraged, though. i’m going to try a 5k route later this week, so i’m sure that will be more along the lines of my 9:00+ pace.