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/
