Milkin' It

Breastfeeding. Nursing. Feeding straight from the tap. Call it what you want, but it has always been love-hate for Megan and me. While I loved the fact that I got to hold my baby close and do something that only her and I could ever do together, it hasn't been an easy past 2 1/2 months in the breastfeeding department. Megan came out sucking and with a healthy appetite, also latched on fairly well right away. However, I nursed through a big crack in each nipple for over 6 weeks, engorgement, leaking/spraying and supporting the nursing pad companies, trying bed pillows, Boppy, and the BrestFriend nursing pillow hoping to find the best support for Megan, trying to hold Megan still as she squirmed and wrenched her head while eating, and talking with lactation and La Leche League members about other issues as they came up. And after all that, I return to work and my baby girl gets a pretty strong bottle nipple preference... That's my girl, already finding efficiencies and not doing more work than she absolutely has to!

Pumpin' It. Early on, John and I agreed that the most important thing was that Megan got the breastmilk, no matter what the means were. I didn't want to battle with her any more in trying to get her to keep eating from me. I only see her so many hours of the day now and want to make all of them special and struggling over food was just not an option. I had this in my mind for a while, but after one week back to work we decided that I would exclusively pump and she would get the milk in the bottle. So far so good and the two of us couldn't be happier! With Megan there really never was a cuddle factor involved in nursing. It's actually easier to cuddle with her while giving her a bottle. The two of us will just have to make other things special too, like bathtimes!

Got Milk? You bet I do! Based on the results after pumping the few times during my maternity leave, I knew that once I started pumping more regularly my supply would ramp up. For just being back at work a few weeks we've already put away quite a few bags of milk into the deep freeze. I started out pumping 5 times during the day (once in the morning, 2 during work and 2 after work). Each session kept getting longer and longer so now I cut back to 4 times per day (just once during work). As long as I can keep getting roughly 10 oz each time we should be in good shape even when she starts eating a little more per feeding.