Month 5 – All about the pump
Another month went by in the blink of an eye. Seriously, where does time go? My supply is continuing to hang on, but I had to add in some pumps at night to get enough for the next day (or go into the freezer stash). I have to pump 3 times at work to keep up, and some days I only pump twice and have to go into the freezer stash for the next day. My baby is eating three 4 oz bottles. I send a 2-3 oz bottle extra in case of emergency. The good news is he’s finishing bottles, so no more wasted milk! Hooray!
I am so lucky to have a relatively flexible job that I can move around my pumping times each day if I need to. We also have a nice mothers room with the symphony pumps in it (there’s 5 individual stations). I still need a full 20 minutes just to get 3.5-4 ounces.
I know that the stress (totally self induced) of exclusive breastfeeding will go down after 6 months. Mainly because my baby will start eating solids. I feel so close to that point, but I am totally not prepared – mentally. At least with breastfeeding I don’t have to plan ahead and think much about. I still have a decent freezer stash, but I know it will go quick if I don’t keep up.
The baby weight doesn’t seem to be coming off (it’s actually 1st baby weight) so I tried counting calories, and just cutting back a little, I noticed a dip in my supply. So much for that.
I bought some supplements to try to help my supply, I tried some with fenugreek, but they didn’t seem to do much. I also got some brewers yeast caplets, because those are way easier to take than the powder. The others I am trying is one I found on etsy – called milkapalooza and the other is Dr. Christophers Lactation Formula. I’ve also heard that Malta will help, but it tastes disgusting to me.
I want to buy new clothes, but right now I really need things that are easily accessible for nursing (at least for home), and I am hoping to lose some weight in the future so I don’t want to buy a bunch of clothes in a bigger size either. At work, we have private pumping spaces so I can take a dress off if it’s not easily accessible, but on the go, I need separates at least that I can use with a nursing tank or nursing bra. I am pretty small chested, so I live in nursing tanks (awesome padded ones from Pea in a Pod – no show through and more support. They are expensive but worth it!)
Again, finding the motivation to pump is hard this time around. But on the other hand nursing is so easy. And I still hate washing bottles.
Here’s our current weekday feeding schedule:
6:30-7am wake up and nurse
3 bottles at daycare (4 oz), roughly 10, 1, and 3:30. I try to pump 3 times a day too.
Get home at 6 with baby and toddler, short nursing session if he ate on the early side, skip if he ate closer to 4.
Nurse at 7, put baby down for the night
He usually wakes up around 10pm and 1am and will just take a paci, then when he wakes up around 3-4am I will feed him, he’s mostly asleep but will usually take some from each side.
On the weekends, we are just kind of on a 3 hour schedule of eat play sleep, but bedtime is usually around 7-7:30.
As much as I’d like to sleep through the night, I think my baby needs that extra feeding to get enough in a 24 hour period. He just doesn’t seem to want much more than 4 oz a time. And I don’t know if I can produce much more than that anyway. With my first I ran into the issue of the daycare saying he wanted to eat more. However, I think it was more because he was fussy than hungry, so I am waiting to see if they start saying that again.
Luckily I haven’t had any issues, no clogged ducts and no mastitis or anything like that – but I think that’s more likely due to my low supply.
I have an off-site all day meeting coming up, that I am anxious about. I emailed the coordinator and asked for a space to pump, but don’t know what it will be, or how easy it will be to slip out of the meeting.
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