I'm one of those overachiever moms (as I used to call them) who started pumping right away to build up my milk supply to store away troves of frozen baggies for later. I would pump for a year or two, no problem, right? Ha! I studied up on all the things to do to grow my milk supply - my baby came two months early so I had to learn on the job. I drank the tea, ate the cookies, took the supplements, and have found all the best comforting things like the gel heating/cooling pack, the Motherlove ointment, the gel pads, the brewers yeast, and the fenugreek and blessed thistle cheap on amazon.
One of the hardest things I've ever done was pump 8 to 9 times a day at first to get my supply established. And I've done some challenging things in my day.
For my particular case, I could only breastfeed about 1 or 2 times a day then had to pump the rest. When I went back to work after about 10 weeks, I started having to pump exclusively when my little guy was no longer interested in breastfeeding. The bottle was obviously way easier for him and he preferred it. But my boy drank breast milk exclusively until about 9 months. Mom for the win!
I'll never forget that horrific cycle at the beginning:
Pump. Make Bottle. Feed. Burp. Wash bottles. Wash pump parts. Rest 15 minutes (maybe). Repeat!
That was my entire life for a challenging 4 months, around the clock, often doing midnight, 3am and 6am pumping sessions and feedings. Of course, I'm so thankful my husband could help me feed in those early morning sessions. And by 5 months, I worked on pumping only 5 or 6 times a day.
Now I finally get to say sayonara to my pump that I secretly nicknamed "Bessie"!! So why do I have such mixed emotions? I'm thrilled to have more time in my day. But I'm losing my longtime friend! I don't have to drag her around anymore or always make sure I have the parts I need when I leave home. I get to sleep solidly through the night and won't wake up with sore breasts if I 'sleep in.' But there is something so special about providing food for your baby, knowing its packed full of antibodies. At least I did what I could and got him through cold and flu season on breast milk.
I had to do the math on pumping. I realized that I have pumped an average of 6 pumping sessions a day for over 10 months, which means:
I HAVE PUMPED OVER 1700 times in 10 months.
Each pumping session took about 15 minutes so that's about 25,200 minutes, or 420 hours. I'm not even including the minutes of washing and drying parts or bottles, or feeding, changing, burping, etc.
These 420 hours were not those sweet hours where I was cuddling and feeding my baby like most breastfeeding moms. (It's almost impossible to pump and feed a wiggly baby a bottle.) These were the hours alone, often in a darkly lit room, uncomfortable, falling asleep in the lazy boy. Or the times in my office checking email, or parked out in my car in between errands.
Those 420 hours also roughly equal 17.5 days, or two and half weeks of pumping for 24 hours a day!
Good grief I'm tired just thinking about it. And there are many hero moms who pump exclusively for much longer than I did! Unbelievable.
What are some of the most interesting places I've pumped? A large open room during a work conference. The passenger seat of my car before a concert. A bathroom stall at the movie theater. These were times when I had to pump every 3 hours. Sounds easy but you try doing anything consistently every three hours and you'll see what I mean.
Well, I am saying goodbye to my pump as I go back to work to start a new job next week. Now I'll have about 1 to 2 more hours of free time per day to spend active with my baby (or asleep!) No more sitting around pumping and reading Facebook. Or falling asleep accidentally for an hour as I pump.
Goodbye my pump! Parting is such sweet sorrow!.... not.
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