I've been milk production, distribution, and supply for the 194 days of Axel's life - six and a half months. Six months of nothing but mama's milk was my goal and, now that we're there, I'm deciding what's next. Nursing has been rocky, with latching challenges and weeks when I felt like I had a ten pound leech latched to my boob for eight hours each day - not to mention the night. There are parts of nursing that I like, now that we've both figured out how to do this. When Axel's not testing out his claws of death grip on my nipple or yelling at the boob because he's full or full of gas, it's warm and cozy. I like cradling Axel against me, and the mutual adoration fest we have sometimes, and the chance I get to catch up on reading The New Yorker. But that's only sometimes. I've never gotten comfortable with public nursing, and, as much as I try to supress it, the selfish part of me dislikes cutting short lunches or long runs because I have to pump. I would characterize my overall experience with breastfeeding as work - and not the dream job sort of work, but the waiting tables at Village Inn to save up for college sort of work. It's been hard. Worthwhile, certainly, but hard.
The direct-to-baby method is by far my preferred channel for milk expression. The breast pump is a fabulous invention - it's the reason I can got to work four days a week and still send my milk along with my baby to daycare - but it's also a loud, clunky machine. I don't think anyone likes being hooked up to machines, whether they're the sort that are dripping fluids into us to combat dehydration or the sort that suck fluids out of us. Sometimes I wonder if it's taking just a little bit of my soul along with the milk. It's exhausting - setting up the pump three times a day, and then pumping for up to thirty minutes at a time to end up with a max of 16 ounces a day. That's over an hour and a half each work day of pumping and pumping-related activity - and, since I spend so much time pumping during work, there's work I have to catch up on when I'm at home and Axel's asleep for the night. While I've gotten pretty good at one handed typing and catching up on reading, there are only so many reports I need to read and terse emails I can send and meetings I can leave early or go to late. I know I'm incredibly lucky that I have the flexibility at work to have devoted so much time to pumping so far, and to have a private office with a door I can close to pump, even if it does have a huge window with see-through blinds. Fifteen ounces just covers the three five-ounce bottles I send along to daycare with Axel (he's a light eater). Getting up to that mark is stressful - and, as I feel my stress growing, I remind myself to calm down, close my eyes, and do deep belly breaths (you know, the sort that are supposed to help you with the pain in the early parts of labor and just made me, asthmatic that I am, feel like my lungs were shrinking up). After the deep breaths, I gaze at my photos of Axel and think of tropical waterfalls, and then I try to type a reply to an email with just my right hand, and I'm right back in the stressed out, milk-inhibiting mode. It's a negative cycle of stress impacting milk flow, which then stresses me out more and further affects milk making and release.
Part of what's kept me pumping and nursing thus far is my inner Scrooge - I'm cheap. Formula is expensive. Why buy it when I can make something of a higher quality for free? And, the longer I nurse, the more brownies I get to eat - at least, that's how my logic goes. Well, I'm going to have to cut back on brownies and shell out some cash. Some days I can't keep up with Axel's needs, and I've been tapping in to the freezer stash to make up for my body's shortfall. It's going to run out soon, at about the same time that I'm going to switch to pumping twice per day - and that means Axel will start having some formula. Formula, solid foods, the ability to cram two pairs of socks into his mouth at once - he's moving on from getting everything from his mama. I'll keep doing breastmilk and formula for as long as I can. My son's worth enduring more hours hooked up to the dreaded pump.
