Gratuitous SNL reference there. Sorry, couldn't resist.
So, we're beginning my fifth week back at work, which means that Iyyar is seventeen weeks old-- although I had to think about that, since I stopped counting weeks a while ago. He's three and a half months old, nearly four.
I didn't go back to work until Barak was seven months old; when I did, since he was still nursing, I started to pump. The concept of pumping wasn't new to me--I'd had to do it for a while when he was born, while he got the hang of nursing the old-fashioned way. But when you start pumping when your baby is seven months, your body is a little bit less receptive to the idea. I never, B"H, had to give him any formula (well, except for the first week of his life and two tablespoons once in some rice cereal I was pretty sure he was going to reject and didn't want to waste breastmilk on), but it was not easy to get enough milk for his bottle every day. He only needed one bottle, but by the time he turned one he wanted it to be a good nine ounces. I never got more than three ounces at a time and usually much less; I pumped in the morning, at work, at night, and sometimes at 2 am after being roused to do so by alarm clock. In retrospect I might have done better with more rest and less pumping--who knows.
Anyway, the idea of nine months of pumping was sort of intimidating, especially since, until a week before the end of my leave, I had had hopes of hardly having to pump at all. I didn't start pumping until I got the bad news about working from home, which left me with three weeks till I went back to working in the office. That was a little over seven weeks ago.
I now have something like 70 3-ounce bags of milk in the freezer. I've taken to pumping first thing in the morning, right after Iyyar nurses; twice at work; and once at night after Iyyar goes to sleep. On a day that I don't go into the office I sometimes put nine ounces in the freezer. Today I think it might be as much as twelve. I have totally faked out my breasts; they are convinced that I have either twins or a baby whale.
Um, and I don't need you to tell me I'm going overboard. I know I am. But I'm not quite ready to cut down. Even if I never use all that milk, someone will (I gave away what I pumped for Barak in the early months, to someone who had, unknown to her, had her milk ducts cut during a breast reduction surgery as a teenager). And it is a much better feeling to know that even if I do run into supply problems again, with a freezer full of Lansinoh bags I am very unlikely to need to resort to formula--which is not, I know, the end of the world, but would personally make me very sad.
In the meantime, of course, I am faced with one problem.
Where on earth am I going to put all the food for yom tov?
1 comment:
When my son was almost 3 years old, my mom came to me, with a determined look in her eye.
Then she asked, "Can I get rid of these baggies of milk in my fridge now, please?"
I still had some in mine. Just in case. Of what, I couldn't say.
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