Sometimes I feel like a cow which has its udders perpetually strapped to a milking machine.
You see, pumping (breast milk) has become an absolute necessity for me now that I am back to work. It is, of course, a personal choice for me to provide Spud with exclusive breast milk for at least the first 6 months of her life, and, I am fully committed to make this work. This is especially so after the initial hiccups of having to supplement with formula in the initial stages where I was led to believe that I was not producing enough milk.
There has been a mantra I live by, after being told by several well-meaning experienced moms who support exclusive breastfeeding that, unless you are diagnosed with a terrible medical condition, there is no such thing as not having enough breast milk. And, as I learnt with breast milk, it is nothing but a supply and demand process. More nursing or pumping will result in a greater milk supply. If one consistently decrease nursing or pumping for several days, the overall milk supply will decrease and apparently, you can expect to see a lesser pumped output.
As such, keeping up my supply of breast milk is more of a challenge now that I am not able to feed on demand any longer. Granted, pumping is actually a hell lot of work! I used to get so obtusely frustrated and annoyed whenever I had to pump. Not only do you have to ensure that the bottles and pumping equipment are clean and sterilized, you also have to ensure that they are cleaned-up well after every pumping session. Do this for 10-15 minutes, up to 7x a day, every day just to keep up your milk supply, and it would be enough to drive anyone insane! Not the most fun thing to do in your spare time, I assure you.
It is still not the thing I enjoy doing most these days, but pumping has now become a daily ritual of mine that I guess I can easily do them while being blindfolded. What became an interesting find during that few weeks of ‘boot camp pumping’ before I was due to go back to work was how close the amount of pumped milk to Spud’s intake was.
Simply means, whenever Spud feeds from the bottle almost at the same time (+/- 1 hour lapse) when I pump, I noticed that the amount of pumped milk vs Spud’s intake were almost similar (+/- 5 ml). This was not a once off thing, but truly at almost every feed and pump session done in tandem! Isn’t the body just strangely amazing!
I used to scoff when I heard people saying (one of them being Silver Bullet telling me) that thinking of the baby and visualizing the baby suckling can help with increased flow of breast milk while pumping. I thought it was all complete bollocks; that is, until I gave it a go. For some reason unbeknown to me, it worked like a charm and I’ve got milk flowing like there was no tomorrow whenever I think of Spud while I pumped away!(in spurts, not the entire pumping time!)
Honestly, as graphic and icky as it sounds, I swear the breasts just got all full and engorged whenever there was a crying baby nearby; as if a signal for me to immediately feed every baby on the streets or go pump all the milk out.
I know what you are thinking; but cross my heart, hope to die that I am not exaggerating here. The body is truly amazing, and sometimes, these new experiences overwhelm me.
One thing for sure though: with all the pumping, bottle feeding and the occasional breastfeeding I get to do nowadays (night feeds only and intermittently over the weekends), I’m quite certain there will be no major issue of weaning Spud off my breasts when the time comes. (Fingers cross!)
