Ixelle and Thumper - Checking in

Time sure does fly, Thumper just turned 6 months old! I did some calculating and assuming every month had 30 days, and I spent 120 minutes a day pumping I've already pumped for the equivalent of 15 days. I'm still planning on continuing until he is a year old and that will mean an entire month of my life will have been spent hooked up to that pump! Wow. Honestly I still haven't decided whether I will pump till he is a year or pump until I have enough of a freezer stash to last him to a year but ideally the former. I now pump 4 times a day for 30 minutes at a time, whenever I wake up 7am-ish, 11am, 4pm and 11pm. Once I dropped my 7pm pump the 3am pump followed really soon after. My supply dipped for one day when I got my period again (didn't miss that at all) but the next day was back up to normal so I guess I can now thumb my nose at the stories I kept hearing about milk drying up at 6 months. Granted, my supply isn't what it once was but I am still often freezing 4-8 oz a day and am back to a full freezer of milk that I need to give away or donate again.

We've also started on solids and while he wasn't a huge fan of baby cereal, Thumper has been taking his veggies like a champ! He's tried carrots, peas, sweet potato and green beans so far and likes all of them. However he is still drinking as much milk as he was before so I'm not relaxing about supply yet.

One of my main frustrations now is having to warm up milk that was in the fridge (Thumper won't take it cold) since the gap between pumpings is so wide. The other is having to wait till 11pm to pump when I'm tired and Thumper goes to sleep at around 8. Considering how things could be much worse, I really don't have anything to complain about.

In non-pumping news, I never knew a baby could keep me so busy day in and day out. I feel like I never get anything done, but the time I get to spend with Thumper is so worth it!

Pumping Challenges: Supply - Ixelle

This seems to be something that weighs heavily on every pumping mom's mind. We all live in constant fear of losing our supply.
Sometime around the 5 week mark I freaked out about not losing weight, and started exercising. This apparently was way too early for my body, and between not wanting to eat, stressing about other issues and my exercise regime, my supply dropped to where I wasn't making enough for Thumper, and we had to start burning through the small freezer stash I had built up. Once that happened I had to really start making sure I got enough calories in a day, I started drinking Mothers' Milk Tea, eating oatmeal religiously every day and power pumping when I felt up to it. I basically pumped every 2 hours instead of every 3 hours for a full day. I didn't see results from this until 3-4 days later.
It took about a week and a half but my supply thankfully built back up without needing to supplement with formula (barely). I'm still in the process of finding that balance between diet, exercise and lactating. It's hard when your body isn't really your own.

Fast forward 3 months, I started having to deal with an oversupply. This involved having to get real creative with freezer space and even talking about buying a chest freezer which we couldn't really afford. I didn't want to rotate my freezer stash because I wanted Thumper to get the freshest milk possible for as long as possible, and so even with providing everything he was eating in a day, I was also freezing an extra 16-20 oz. This was when I decided to donate milk (I'll write later about this!) and once again, it was kind of a leap of faith since there are no guarantees about my supply in the future, it would be terrible to have donated milk that I would later need. And yes, even so much extra I was still in constant fear of my supply dropping, especially with people telling me about the unexplained drop in supply that is supposed to happen at 6 months. This was also when I started looking around for information and resources on EPing online to see if I really needed to be worried about my supply dropping at 6 months (I'm at 4+ months now, so maybe in a few months I'll be writing a post about that). After a little research and some personal stories from some awesome fellow pumping moms, I decided to try dropping from pumping every 3 hours to every 4 hours (which went very well) and then dropping one of my pumps altogether, so I would have one 8-hour stretch between pumps every day and would be pumping 5 times in a day. This is where I'm currently at and my body is still adjusting to this new schedule, I may have to tweak this schedule a little. I'm freezing much less milk daily, and have had a few plugged ducts (ouch) that I'm working with, but that is another struggle for another time!

Pumping Challenges: Living Arrangements - Ixelle

It really takes a special kind of perseverance to pump exclusively, naturally there are many challenges along the way. Here is one of my struggles.

Living arrangements.

Although my husband and I have a place of our own, we rent out a room to a friend of ours and also have been providing a room for my brother to stay. So it's always been a house full of guys and lil ol me. This puts a big restriction on where I can pump in my own house. For the first 3 months I was pumping in Thumpers room, and between pumping, skin to skin time and trying to get nursing going, I was basically a prisoner in the nursery. Once I went hands-free I started trying things like feeding Thumper, or changing him while I pumped, or sorting his laundry. For 2 months I re-read some of my favorite books (and would usually look up at the clock and realize that I pumped for too long). For right now I see my pumping time as 'me' time where I can do things that I want to do whether it's read, do chores, spend time with Thumper or even type up blog posts. Thinking about something other than pumping helps tremendously. In the past week, I moved the pump into the master bedroom (which has been in dire need of a good cleaning) and have been able to fold laundry, use my laptop to access the internet instead of just my phone, clean a little, relax a little. Just having a change of scenery is great for my mental state while pumping. I don't have to look around and be reminded of only baby things. This also means that I can use the master bathroom instead of having to worry about covering up to go use the bathroom or go wash up. I'm still cautiously exploring other places to pump and have successfully pumped in the car once (not while driving), and will need to do that again this weekend. A change in scenery makes quite a difference when you are getting frustrated or burnt out with pumping.