Pumping breast milk is actually a lot of work. I didn't know this before I started pumping and I thought that everything would be easybreezy. Much to my surprise, it's time-consuming with low return for your efforts. Depending on the time of day, I can usually get 2-4 ounces of milk but it can take as much as 60 minutes to get that amount. I try to pump twice a day - one bottle for Scott to give Lily in the evening (we were trying to fatten her up with breast milk because she was on the lower end of the growth charts and it seemed like an extra feed would help) and one bottle for freezing (to have a stockpile of milk for when I'm away from Lily - either biking or when I return to work in a couple of weeks). When you add two sessions of pumping to an already busy schedule of breastfeeding every three hours, it often feels like I'm only ever working on providing or producing milk (in between trying to keep Lily entertained or getting her to go to sleep). Given all of this, each ounce of milk is very precious and it's so frustrating when some gets wasted. This happens when I spill the milk pouring it from freezer bag to bottle. It also happens when Lily doesn't quite finish a bottle. Worst of all, it happened last night when she didn't want to drink the bottle that we tried (twice) to give her. On the first occasion, the milk was too cold (I was trying to feed her a bottle when we were driving back from Vernon but we had nowhere to heat it up) and she was just too sleepy to eat on the second occasion. So, sadly, I threw away four glorious ounces of milk this morning. It killed me to do it but it had to be done (darn food safety rules!) Having said all that, I'm so happy that Lily will take a bottle as it gives me some of the freedom that I seek and allows me a reprieve from the 24/7 world of motherhood.
No comments:
Post a Comment