Goodbye, Breastfeeding Mafia

With Bitmap in daycare and me working out of the house, we’ve hit a new problem: breastmilk. I have a fantastic pump, and a comfortable place to do so at work, but it’s hard to keep up. If I don’t pump every hour it’s pretty much impossible to get enough for an entire day’s feedings, and that’s just not going to happen. Because at some point I have to actually work at work. So I wake up in the middle of the night to pump (in addition to waking up in the middle of the night to feed her). As such, I’ve become a little nutso about pumped milk. And it’s not good to be literally crying over spilled milk.

I feel like a bit of a failure because I could conceivably pump more, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to strategize my evenings around pumping. I’m sick of having to skip wine at dinner because we didn’t have any expressed milk handy to bring with us.

So we’re introducing formula. With a heavy heart I mixed up a bottle of half formula half breastmilk and gave it to Bitmap. She was a little confused at first, but gobbled it up nonetheless. And I started to wonder why I’d freaked out about this so much. It does, however, smell absolutely awful.

We’re not giving up breastfeeding entirely, but with her nursing less and me only pumping a few times a day I expect my supply will eventually taper off. And that’s ok. I do plan to continue using expressed milk to make her purees, since formula isn’t supposed to be frozen. I’m trying not to beat myself up about it, but I’ll admit it’s hard. My husband, on the other hand is thrilled. “Finally,” he declared, “I can feed her just as well as you can!”

I think we’re gonna make it after all.