Race to the finish.

As I've said before, breastfeeding is hard. And as I'm sure any pumping mama will tell you, pumping is harder. Pumping requires a lot of discipline, of which I have little. It's been a huge challenge keeping my supply up to feed Dot these last 10 months, and my supply has started to plummet in the last few weeks for some reason.

I theorize that it's due to her increased appetite for solids. She's eating more solids, so she's reducing her milk intake. This is all normal. However, I have not been sensitive to this, and did not begin to reduce the amount of milk we were sending with her to daycare. What this means for me and my supply: she's nursing less while she's at home because she's getting a greater and greater proportion of her daily milk intake while at day care. So I need to increase the proportion of her milk that she gets directly from me by reducing the amount of milk we send to day care.

In the mean time, I still have to figure out how to build my supply back up quickly. I figured all of this out during many late night smartphone research sessions after pumping almost nothing. Typically, in the middle of the night, Dot eats on one side, and I hand pump the other. I used to get several ounces, and lately it's been one ounce or less. I've tried taking supplements, eating lactation cookies, oatmeal, and hand expression after pumping. ANYTHING to avoid pumping more. But alas, here I sit at 3:30 in the morning, hooked up to the machine, trying to squeeze out a couple extra ounces.

I was at a La Leche League meeting the other day, and at the end of the meeting, the leader said something about how in the grand scheme of our babies' lives, breastfeeding is just this tiny little part of it. Her point was that we should cherish it, but as I thought about it more, the statement could also be construed as meaning it's a very small part of how we parent. It is very important to me that Dot receives no milk other than breast milk until she is a year, and I have worked very hard to get to where we are. And we are so close. Seven more weeks to go. But at what point am I willing to throw in the towel? Breastfeeding, while extremely important, is not the only determinant of whether she's a good person, or of whether she's healthy. I've read blogs by other moms who go to even greater lengths to feed their babies, and I don't know if I could push myself so far. My sanity is also valuable, and 3:30 am pumping sessions are threatening that sanity. But at what point? I don't know, but I'm not there yet. 

This happened. AGAIN.

We've lived in our house for over five years. We have no driveway, which is why when our car was totaled while parked on the street in March, I wasn't all that surprised. I knew that someone would hit our car eventually; we live four houses behind a popular hipster-y dive bar, and our hill is super steep, so people barrel through the neighborhood. Anyway, it's why our insurance agent charges us extra. Hazard pay I suppose.

Nonetheless, I thought we had paid our dues. So when this happened Saturday night:

I couldn't f***ing believe it. (Note that both of these cars belong to us.)

We were woken up Saturday night/Sunday morning by the sound of metal colliding with metal, that loud smack that sounds like a fat man doing a belly flop into yogurt from 50 feet up. We heard a second crash seconds later, and Mitch jumped out of bed and looked out the window. "SHIT." He ran out, and I followed. We found a hysterical girl, we'll call her Blannah, crying on the curb, and her hysterical boyfriend, we'll call him Blhris, pacing up and down the street yelling "BLANNAH! WTF BLANNAH!" He was very helpful.

It was clear from the position of the cars that she had rear-ended the silver one, smashing it into the red one, pushing the red one forward about 10 feet to block our neighbor's driveway. We called the police, and our neighbors slowly filed out of their homes to gawk at our misfortune. Their condolences were predictable. "I can't believe this happened again." "Was she drunk?" "Do you want me to take your dog for a walk?"

Blhris continued to yell and pace, and not-drunk Blannah continued to cry. As we exchanged information I noticed something happening. Mitch began to console her. HER. Not me. Not his wife walking around in her bathrobe on hold with claims, but the young girl with schmears of eyeliner all over her face. 

One of Mitch's many redeeming qualities is that he is insufferably nice. Particularly to strangers. Mitch told Blannah that insurance will take care of it, that her dad won't be mad forever, he'll just be glad she's okay, that she should make sure someone can drive her home because she's probably too anxious to drive. Of course she can leave her car in front of our house all night. Everything will be fine. We'll see her in the morning when she picks up her car. She thanked "us" for being so nice.

We spent hours on the phone with our insurance company that night because they couldn't understand how to file two claims for what had happened, and of course their server crashed while we were on the phone. So when we flopped into bed at 3:00 am, and my baby promptly demanded a feeding at 3:05 am, my forgiving feelings towards Blannah began to wane.

Blannah showed up the next morning to retrieve her vehicle (which had nary a scratch on it, might I add), and we finally decided to get the story out of her. How had she hit the cars so hard if she was parked? Why did we hear two crashes? And what on God's green Earth were they fighting about?

The story goes, she and Blhris were arguing at the bar, and she fled the scene in a dramatic fit of abandonment. Her intention had been to jump in her car and speed off (I'm sure hoping Blhris would follow), but as she attempted to accelerate through our narrow, steep street with parking on both sides, something got in her way. Blind with rage, she reared back and gunned it AGAIN, hitting something AGAIN, and finally stopped to assess the situation. Upon the assessment she realized that the thing she was hitting was in fact another car. Who would have thought?

Mitch is so nice. He gave her endearing glances and minimal encouragers while I laughed in her face. OF COURSE she hit our cars twice. OF COURSE. I couldn't be mad anymore. I could only feel crazy. My life is so out of control these days, I expect nothing less from the universe.

So I pinched my baby, said oh-no-it-must-be-naptime-we'll-be-in-touch, and fled the scene. Mitch showed her out, and we vowed that the next house we buy will have a driveway. And will be no where near a bar that attracts hipsters. Maybe somewhere in Madeira. Or Mason.



The Impending Wean

My daughter is 10 months old. She has accomplished a great many things in her short life, not the least of which is maintaining exclusive breastfeeding. Indeed, when I started breastfeeding, I heard from numerous people that their babies voluntarily quit breastfeeding at 6 or 8 months, even though they had intended on breastfeeding to the first year. But knowing what I know about teething and other infant psychosis, I never took any of her nursing strikes too seriously. We're still going strong, and I consider myself extremely fortunate that when I'm home from work, I can still nurse my darling baby.

Of course, all good things must come to an end. If I were staying home full time, I would allow Dot to self-wean, letting my milk supply drop off gradually as she drinks less over time. But since I pump at work, Dot doesn't tell my body how much milk to make; I do. And since I really don't want to lactate forever (even though it burns like, mad calories), I'll have to wean myself off the pump.

My intention is to let Dot nurse until she's two, if I'm lactating that long. But I've decided to wean off the pump at one year for several reasons.

First, it interferes with my work performance. At the risk of setting working mothers back several decades, it's really hard to keep up with my job. I pump for fifteen minutes every two hours at work, with an additional 10-15 minutes of set up and breakdown. For several months, I had my own office and could shut the door and continue working. Now I have been blessed with an office mate, so I have to leave (I don't think she would take kindly to me milking myself with her in the office). I probably lose 1-2 hours of productivity every day, which means I end up taking work home with me a lot. And I feel poorly about that.

Second, also related to my job, I'm sick of being covered in my own fluids at work. It seems that at least on a weekly basis, something malfunctions on the pump in such a way that milk pours or splatters or spews all over the front of me. This is unbecoming of a young professional. It's also ruining all my clothes.

Third, in order keep up with Dot's demand, I actually have to produce more than she eats every day (pumps are less efficient than babies), which means in addition to pumping while I'm at work, I pump once at night after she goes to bed, and once in the middle of the night (She's nurses on one side, and I pump the other, and yes my child still gets up once a night. I'm okay with that.). These two extra pumping sessions are exhausting and time consuming, and I'm often homebound for fear of missing those valuable pumping sessions. It also means I'm bound to my pump even when we go out of town or take vacations, so understandably I'm anxious to relieve myself of these extra pumping duties. And to sleep through the night again.

Lastly, and most importantly, I hate pumping. It's not the same as breastfeeding. It's not as rewarding for me, and few things are more anxiety-provoking than watching your child's sustenance drip slowly into a receptacle, counting the ounces and hoping you're pumping enough (which I'm not anymore, by the way; I've had to start relying on my freezer stash to feed her at day care). I'm extremely grateful that my job accommodates my pumping, and I would do it all over again to make sure my child was well-fed, but I hate it. It's the worst, and if you pump exclusively, you deserve some kind of trophy.

So it was with bittersweet feelings that I started researching how to wean off the pump today. In about two months, I'll start gradually cutting out pumping sessions. I still have well over 300 ounces of breast milk in the freezer that we'll be able to send to day care, and after that's gone, she'll get regular old milk. I still plan on nursing her while she's at home for as long as she likes (that is, until she's two), but I'm kind of excited to be finished with pumping. I'm looking forward to carrying a briefcase again, and wearing shirts that don't enable immediate boob access. I'm looking forward to smelling like my perfume, rather than old yogurt. I'm looking forward to being able to sleep for more than four hours in a row (because she will be weaned off that nighttime feeding, or I'll be damned). And I'm looking forward to being good at my job again. I'm sure my boss feels the same way.