How Pumping Keeps Me Sane

I hate pumping breast milk with all my heart. It doesn't feel good and it's stressful for me. It interrupts my day and sometimes I just want to scream.

But I love it.

It was really hard for me to leave Peanut during the day when I went back to school full time, it was even harder when I started working full time. At least when I was just in school I was only gone for 4 or so hours and could then pick him up if I wanted to. But working all day without him was really hard at first. I missed him more than I could imagine. And then I had this machine hooked up to me making me feel even more like a cow. I was resentful to say the least.

That is until one day when I realized that pumping was my time to be a mom again. I work with pregnant, breastfeeding women, and infants every day; that is hard to do when you know that you can't be with your baby.

One day I randomly decided to take my ID tags off and lock my computer while I pumped; I'm not really sure why I thought I should, but it was a good choice. I took out a parenting book and read while I pumped. I relaxed more than I usually did which meant that I got more milk.

When I thought about it later I realized that I needed to get back into Mommy mode while I pumped. I am the only person that can provide the perfect breast milk to my son and pumping meant that I could do that while also providing for him in another way.

On the days that I miss him the most I close my eyes and just think about him and how nice it will be when I get home and get to snuggle and play with him.

He is 10 months old now and starting to lose interest in nursing. I am going to keep doing my be to get him to a year, and then I am going to stop pumping at work except for at lunch. I love our early morning session that we have right before we get ready for the day so we will keep that as long as possible. But my supply is low and he won't nurse at all unless he is half asleep, so I see weaning probably in the fairly near future.

Random note - I think I might starting writing blog posts while I pump. I feel like I want to do something productive but that is still related to my mothering, and this blog is part of my identity as a mom. So we'll see.

Swt