The Milk Boob Chronicles Part 2

I have been excited and dreading writing this post for 16.5 months now. Saturday night was our last night breastfeeding. If you think about it 16 months is an aggressive amount of time to do anything let alone feed someone. I have to admit I cried like a baby. And then I cried more. NEVER in my life did I think that I would be so torn up about giving this up but at the same time I am excited to have my body back to myself.

The last supper

We have had our share of ups and downs. Feeding was awful at first. She gave me blood blisters and they would crack and bleed for the first 3 weeks we were feeding. It was some of the worst pain that I can remember. I would have to take a deep breath, let her latch, and then let her eat. (blah blah blah I know it shouldn’t hurt but whatever you people are smoking dope because it did). Anyway, then 2 months later we went through nipple confusion. She didn’t know if she wanted a bottle or the boob so that was one of our more awful experiences. I remember wanting to throw in the towel.

I will never forget going out to eat at the mellow mushroom with my mom and sister. Aubin was only 15 days old and she started crying at the restaurant. I had never fed in public so I pulled out my giant cover and put it on. Then I realized that shit was heavy, and it was hot, and I couldn’t see what I was doing. Aubin was basically on fire and was having no part of eating in a sauna. However, I wasn’t comfortable nursing without a cover then so again I was discouraged. Thank goodness we figured out how to use the two shirt method and not to give a shit about other people!! #normalizebreastfeeding

Ill miss her being milk-drunk

Feeding Lady A just became easy. She was good at it, I had a ton of milk, and it made her happy. Win-Win-Win. Pumping, not so much. That shit sucked. I hated pumping so much. No one wants to drag a suction torture device around for a year, hook it up to your tits, and just sit there like a cow all while trying to write a report that is due in 3 hours. Its just not fun. I had the worst imbalance of milk production ever. Usually it was 4:1. Im totally going to need a boob job on my right side! As an engineer (of medical devices) I am totally bamboozled on  how someone has not redesigned that piece-of-shit-tit-sucker.

straight up 4:1 ratio of milk 

Finally, we figured it out. She would nurse, I would catch up on my candy crush and all would be well in the world. 

Until recently. Aubs was getting squirmier while we fed at night. She would only nurse on one side and I was sick of fighting her and trying to “trick” her with different positions. We decided to make the jump into cutting her off last Friday so I could have a whole day to prepare. I think it was so hard for me because it is legit the last thing that is tethering her to still being a BABY.

Saturday night, we gave her a bath, and wrapped her snug in her jammies. I made Levi document the big day. I cried and Aubin patted my boob like she always did. I held her other little hand. When she was done she said “Morrre” and I had to tell her there was no more and now she is a little girl who drinks big girl milk. She honestly didn’t seem to care at that point so we snuggled up and I read her some books before kissing her goodnight and tucking her in with her white fuzzy blanket.

Crying like a baby

I look back on all the extra special time I got to spend with her one on one, the tears cried over legit spilled milk, the puke, burps, hours of zombieness, and I am thankful that we nursed for so long. Now my baby is a big girl!!

So much puke all down my arm

Here is a fun factoid: If I estimate that from beginning to end, I was making 20 ounces a day for 504 days. That equals 10,080 ounces!! Convert that into gallons and you have 78.75 GALLONS of breast milk. If we were talking in terms of formula, at $0.14 times 10080 ounces, it would have cost $1400 if it was a 1:1 ratio of milk to formula (at 2:1 ratio it is $2117). That's money for a nice vacation for us :) 

Do Great Things 

Lindsey