Here I am at the 5.5 month mark of Jude's life and I am still breast feeding the little tyke. I've almost made it to my goal of 6 months.
One of the benefits of having Jude in May was that I had 3 months of time with him before returning to work for the fall school year. This meant I have 3 months of feeding him from the boobie, on demand, around the clock, no bottle, and more than a few sleepless nights. This was great! We had a bit of a rough time at the start with a painful latch and then my overabundant supply and hormone havoc, but by August, we had a peaceful routine together.
Then came the "Return to Work" about 10 weeks ago.
This meant that 4 days a week I'm gone from home from about 7:30am until about 5pm. On these days, Brian gives Jude a bottle of milk and I try to get a couple of pump sessions done while in my office at work. Then, I play catch up with Jude contact time on the other 3 days a week.
This had lead to several "funny" moments in my pumping adventures.
To begin with, I'm lucky because my office is complete with 4 real walls and a door that locks. However, I need to remember to LOCK my door at times. Yep, while pumping away during the weekend, a fellow faculty member (not a biologist) came up to my nearly completely shut door. He knocked and barged right in before I could tell him not too. He took one look at me hooked up to a machine, turned bright red, said excuse me, and left. I never did learn why he had stopped by the office. And then there is our janitor who has a key to the offices and who never seems to visit at the same time each day. There have been several occasions where, I have started pumping, and then heard him in the hall knocking on my neighbor's doors. This meant that I had to quickly halt spewing milk, shove the boob away, and allow him to empty my garbage without flashing a bit of extra flesh.
And these a are just two funnies. Pumping is never a 100% guarantee. Some days I relax and chug out tons, other days not much at all. Sometimes I pump and then I get home an hour later and Jude's famished and screaming. Sometimes I think I'm going crazy and hear voices in the sound of the pumping mechanism. Granted this last one is usually during the 10pm pump session.
So, where am I now?
I smell like milk. I smell like milk alot . I swear I sweat milk at night. I wonder if others around me notice the sweet milk odor I'm emanating. I look around to see if other small babies, young puppies, cute kittens are following me having been lured by milk smell and hope of being fed. My shirts still don't fit quite right, though Brian has admitted to enjoying the "busting-out" look. I am sometimes more than a bit too tired to pump at night 'round 10:30pm.
Jude's more hungry 'cause he's a growing boy. And this past week he has been waking at least 2x a night (2 and 5am) to eat. Ugh. And other nights waking at 11pm, 3, 5am. Double ugh.
Jude's growing more distracted while eating, which means he's turning his head at any sound (brother, daddy, tv, whatever). This meant longer feeds and more than a few pinches to me). Jude's been eating food, but hasn't slacked on milk at all...some days it seems like he is just an eating machine. Other days Jude's reflux is bad and he is only eating because the sucking helps his pain...then he upchucks most of the milk. Poor little dude.
I still holding out to hit the 6month mark with the breastfeeding, but we'll see.
