All About Pumping And Some Good News

Elijah is supposed to come home next week! If everything goes well, that is.

Now I'm nervous because I've never had a baby before, and as eager as I am to have him home, now I'm afraid I'll kill him with bad parenting. At least at the hospital, there's a nurse within a moment's reach if I do something wrong... now I'll be on my own.

I picture changing him, giving him a bath, walking him in his stroller, and feeding him all the time so he's never hungry again.

He's been in the hospital for 14 weeks. Now, at the risk of grossing some people out, I'm going to give myself a little pat on the back for using a breast pump for 14 whole weeks. I have to pump every three hours, except at night, when I pump every four or five hours. Each session takes about 20-30 minutes, and I do it 7 times a day - it feels like all I do, sometimes. I can't go anywhere for long before I have to get back home and pump, unless it's at the hospital where they have a pump on the premises. I might also mention that pumping can be and has been painful (you can look up "instruments of torture" in the dictionary and find a picture of the Medela Lactina®).

I have stuck with it for two reasons: one is that I knew from the start that I wanted to breastfeed. It never occurred to me not to. Some women are flat unable to breastfeed, even without their babies in the hospital, and most women can't pump for the length of time I've been able to. I have been blessed to be physically able to keep up my milk with a pump, and that is through no merit of my own - it's just the way my body behaves. So, I was able to do what I really hoped I could.

The second reason that I stuck with it is that it seems Elijah is unable to tolerate anything except breast milk. They tried him on formula and two kinds of milk fortifiers and all three gave him diarrhea. It has given me great pleasure to be able to give him the only thing he can eat, and I'd do it 14 more weeks if I had to.


Did I mention the weight loss? Yeah. That's pretty cool. I already weigh less than I did when I got pregnant, probably since I produce almost 40 oz of breast milk a day (that's 1/3 a gallon). Because, apparently, I'm part cow.