Dairy Section

As a mother, one of the first and most important things you need to decide is how and what you want to feed your baby. For me, the answer was always very clear-- I want to breastfeed. There's a suuuper long list of why It is beneficial for both babies and mothers, and I know that it doesn't always work out for everybody...but it was something that find important and I went into it being very determined.

I don't think I ever blogged about how my experience with it went, so here's a little recap: Our hospital told us that it is recommended that mothers try to breastfeed their little one within minutes of their birth, right after they are cleaned off and placed on the mother for the important skin-to-skin bonding time. Because I had a complicated labor that turned into a c-section, I didn't get to have that skin-to-skin time until over an hour and a half later when I was in the recovery room after the surgery. I was really bummed about that, but it worked out because at least I knew that Abigail was being taken care of and that her daddy was there with her the whole time. Anyways, once I woke up in the recovery room and was able to move my arms, the nurses gave her to me and encouraged that I try feeding her. It didn't work out at first because she had difficulty latching. Although it was a little discouraging, I was told that that was okay, and that I could try again later. But that next time, she finally did latch on and it seems like she's been latched on ever since. :) I was so thankful that my milk came in so fast...so fast, in fact, that even while we were in the hospital, I was overproducing and even needed to pump.

Supply was never an issue. The issue was what was I going to do with all this extra milk that she was not drinking? What I did (starting week 2), was pump and store my milk in the freezer. Especially since I was going to go back to work when school started again and wanted Abigail to remain exclusively breastfed, it was a great way to start stocking up for when she'll need it in a couple months. Fast forward about 2 months, and here we are now. She's still exclusively breastfed, and we've got our routine completely down. Abigail is clearly healthy and well-fed. My milk is still coming in, and we're still pumping and storing every day. Now, the only problem we have is our freezer is FULL and there's no room. No, not full of food-- it's full of milk! Our freezer section has been taken over and is thr dairy section. We've rearranged the little baggies as best as we can, and have tried to cook and eat all of our frozen food and stopped buying any frozen food, but now it's just to the point where we either need to use up the milk now, or stop storing. Definitely a bad idea though, because I can already see that my milk supply isn't coming as fast or as much as it used to before. If I stop, I fear that we'll run out of milk when she finally does start using what we have stored. School starts in a couple weeks from today, and due to the nature of my job and my busy daily schedule, I know that I will really only have time to pump once a day during my lunch break. And if that is indeed the case, then she'll eventually run out of milk since the demand will be greater than my ability to supply. :(

I guess we'll see what happens. If anything, I'm just grateful that breastfeeding has gone so well for us. We've been so lucky, especially since I've heard stories of how things can go wrong. Our cup overflows....(with milk) and now, apparently so does our freezer. Haha :)