Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Done Pumping

I have mentioned a few times that Benjamin has almost entirely stopped taking bottles at daycare. He has been having 1-4oz of breast milk at daycare for the past 3-4 weeks. Now that he is a year they are giving him cows milk too, which he loves, and I think he will be totally off breast milk from a bottle within the month.

He still feeds directly from me at night (too much at night... haha... but that is another story).

I intended to wean off pumping, to not actually stop until his daycare demand had entirely stopped. Just switch to once a day for awhile. But then I accidentally did not pump one day I was working from home (the day I was sick/not feeling well), and my supply was fine. Then I forgot my pumps one day at work, and my supply was fine. And I have a freezer stash that I doubt we will even make it through before he stops.

So, I just stopped pumping.

It rocks! I  love having the free time at work! Real lunches! Taking walks! Running errands! I love leaving in the morning without a huge freezer bag w my pumps and bottles in it.

I don't miss pumping, but somehow I still am a little sad, just because its a sign of how big he is. It is RIGHT on schedule with what I wanted in terms of weaning him. He is growing up so fast!

Soon I will start night weaning. Ideally that would leave me breastfeeding him once in the evening and once in the morning. I would keep doing that as long as he wants or as long as I am able. We will see how it goes.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I enjoy your blog! I will be interested in hearing how you approach night weaning since that is something we will be tackling in the next few months too.

-Mandy (ang1010)

Allison said...

Ahh....I remember those days! The freedom that I had when I stopped pumping (or even when I cut my sessions down to 2 and then 1) was amazing! Enjoy it!

I had enough in the freezer for Elizabeth to give her one cupful per day until she was about 2, IIRC (I stopped pumping when she was 17 months, I think)--you could just give it to him in a sippy cup.

Best of luck on the night weaning. We're going to need to do something very soon with N--the amount of times he's waking is getting ridiculous.

I hope everything goes smoothly with your gradual weaning!