104,063.
That’s how many millilitres of milk I pumped after my second baby was born. Imagine twenty-five 4 litre bags of milk. That’s how much milk I made and measured. Mad respect to my boobs, they worked really hard.
AND SO DID I.
As an undersupplier, breastmilk was an issue for me after both of my pregnancies. My first baby failed to grow the first week he was alive, causing me a lot of stress and both of us a lot of distress. With my second baby, as a household we were determined to not have the same thing happen again, and there were two huge things we did differently.
Number one: I hired Antea the Mama Coach for postpartum support. I had 7 weeks of email support with her and two in-home visits. She helped me set sleep foundations for my newbie, cheered me on when things were hard, helped us navigate when everyone (except the baby, thankfully) had a gastro bug, and was generally an optimistic and caring presence in my life. I really cannot overstate how much her guidance has helped our family navigate sleep and feeding with my two children.
Number two: We supplemented with formula from day 1. (Actually around day 4. He was content up until then.) Hand-in-hand with this, I had decided not to attempt triple feeding at any point during this postpartum. Triple feeding is when you nurse, top up the baby with a bottle (pumped milk or formula), and then also pump to increase demand. In theory, this should increase your breast milk supply and then you can continue nursing in the future. However, when I did triple feeding, I was setting an alarm for 3 hours from start of feed to start of feed, which resulted in me sleeping approximately never and contributing to the dumpster fire that was my mental health postpartum.
The gastro bug. When the baby was about 2 weeks old, a gastro bug showed up in our house, starting with my toddler. Then dad got sick. And then me.
Since we were already nursing and giving a bottle, and I was pumping to increase supply (but purposefully NOT triple feeding), I decided to ditch nursing and exclusively pump. Did I know what I was getting myself into? Not exactly. But, I did know that it was one thing that I didn’t have to figure out along with my baby, because teaching a baby to breastfeed is HARD.
I set out to exlusively pump with quite a bit of optimism. I had already rented a breast pump and had all the parts, so the rest should be easy, right?
Well, no. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t even straightforward.
Here’s what I do know for certain:
- My output increased after I saw an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC). Ottawa is lucky to have Milkface Lactation as an in-person option. I figured that if I was spending so much time pumping, I might as well be getting as much milk as possible. The main thing that I changed after seeing Britt was making my flanges smaller.
- Most of the supplements that I tried had no discernible impact on my output. Were they useless? Absolutely not. Particularly immediately postpartum, I felt like moringa was helping me feel less depleted.
- The biggest shock to me was that my output actually INCREASED after I dropped my middle of the night pump. Once the baby started sleeping through, it felt so stupid to get up at 3 am to pump. I did it for a few weeks, but eventually gave that up and let myself get more sleep too.
- Exclusively pumping is so much work. For a long time I was pumping 7 times a day. For about 30 minutes at a stretch, so that’s 3.5 hours a day just attached to the pump. Add on time for washing pump parts, labeling, using and storing milk, setting up the pump, hoping the baby stays asleep, etc etc. It’s a lot.
- Feeding a baby is amazing. Whether you nurse, pump, use formula, or a combination, as long as your baby is fed you are doing a great job. Sometimes babies are bad at making sure they eat enough. This is also not your fault.
The only way I survived pumping for 9 months was by making it my only hobby for about 5 of those months. Once we were kind of past the survival mode of immediate postpartum, I started keeping detailed notes, creating graphs, looking at left vs right (partially to see which flanges were most effective), tracking how many pumps per day and what times they were. I found a groove with it and it worked fairly well for us. Looking back, it’s hard to remember how I spent that much time attached to the pump. How did I find enough hours in the day? (Spoiler alert: this is what being a mom is. Wondering how in the fuck you found enough hours to do everything in the day. Repeat until ….???)
Around 5 months in, my toddler had a sleep regression that resulted in RAGE at bedtime. We ended up pushing his bedtime later, and I ended up dropping a pump session because I needed that time back for myself. Since I was combo feeding, I didn’t feel the pressure as much to keep my production high, because we could always give more formula. I’ve been done pumping for a little over a month now, and it’s really nice to not worry about pumping any more. And my kiddo is thriving.
