Udder Indecision

Well, we had a great trip on the weekend. Amelia was great, all things considered. She was a champ for the five hour drive (slept most of the way both there and back) and was wonderful at the wedding.

During the reception, she fell asleep at 9:30 (her bedtime, of course) and stayed asleep despite the blaring music until we went to leave and took her out into the quiet night air! She didn't really nap at all (too excited) but then slept 14 hrs the night we came home. What kind of 4 1/2 month old baby sleeps for 14 hours?! Just like her momma!

Things here are going well otherwise. We've pretty much settled on a bit of a schedule and she's happy most of the time (unless tired or hungry, just like me).

My biggest dilemma right now is whether to stop pumping (milk) at Thanksgiving. As most of you know, we had to stop breastfeeding in June (due to low supply - don't let anyone tell you that it doesn't happen) and that's what I've been doing ever since. Right now she gets about 1/3 - 1/2 of her food from breast milk.

I set the goal of Thanksgiving a while ago, since that's when she'll officially be starting solid foods. I always told myself to try and hang on at least that long, so she would get the benefit of breast milk for at least the first (almost) 6 months. I also naively hoped that maybe she would breastfeed again then (if solid foods helped fill her up) but didn't realize that her per-meal intake is slowly rising (sometimes 10 oz!) while my output is slowly dwindling.

But now that the big day is finally coming, I feel so much guilt about stopping. What is more important that I'm doing in a day than trying to give her the best start possible? Especially if/when she gets her first cold, I'll be thinking that it's the formula, because she's not getting any of the antibodies from breast milk.

On the other hand, pumping milk four or five times a day is really starting to drive me crazy. At the risk of sharing too much detail, the supply gets less and less every day, so I have to pump for longer periods of time each day and do more manual compression. It's a pain, literally and figuratively. And then if I don't get very much, I feel sad, like I'm letting her down. Almost every day, I think about Thanksgiving and finally being able to stop. I've been pumping now for almost three months, which I think is something to be proud of. And I don't want to be one of those mothers who goes crazy from the worrying and guilt.

But when she's falling asleep at night, all snuggled in and nursing quietly, I think that it is the best moment of my life and I should never let that intimacy go.

So hard to know what the right thing to do is.

Here are some photos from the weekend:

AJ meets the pugs:


AJ on the change table, happy to be at a party:


AJ with the bride: