Yes, I'm still breastfeeding these babies. However, I just began the weaning process about 2 weeks ago. I started by dropping my night pumping sessions. That's why you haven't seen any 2 a.m. posts lately. Not pumping at night was really hard at first, literally. See, when you don't pump or feed, your boobies get rock hard and full of milky milks. I would wake up at 6 a.m. and pump 20 ounces because of the backup. After that, I tried to continue my every 3 hour schedule.
Last week, I started pushing to every 4 hours, instead of every 3. The first few days, I would be dying to pump and sometimes gave in before the full 4 hours. By the end of the week, though, I was able to hold out. Next week, I'm going to try to go 5 hours between pumping.
On Friday, I was at home with the kids all days, and I didn't have quite as much pumping time. I had already woken up with a sore breast, and I felt like one of my milk ducts in my right breast might be clogged. As the day progressed, it got worse and worse. By the end of the day, I thought I was going to throw up from the pain.
Other times when that has happened, I would just take a warm shower and massage out the blockage. Since I was home alone, though, that was not an option. At one point during the day, I was so desperate that I put my boobie in the pan that I use to warm up water for the babies' bottles. It's times like that when I'm glad I'm not on a reality show.
I will just keep trying to get them off the boobie milk. I think 8 months is long enough to have done it. In a few months, they will be drinking cow's milk so we'll only really need to fork over the cash for formula for a little while. They are drinking much less milk anyway because of all the food they are eating. Man, are they eating! They each usually pound 2 containers of Level 2 baby food at each meal, for a total of 6 per meal x 3 meals per day = 18 containers/day! (= tons of $$) Now you understand why I try to make my own baby food. Speaking of which, I made black beans and brown rice for the babies this week. So far, Abby likes them best! She's my little Cuban baby.
2 comments:
You are a super woman to have kept up for 8 months- multiply that times 3 and that makes 2 years!
Being finally done w/ breastfeeding adds so much freedom back to your life. I don't know how you go from the volume you were producing down to nothing, but weaning just one child took me less than a week and went smoothly. I hope yours has gone well too!
Engorgement sucks (as you can see, I'm a little behind on your blog). But it will be over soon. Kudos for keeping up with the dairy farm for as long as you did!!
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