No more pumping!

I gave up pumping almost a month ago. Just stopped. Cold turkey. I didn't step down, or taper, or slowly drop a session every week. I just stopped. And I'm not sure that I've felt better, physically or mentally, since I went back to work from maternity leave than I do now.

I am thankful for pumping. I am thankful that for seven months, my baby got to drink my milk, even when I wasn't with her. I'm thankful I had the privilege and ability to do that for her, and it was my choice to do so.

But pumping was misery for me. I felt bad about myself after almost every pump session, which I was doing three, sometimes four times per day.  I was whipping myself mentally over my perceived failure to make ALL THE MILK (which I've written about at length before).  At the end, I was pumping three times a day for a total of two to three ounces of milk. I want to scream at myself for that insanity.

Everything about pumping was exhausting.

But now I don't pump anymore. The world didn't stop turning. I haven't, in fact, even noticed that many changes. For one, now that I don't pump anymore, I read a lot more slowly. It takes a lot more time for me to finish a book because pump time used to be reading time.

Sometimes, a client brings a baby into the office, and if it's late afternoon, I feel a little uncomfortable. I think "if I had my pump with me, I would pump right now" but I don't and the feeling goes away.

I don't wash pump parts anymore. I don't lug the pump around any more. I don't have to schedule meetings around the pump anymore. I don't take my clothes off at work anymore.

And it is amazing.

In the end, I know that I put the pressure on myself to work and pump. I could have never pumped, and given her formula all along, and that would obviously have been fine. But I was irrationally attached to the idea of being her sole provider for as long as possible. The messages we get from society, the outsized pressure to breastfeed, the inflammatory studies that people share on Facebook...these feed postpartum anxiety, and depression, and feelings of inadequacy for many women, myself included. In truth, the only wrong way to feed a baby is to neglect to do so.

Parenting is hard. It forces you to make decisions every day that have very meaningful implications for the future. You make the best decision you can at the time, with the information you have. I know that we all have opinions about things like breastfeeding and formula because we want other people to make the same choices we made. It lends validity in an arena where it is lacking.

When I shared my fears about nursing and pumping even before my baby was born, I had so many women give me the "don't worry, your body was made for this, your milk will change based on your child's needs, formula is disgusting" speech. When I struggled, those messages were rattling around in my brain and I think amplified my failures. I wish I had heard "it will be what it will be, and you will do your best, and make the best decisions you can, and I support you without judgement."

So, if you're reading this, that is my message to you about parenting. It will be what it will be, and you will do your best, and make the best decisions you can, and I support you without judgement.

I still nurse in the morning, and at night, and on the weekends as she wants. At school she drinks formula by the bottle-full, and she is just as happy, and bright, and growing as she was before. She didn't sprout horns or give up on bottles; she just went on with her life, and I did too.

Pumping was one of the hardest parts of parenting that I have faced so far. I learned a lot about myself, obsession, irrationality and love through pumping. But I'm so glad it's done.