This morning, I woke up around 5:45 to a text from my nanny, who was letting me know she wasn’t feeling well and would be unable to come in today. While it was obviously fine for her to not come in when feeling ill, especially since I knew I only had two meetings today, I also woke up to a weird feeling in my right breast, like a little rock on the side of it. Ugh, I thought. I had a similar feeling a couple days ago, but luckily it never resulted in a clog and cleared up after I pumped that morning. But this time, after my morning pump, which was much lower than usual in terms of output, I realized that “rock” was still in my breast.

Ughhhhhh. Not only did I not have childcare today, but I’d also have to deal with another stupid milk clog… my third one ever, and my first since I started religiously taking sunflower lecithin supplements twice a day as a preventive measure for clogs to thin out the milk fat. WHY did it have to happen on the day the nanny called in sick?

While it would have been an enjoyable day feeding and spending time with my baby, it ended up being an exhausting day of taking care of her while also trying to get the clog out… which in many ways, took more mental energy out of me because there’s always the stress of not knowing when or if the clog will come out. Plus, it physically hurts. It feels sore and hot since a milk clog is essentially an enflamed milk duct, with milk fat that has gotten stuck. Eventually, it finally went away after a lot of massaging, pumping, and ibuprofen, but it was still exhausting. By the end of the day, I was totally pooped and just wanted to pass out. And I did just that… and even skipped my last pump. That probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do given my clog just came out, but I was just too tired to stay up for yet another hour to pump. I’m now at over nine months of exclusively pumping — no one understands exactly how much time and mental energy this takes to do, not to mention the extreme discipline. My body is still not my own as long as I am pumping, but it’s a sacrifice I’m making for my baby.