It’s been over three weeks since I last pumped milk. It’s been three weeks since I last had to clean pump parts, three weeks since I heard the “brrr!” sound of my Spectra S1 Plus pump, which I used to joke was like my second baby. It took a few days to over a week to finally get used to not pumping before bed, to actually having time… to MYSELF before bed, but it finally started feeling okay about a week ago. It felt strange, but my new normal finally sank in. Sometimes, when I am in the shower now, I still squeeze one of my breasts to see if any milk comes out. And alas, I do get some drops. It’s still a nice white color, but it’s a lot thicker now, almost like the colostrum I originally produced right after birth. I don’t know how to store the drops because they are so small, and it’s not like the quantity is that much, so I end up just washing it away. But it would be nice to save it for Kaia somehow, especially since it seems like after her little hand foot mouth disease situation, she also got another fever somehow.

No one wants to see their baby in pain or suffer. But if there is some benefit to her getting some breast milk drops, then maybe it would be worth saving them for her in some way. One drop of breast milk contains about one million white blood cells that can protect a baby from infections. It’s almost like a super power in itself.

I used to have this silly fantasy of nursing until my baby was past two, of being THAT mother who still nursed in public at a toddler age and would get slightly embarrassed because her toddler would actually ASK for “the boobie.” I thought about it because I just wanted my baby to reap as many benefits from breast milk as possible, and I thought it would also help our bonding. Well, that was never to be in our case. I wish I did have some milk to share for her, though. Sometimes, it still makes me sad that I never froze even a single bag of breast milk for her for the future… even though it doesn’t logically make that much sense since I know that after 3-6 months of being in the freezer, most of the breast milk benefits drop off heavily. But I still think about it. Mom guilt has a million different forms.