Yesterday was Chris’s first day officially back at work. Granted, he did not go back into the office physically, but instead set up his work laptop and monitor at my usual workstation in the second bedroom of our apartment. To go into the office, he would be required to wear a mask and get tested for Covid every week, And the requirement to wear a mask in the office at all times was a deal breaker for him. On top of that, even if he were to go back into the office, he wanted to do that later to ease into the transition of being back at work.

I was bracing myself for this week because I knew that it was going to be a challenge to balance the baby’s feeding schedule along with my pumping schedule. Everything had to align almost perfectly in order to get both done, and both really did need to get done. 

I was chatting with our night nurse about this last week and telling her that I was nervous about how I was going to manage both all by myself. She gave me a sympathetic look and said given that both the feeding schedule and the pumping schedule are happening every three hours, after diaper change, tummy time, feeding, burping, making sure the baby was upright for at least 15 to 20 minutes after a feed, and then setting up my pump and pumping milk, I would be lucky to have 30 minutes to myself, and that would be on a very, very good day. On really bad days, I may only have 10 to 15 minutes to myself, and that would likely not truly be for myself. That time would likely be spent preparing bottles, cleaning bottles, cleaning and prepping my pump parts, and stuffing food down my throat to make sure I had enough calories to produce enough breastmilk (I would also add here that I eat almost all my meals standing up while pumping now – breakfast, lunch, and most of the time even dinner). My night nurse was never one to sugarcoat things, and so she likes to keep it real. 

Well, the first day was absolutely exhausting, and I am saying this as someone who is already exhausted with her husband doing almost all the bottle feeds and taking care of most logistical baby-related things for the last seven weeks. I had limited experience bottle feeding my baby, and so, I was not equipped to read her signs the way that Chris was. I do not always immediately recognize when she is still hungry or if she is truly full. She ended up wanting more food after getting burped and falling asleep at the first and the second feed. I obviously got frustrated because I needed to pump after both, and so I ended up trying to appease her by feeding her a little, or holding off her feeding, and it didn’t really work out. Chris would occasionally come out of the second bedroom and check in to see how things were going, especially when she was crying. And he could tell that I was frustrated and feeling overwhelmed already.

The second day was also rough, but a little bit more manageable than the first day. But Chris had already seemed to make the decision that he was probably going to go back on leave again. I asked him if it was because of some work situation in terms of re-structure that he had alluded to in the previous week, and he said that it was more because in just two days, he noticed how even more exhausted I looked at the end of each day, and this was not sustainable for my overall health and well-being.

I felt really bad and guilty. It was clear that I wasn’t managing well, but I said that I needed more time to adjust and to read the baby’s cues. Two days provided very sparse data. But it seems like he had already made up his mind. And I was not going to push back on him going back on leave. I really wanted and needed the support. And honestly, parenting is just more enjoyable when both of us are together.

But I did not just feel bad and guilty towards him; I felt a deep guilt about all of the other mothers out there in this country who have no support, whose husbands or partners barely even had one day or one week of family leave off. I felt bad about all of the mothers who only had a week or two off from work and immediately had to go back to work, still with postpartum bleeding, painful vaginal tears, pelvic pain, C-section scars — you name it. My partner had originally taken seven weeks off, and as a dad, that is quite a foreign and luxurious concept in this country — that a dad would take off that much time when his child was born. So even if he did continue to go back to work, I still would have been an outlier in this abysmal country that does not value family or child rearing; I would have been an extremely privileged and lucky outlier. And now that he is going back on leave, I know that we are in the less than 1% of the population who has this much privilege. I guess that is also what motherhood is about:  always feeling bad and guilty about pretty much everything. That could be about not spending enough time with your children, not pumping enough milk for your children, going back to work, having more resources and help than other mothers, having more comfort than other others. 

We are not only lucky because we both have so much more leave than the average American, but also because we are able to afford help in the form of our night nurse. Her support does not come cheap by any standard, but we are able to afford it, unlike so many families out there. There are people who are fortunate enough to have family nearby who can help out, and then there are the people who, like us, have no immediate family nearby and pay for the support. But then, there are the people who literally do it all on their own. And for the single moms… I don’t even know where to start. My heart hurts for these people, and at the same time, I have deep admiration and respect for them. I particularly feel for the mothers out there whose partners don’t have much or any leave when they have a child, and they literally have to do everything by themselves, day and night. It is not easy to have a child in this country, and it truly does take a village. And we are lucky and privileged to be able to pay for our mini village.

In the beginning, I was only pumping a few ml of breast milk, which is considered normal. But 1 to 2 weeks into the journey of pumping  and during the triple feed program, I was still at best producing only about 1 1/2 ounces of breastmilk, with the random fluke of 2 ounces just once or twice. And I knew that the baby’s appetite would only increase as the size of her stomach increased as she grew. As I made a number of changes, including getting my flange size and type corrected, as well as increasing my number of power pumps so that I was doing them every single day since January 20, I have seen an increase in my supply, but the change has been gradual day over day. Chris has a Google Sheet he uses to chart all of the baby’s eating patterns, whether she is having breast milk versus formula and what type of formula, poops and pees, as well as time of day. I added two additional tabs: one for breastmilk output by time/day, as well as one for a pivot table to show this easily day over day. And I would be lying if I said that I did not get excited when I started seeing that my output was increasing. Not only did I get excited, but I also started taking photos of my combined output when I had reached certain levels, so if I finally reach 3 ounces, then I would take a photo of it. When I reached 3 1/2, I took a photo of that. And likely, when I reach four or five for one pump session, I will be taking photos of that, as well. Hell, one day when I put together a scrapbook documenting the babies first few months of life, whenever I get a chance to do that anyway, I will likely be including photos of breastmilk bottles… Just to remember and fully document my breast-feeding and pumping journey and how obsessed I was about this during this period.

I may never be able to fully produce enough breastmilk to 100% feed my baby with food that my body produces, especially given my relatively late ramp up one month in, but I have made peace with that. A big reason that I wanted her to have breastmilk and only breastmilk in an ideal world is because I hate the American formula industry. Yes, fed is best, but… Let’s just be real. Breast milk is the best milk. That is just a fact. How can any type of formula or milk made outside of the human body be better for a baby? It was designed to be the perfect food for a baby. That is just mother nature. That should not offend mothers who choose to formula feed. 

It is absolutely disgusting that mainstream brands of American formula such as Similac actually have hideous ingredients in them such as corn syrup. Corn syrup does not belong in a baby’s diet, much less a newborn baby’s diet. The American Academy of Pediatrics says that parents should not include any refined sugar in a baby’s diet (after starting solids, obviously) when she is one year of age or younger. If that is the case, then why the fuck does formula include corn syrup — and the most common and popular brand of formula in this stupid country, at that?? It’s like we are training babies in this country to have an immediate and early addiction to sweet, and even worse, CORN SYRUP and other processed nasty foods.

If we are able to reach about 75 to 80% of her diet to be breastmilk only, then I will feel satisfied and like I did enough to increase my output and ensure her diet was what I wanted it to be. This is my motherhood obsession.

Before I had my baby, I had no idea that there was an entire world of women who were exclusive pumpers. What I mean by that is that these women pump breast milk around the clock as the primary way, or what they hope will be the primary way, for their babies to eat. A lot of reasons exist for why women would do this, but some of the most common reasons include, but are not limited to: babies failed to latch, poor milk transfer, moms do not want to breast-feed directly on their breast because it is not comfortable for them or they just don’t like it; babies are in the NICU after being born and thus are separated from their mothers, and so the moms do not have a way to do skin to skin or to “activate“ their breasts to start milk production; as a result, the moms are forced to use electric pumps to signal to their bodies to create and continue milk production if they choose to breast feed; Mothers want the flexibility of others feeding their baby (via breast milk in a bottle) as opposed to their baby solely relying on their breast for food. I am sure there are other reasons, but these are the most common that I had heard or read about. I suppose I fell into this world myself after being devastated by the fact that my own baby had poor milk transfer, which ultimately hurt my milk supply without my even being aware of it for the first few weeks of her life. Because I was already pumping six times a day on the triple feed program schedule that the NP/LC put her on, I figured that it would not hurt to add in one additional pumping session to get additional breast stimulation to increase my milk supply, but also to produce more milk for her potentially.

And so, I became more aggressive about my research and understanding of the world of exclusive pumping. I never thought that I would be an exclusive pumper, and I guess technically I am not completely exclusive because I still nurse her four times a day now, but I know for a fact that she is not getting a lot directly from my breast, and my goal is to have her get the majority of her food through breastmilk… But through a bottle given the circumstances. I know that every mother has a decision to make in terms of how she wants to feed her baby, and fed is best at the end of the day, but for me, because nursing did not work out as an exclusive form to feed my child, the next best thing in my mind is to try to produce as much breastmilk as possible to feed her through a bottle. I had already invested so much time and energy into learning about breast-feeding, and so there was no way that I was going to give up now. I already have my breast pump and I have already been pumping, so this seemed like the natural alternative for me to explore and continue. For me, if I were to give up now, even if I was, at best at this point, only producing about 6 ounces of breastmilk per day, it would feel like I had failed as a mom in my goal to breast-feed my child, and I do not want to fail. Plus, I have 16 weeks of official maternity leave, so why not use that time to nourish my baby in the way that I ideally wanted to?

Yes, exclusive pumping is not for the faint of heart. It requires an insane amount of time, tenacity, and dedication, but I know that I am capable of doing it. The most aggressive exclusive pumpers pump at minimum 8 to 12 times a day around the clock (so that’s every 2-3 hours, really) for the first 12 weeks of their baby’s life to not only produce milk for their baby but to also optimize their milk supply. Your milk supply, as a lactating person, is dictated by how often you have your breasts stimulated, whether that is through a nursing baby or a breast pump. If you do not stimulate your breasts literally around the clock, you run the risk of ruining your milk supply, especially in the first 12 weeks postpartum when your milk supply is establishing itself and will finally stabilize after the first three months. This is why sleeping a full night’s sleep, so 6 to 8 hours straight, especially in the first 12 weeks postpartum, can be particularly detrimental to your milk supply.

So while I was reading about aggressive pumping schedules on an exclusive pumping mama’s website, I realized right away that there was no way that I could do a pumping session every three hours around the clock for the first three months, or ever. I was the kind of person who absolutely needed at least a 3 1/2 to 4-hour block of sleep, and so my compromise to myself was that I would pump seven times a day and give myself one approximately four hour block of sleep for my own sanity and health. If feeding my baby at least one bottle of formula would mean that I could sleep an additional two hours every day, then that would be worth it to me.

I learned a lot of things reading about exclusive pumping on this site that I had no idea about, that the nurse practitioner/lactation consultant at my babies pediatricians office never warned me about. I learned about concepts like power pumping for 20 –10–10, meaning you pump for 20 minutes or until the milk stops flowing, you stop for 10 minutes, you pump again for 10 minutes or until the milk stops flowing, and then you pump again for 10 minutes. The idea of power pumping is to mimic a baby cluster feeding on you, and you must pump until after the milk stops flowing, otherwise you are telling your body that you do not need to make more milk. The LC at the doctor’s office never mentioned this to me, and it kind of pissed me off. Her version of power pumping was pumping for 10 minutes, stopping for 10, and then pumping again for 10. There is pretty much no documentation of her version of power pumping, which I had been doing blindly with zero results. It really made me feel like the IBCLC at the doctor’s office was totally incompetent. She never centered her the care around me even though she was happy to bill my insurance for my visit as a lactating mother. She never asked me about my breast-feeding goals or taught me about how to protect my milk supply or increase it. She never helped me learn my pump or discuss flange sizing with me, which is KEY. The only thing she suggested in terms of increasing my milk supply was to purchase this $35 bottle of mother’s love tincture, which has fenugreek in it, a supposed milk supply booster. At this point, I had been taking this stupid and disgusting tincture for about 2 1/2 weeks and it had done absolutely nothing for me. I should have known better than to expect some magic from a bottle of random crap. But alas, I was desperate and inexperienced, and I was naïve to think that someone from the doctor’s office would be able to guide me in the right direction. I feel like I learned more about milk supply and pumping from this random website I found than in all the visits with the IBCLC at the pediatrician’s office. And that is sad because this website is fully available for free, and obviously visits to the pediatrician’s office are never free.

So, I am going to try this out and see if my milk supply can increase. Because at the rate that I am going now, I am barely giving my baby any breastmilk, as I am barely producing 20 to 30% of her needs. And as she gets bigger, she is only going to want to eat more. I really don’t want her to be exclusively formula fed, but we will have to see how my pumping journey goes. I did not choose this path; this path chose me.