Since dropping pumps, not only have my pump sessions become longer to fully empty, but I have also had to do more breast compressions. I particularly have to do more of these in my first morning pump when my boobs are super full of milk, lumpy , and they are nearly rock hard. I was also told by my Cleo lactation consultant that I needed to spend a little bit more time massaging my breasts first thing every morning before pumping to loosen any potential clogs that could be there. This would also make it easier for the milk to come out.  While I was fine doing the extra breast massaging, doing more breast compressions at this point is really, really exhausting. I have given myself numb fingers as well as mommy thumb and wrist pain from all of the breast compressions that I have done during pumping. My mommy thumb condition does not really seem to be getting better. Some days, it is more tolerable than others, but the pain still persists depending on the type of movement my thumb does. Even the term mommy thumb is a misnomer because the pain is not actually in my thumb. The pain results from movement of my thumb, but the pain is actually in my wrist because of the tendons that are connected to my thumb. See? That’s another interesting thing that you learn as a pumping Mama: you learn more about how everything in your body is connected.

So every morning, on top of my extra breast massaging, I have to spend more time pushing down on my boobs to get the milk out. I am literally pushing milk out of my breasts every morning to get the milk out not just for my baby to eat, but also so that I do not get clogged. And so as I do this every morning, I think to myself, Do cows get milk clogs? They don’t have hands. So how would they get their milk clogs out?? What other animals in the animal kingdom get clogged milk ducts…? 

When you are pumping milk, a number of best practices should be followed in order to maximize the milk that you produce for each pump session. Some of these include applying heat to and massaging your breasts before pumping, breast compressions while pumping, and making sure to moisturize your nipples with something that is baby safe like shea butter to prevent cracking or drying out. I usually do all of these things, but I especially applied heat a lot during the first several months of pumping, particularly because it was just very cold since we were in the dead of winter. I used different types of heating pads that needed to be boiled and rehydrated over the stove, and while I used them pretty religiously for the first three months, I got tired of how much preparation went into rehydrating them every single day, multiple times per day, particularly since at that point, I was pumping seven times per day. I ended up reserving the heat pads mostly for my last evening pump as well as my middle of the night pumps. That reduced the amount of heat pad preparation that I had to do. In the beginning, Chris would always boil all of the heat pads for me, but as time went on, I ended up doing it myself and got annoyed at the tedious process. But then, I remembered while rummaging through one of our closets that we had Beddy Bear. 

Beddy Bear is a teddy bear that has raw rice stuffed into his belly. You warm him up in the microwave for about 2 1/2 minutes, and then he basically is a heat pad for you, without any need to rehydrate over boiling water on the stove. This certainly beats waiting for water to boil in a large pot and then allowing the heat pads to rehydrate for about 20 minutes every single time I use them. Because he was so low maintenance, I started just using him to heat up my boobs for certain pump sessions. And he was working quite well. Well, that is… until he actually burned me. A couple days ago, I heated him up for my last evening pump session, and when I put him on my breast, I must have been very sleepy because a few seconds later, I felt a strong burning sensation on the top of boob. I immediately removed him and touched my breast. Crap, I thought. I think I might have overheated him. Or did I? He must have gotten too hot, and I probably should have waited for him to cool a bit before I put him on my breasts. 

The next morning after my shower, I looked at myself in the mirror and noticed that the bruises that are on the top of my breast from breast compressions had gotten even more conspicuous and darker. I looked closely at my breasts in the mirror: ahhhh, I thought. These new bruises are burn marks from Beddy Bear! I can’t believe my teddy bear burned me! And this is all just for breast milk for my baby… 

I thought this before, and I still believe this now: breast-feeding is truly a mother’s gift to her child. It is completely selfless and done 100% out of pure love and the desire to give our babies the most we possibly and physically are able to give. Being a pumping mama is hard ass work, but I have not regretted a second of it. I love watching my baby thrive and grow while primarily having my breast milk as her main form of food. I will always be a little bit sad that nursing did not work out for us, but I am grateful for my milk production, even when it was not that great in the beginning, and even now, when it is still shy of 100% meeting my baby’s needs. I am grateful that I have this opportunity and privilege to feed my baby with food from my own body.

Ever since I started dropping pump sessions, I have been taking forever to empty. I used to pump for about 30 minutes each session, and now, I am noticing that I have to pump until at least 40 to 45 minutes in order to get the same output that I got previously with just 30 minutes. This is really really frustrating. Sometimes, I end up staying connected to my breast pump for an entire hour. This is supposed to be fairly common unfortunately: I’d read about this happening for a lot of women in my Facebook pumping mamas group, plus my Cleo lactation consultant says this is normal, as well. This is not necessarily the end of the world, as because my pump is battery operated, I do not need to be stuck to a wall. I can actually move about the apartment, and most of the time while I am pumping, I am playing with my baby on the floor. But it is definitely not convenient to have bottles stuck and connected to my nipples. I cannot do exactly everything that I could be doing without the pump connected  because of this. On top of that, my total time connected to a pump is actually longer now than it was when I was doing seven pumps per day. This was not how I was envisioning pumping at five times per day, which is what I am currently at. Plus, in just a couple of short weeks, I am going back to work. Granted, I am lucky in that I am not going back into an office, and that instead, I am going to be working from home at my desk in the second bedroom, so I can still pump while I am at home without being forced to go into a tiny, windowless and soulless pumping room for moms. However, I do not necessarily want to be pumping milk during all of my meetings. I am planning to block out my calendar twice during the workday to pump milk, and so during that time, I will not be doing any video meetings or external meetings. But I was originally envisioning that my pumping breaks would only be 30 minutes. It’s not a big deal for me to be connected to a pump while I am outside of work hours, but this can get really annoying once I am actually doing work meetings again. And I already do all of the things that have been recommended to me to empty faster: I do breast compressions. I apply heat. I massage my breasts before I pump. I have played around with the settings to see what else can empty me faster, but I was already doing that, anyway.

This is annoying, but this still beats pumping seven times per day, every three hours during the day and every four hours at night. I have to wash my pump parts two times less than I did previously. My output per pump is a lot higher now, which makes pumping feel a lot more gratifying now. I am going to get through this.

Women go through a lot of crap in their lives, particularly if they have to go through pregnancy and childbirth. While most people are aware of the pains and annoyances of pregnancy, not many people, other than those who have actually experienced it themselves, are aware of all the postpartum side effects that women face. Of course, while most logical and reasonably aware people would know that childbirth would require your uterus and vagina to heal, it is less well known that postpartum hormones can really go haywire after the birth of a child. Some of the potential things that can happen can include but are not limited to:  hot flashes, cold night sweats, mood swings, acne, hair loss, and a massively itchy scalp. Oh, that massively itchy scalp is actually affecting me literally as I write this.

A bunch of my friends and colleagues warned me about postpartum hair loss. This tends to be most common about 3 to 4 months after giving birth when most of the pregnancy hormones have left your body, and your body is starting to regulate once again into a non-pregnant body. If that happens, your hair can suddenly start falling out in huge clumps. While I have not yet experienced any hair loss that is notable, fingers crossed, I have repeatedly experience a scalp that is so itchy that all I want to do is scratch it until I bleed. And the most annoying part is that whenever it gets super itchy, it’s when I am supposed to be resting. 

When I actually have a quiet moment and can lie down and not use my arms or hands at all, that is when I itch the most. And it drives me absolutely nuts because all I want to do is rest. I don’t have that much time to rest during the day or night. And so it’s like my body is trying to mess with me and tell me that I’m not allowed to rest, and and instead, it is going to drive me crazy by making my scalp itch. That is just not fun at all for me. I wash my hair about 2 to 3 times a week, and if the itchiness continues, I may actually have to increase the number of times I wash it, which I absolutely hate because I hate washing my hair. It is one of the self grooming things that I abhor. It is annoying to wash my hair particularly because ever since I started dying it, I get massive knots trying to get my fingers through my hair while I am washing. And the knots are super frustrating. That’s why during the very few times during the year when I actually get my hair done, I am so happy to have someone else wash my hair for me.

Oh, postpartum life.

Months ago, when I was sharing with my colleagues that I was pregnant, all of my colleagues, particularly my mom colleagues, were very excited for me. The ones who knew that I had dealt with carpal and cubital tunnel warned me about mommy thumb, also known as de Quervain’s tenosynovitis. They warned me not to throw away my wrist splints (as at that point, I didn’t need to wear them regularly anymore given I had managed to get rid of the daily pain) and to save them in case I might need them after the baby came. One of them told me she even had to start seeing a physical therapist for some relief because the condition nicknamed “mommy thumb” was so painful. I knew I had given myself this when I tried to do a thumb’s up motion on my right hand and completely failed. When I tried to move my thumb in circles upwards, I was feeling an unpleasant popping sensation in the tendons in my wrist directly under my right thumb. And that was when I knew that I had pinpointed my wrist problem: this has nothing to do with carpal tunnel. This was a completely different situation. And in some way as strange as it sounds, I am happy that has it has nothing to do with carpal tunnel because carpal tunnel is a nerve issue. Mommy thumb is a tendon issue, which I am hoping is easier to heal.

New parents are most susceptible to this condition, which is a form of tendinitis in the thumb and wrist. They get it because of the repetitive motions of caring for their babies, particularly in lifting them up using their thumb and pointer fingers. Well, I rarely lifted my baby that way in the last 15 weeks because it wasn’t until relatively recently that she had a decent hold of her head and good neck strength. Instead, how did I give myself this? Well, it all goes back to the same thing that I’ve been complaining about and been frustrated with pretty much since the beginning: pumping milk. All of the hand expression that I have been doing to prime my breasts for my electric pump have ultimately been responsible for not only the numbness in my fingertips, but also this mommy thumb condition. Pumping is also responsible for aggravating my cubital tunnel, simply from the repetitive motion of placing my flanges in the right position on my breasts every day for at least 6 to 7 times a day in the last 15 weeks, as well as doing breast compression while pumping.

Well, the numbness in my fingertips is slowly going away because I have been less aggressive about doing breast compressions… Partly out of laziness, and partly just because I’ve been more gentle on myself in terms of my output. And with mommy thumb, there are very specific stretches and exercises to do to help the condition, and I even just purchased a thumb splint, which is basically a wrist splint with another splint for the thumb. I did a massage that was specific for my wrist, and while it seem to help, it likely gets worse before it gets better. The next day after I did this massage on myself a few times, I felt really sore in my wrist. The specific stretch I found online definitely helps it feel better. And I have been icing my wrist as well.

More mommy injuries. It just keeps coming.

Ever since I reduced the number of pumps down from seven pumps per day to six, my output per pump has increased dramatically, plus my overall daily output has also gone up, much to my excitement. I am basically producing 2 to 3 ounces more per day with six pumps a day as opposed to seven, which makes me super happy. What also makes me happy? Looking at my pump output at a given session and seeing such full bottles. No one could relate to the happiness at looking at these fuller breast milk bottles then a pumping mama. This is a fact.

In addition to that, when I put these bottles in the fridge to cool down before combining with other milk that I have expressed and into the bottles that the baby will eventually drink, because the bottles are so full of milk, now, I can see a clearer separation between the foremilk and hindmilk. These two types of milk are exactly what they sound like: the foremilk is milk that you expressed at the beginning of a pump or nursing session. This milk is a lot thinner and less fatty. As you continue nursing or pumping, your body starts releasing the hindmilk, which is a lot thicker, creamier, and much whiter. The hindmilk has the most fat content. The hindmilk is ultimately what gets your baby full. And so the more hindmilk you have, the richer your overall milk is. And when you really look at the milk separation, sometimes the foremilk can look like it’s a blue color. You’re supposed to shake up the milk to ensure they are combined thoroughly before feeding baby.

And for the first time, this week, I saw the foremilk look a little light blue. But when you see the separation of the foremilk from the hindmilk, it was very clear that the hindmilk made the vast majority of the bottle, whereas the foremilk was a teeny tiny proportion. And this made me feel so proud and happy: I have super fatty breast milk! My milk is fatty! My baby is getting lots of good nutrition from my breastmilk that my body is producing. And that just feels like the best thing. It makes all of the pumping that I do feel worth it even though it has been extremely trying and mentally exhausting.

As a lactating woman, I spend a lot of time thinking about my milk supply, both consciously as well as subconsciously. And with that, in the back of my mind, I think about when my period will return, which hopefully will not be until at least month eight or nine postpartum so that my milk supply can at least remain stable at the level that it currently is at. When you are lactating and your period returns, your hormones shift, which causes an inevitable drop in your milk supply. This tends to freak out most lactating women, particularly those who exclusively breast-feed their babies and are strongly averse to formula.

So you can imagine my horror when one day, I went to pee, and before I flushed the toilet, I noticed that the liquid in the toilet bowl was a pinkish red color. For a split second, I flipped out a little bit. What? I thought. Is my period back? I touched myself down there and did not see any blood. Then, I remembered that I’d roasted beets and eating them for dinner. And beets have the ability to change the color of your urine if you eat enough of them, similar to how asparagus can change the smell of your urine. Phew, I thought. Thank God for the beets! I was only about 14 weeks postpartum and the idea of having my period back this early in my breast-feeding journey did not sit well with me. Most of the time when you hear of women getting their period back after giving birth this soon, it’s because they are exclusively formula feeding or they are not nursing enough. In my case, I was pumping milk around the clock and nursing a few times a day consistently for the last 14 weeks, so if my period had come back that soon, I would have been completely devastated. So hopefully, I still have at least 4 to 5 months before it returns.