Drying up

Twenty-two bags.  That's how many bags of frozen breast milk I stored in the deep freezer and used over the past year.  Each Ziploc freezer bag held five bags of milk, with 10-14 ounces in each.  That's 1100-1540 ounces of milk, or around 200 6-ounce bottles of milk.  That doesn't include, of course, the nursing sessions, the pumped milk that went right into bottles, or the (very little) milk that got pumped and dumped because I didn't want to transport it.  Tonight, I took the very last one -- the last little Lansinoh bag marked "Mother's Milk" -- out of Bag 22 to defrost for tomorrow.  I haven't nursed since Friday afternoon, I think.  I got down to just mornings, and I'm just basically stretching it out, nursing if I get too full until my body gets the message.  I did it right this time, weaning slowly, starting last month when I had enough frozen milk to supplement while Emme was at daycare.  Then last week we introduced cow's milk -- a cup or two of that, two bottles of breast milk, and nursing in the morning.

She's sleeping through the night again and for good I think -- with the surgery and four (!) new top teeth behind us.  I know many would argue with me, but I think weaning has helped.  She doesn't wake at night looking for food.  She sleeps about twelve hours, and I'm making a big push to keep the pacifier to only bedtimes.  (It got used a lot more when we were traveling and she was teething.)  I'll try to eliminate it completely in the next month or two, once I know her sleep is set, but our pediatrician said that as long as it's only at bedtimes, it's not a major issue.

Weaning is always a mixed time for me emotionally.  It, more than anything else, seems to signify for me the transition from infancy to toddlerhood.  I like that I don't have to pump anymore -- I do truly loathe it. A time suck, if you'll forgive the phrase.  I like that bottles will soon be done with.  That I don't have to defrost milk ahead for daycare.  Emme has been pretty disinterested in any real nursing sessions for probably more than a month.  She wants to do it herself.  She can't sit still long enough to nurse for very long, especially if we're around other people.  It's a good time for both of us to be done.  But still -- there's a sense of time passing when I wean; it's the end of something.  Emme got absolutely nothing but breast milk, and that's kind of cool.  (Oliver got some, but very little, formula -- and mind you, there's nothing wrong with that.  It's just the absolutism of saying, "I exclusively breastfed for a year" that feels like an accomplishment for me.)  

If I approximate, on the conservative side, how much milk I've made in the past year, it's well over 10,000 ounces of milk.  That over 100 gallons.  But now we're done -- and, I think, that's okay.  The nursing bras have already been put away.  Soon the nursing pads will disappear.  In a few weeks, I can once again sleep without a bra on (another annoyance of nursing, but my letdown is too strong to go without), and I will probably switch back to the bras that I wore before Emme.  

So I'm drying up -- and drying a few tears -- but for the most part I'll celebrate my newfound freedom, pat myself on the back for a second job well done, pour Emme another sippy cup of milk and myself a glass of wine.  Cause baby, we're weaned.