Breaking up is hard to do

I know a lot of women (myself included) who have certain hopes or expectations that there will be a natural ease to breastfeeding.  Now labor, that's another story.  I think most women are prepared for or at least expecting childbirth to be challenging.  I remember telling patients in labor,"They don't call it labor for nothing! It's hard work!" Side note: clearly that was said by my pre-childbearing self.  I wouldn't dream of saying that to a woman in labor now, having been through it. A big thank you to all my patients who endured that statement and humored me with a wry smile (instead of a kick in the teeth).  But back to breastfeeding. 

I don't know any woman who, during or after her lactating time, thinks or thought breastfeeding was a breeze.  We all have had our own nursing challenges and set backs, and have worn our tear (mama and baby!) and milk-stained nursing bras to prove it. 

Recently I've read or heard a few women's experiences with weaning their children from breastfeeding.  Despite their challenges along the breastfeeding journey, they all described a peaceful weaning experience.  Though always with bittersweet pangs, each mama felt it was the right time for her and her baby to stop breastfeeding.  So they stopped.  And life went on.

And here's where this post should more aptly be named Confessions of an Overproducer.  See, I actually didn't have many of the scary and painful challenges that come with breastfeeding.  Little man latched within minutes of delivery (pain-free),  I never had nipple cracking, bleeding (heck, I never even used the little freebie tube of lanolin from the hospital) or really any nipple discomfort, and my milk came in on schedule.  But boy did that milk come in.  And in.

I've had many friends and patients struggle with milk supply issues (lack thereof). But I had never even thought about oversupply issues.  But oversupply has been the name of the game for these past 12 months.  Admittedly, this comes with definite perks, the most obvious being never having to feed my child formula.  Getting 12-14 oz in one mid-day pumping session was also key since pumping breaks are hard to come by in the primary care world of patient every 20 min (and bathroom breaks once a day!).

But the down side to all of this has been engorgement.  Near constant engorgement.  And spontaneous let down and leaking.  A lot.  I should have bought stock in Johnson and Johnson's breast pads because I've gone through about a box a month for this past year (probably more in the first few months when I had to change them every few hours because they would be soaked with every feed).  I even walked around in those first few weeks with chilled cabbage leaves on my naked breasts to help soothe (yes, it worked very briefly but as I had to stop since it turns out being naked and covered in produce all day long has a short shelf life of appropriateness.  And yes, we ended up with a ton of unused cabbage which we promptly made into delicious slaw.).

It's been a struggle, without a doubt, and not the struggle I anticipated.  Any time the little guy decided to sleep longer than usual, I was up pumping (after trying in vain to sleep sitting up, since lying on either side was too uncomfortable, and lying on my back made my breasts hang to the side - also extremely uncomfortable).  Aaah, the irony of wanting your child to wake up to feed, when all you really want is for them to learn to sleep longer.

So where does that leave me?  Unable to wean quickly, that's for sure.  See, I can't just stop cold turkey.  Or even cold ham (if that is less than cold turkey, which I'm not sure).  It's a process.  One that we've started (we're at 2-3 feeds per day), and I'm happy to report my body is starting to sync demand with supply.  Just as with everything else I've experienced in this life-changing year, it's been an exercise in adjusting expectations.  And an exercise in the bittersweet and in contradictions.  It's hard to let it go after working so hard at it for over a year now.  And hard to end a phase that has been so important and beautiful and positive.  For now, I'm just going to let it flow (no pun intended).