Still a working mom, not really a pumping mom.

It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged here, but it’s probably because the topic at hand is not really an active part of my life anymore. I’ll leave this blog up because I think there is some good info for new moms, but I may not actively contribute. (until next time???)

As it stands now, Winston is almost 9 months old and weighs over 28 pounds!!! Yes- he’s huge. My 2 year old son is only 31 pounds, and my 4 year old daughter is around 38 pounds.

I quit pumping at work when he was 6 months old, just like I did with my first son. I still go home at lunch and for a while I would pump at lunch, but that only lasted a few weeks. There just wasn’t enough time to eat for myself if I did that. I nurse him if he seems interested, but that is probably only once a week or so. I DO get to work from home most Wednesdays though now. I try and nurse him when he’s hungry or tired. He doesn’t get that much, but I think it helps keep up my supply. Otherwise we use formula (Walmart brand) as well as regular food during the day.

The other change in my work is that I haven’t traveled since I had to go 2 weeks in a row!!! YAY! That is mostly due to budget cuts and a new project I’m on. I like that part. I think if I did still have a heavy travel schedule I would make it more of a priority to pump, so there could be at least a small freezer stash when I was gone.

Breastfeeding at this age in general is just hard. He is so distractible. And his older siblings aren’t really a help in that department with all of their loud play. Most of the time to nurse him I have to go in our bedroom, turn off the lights, shut the door and lay down with him on our bed. I don’t mind it so much. It gives me a break and I can watch TV. He usually only wants to nurse if he’s tired. The last few times I tried to nurse in public were ridiculous. He finds the nursing cover super fun to play with. I don’t even try anymore. He gets a bottle, or real food.
About a month ago I decided it was time for my little guy to sleep through the night. He had been going to bed around 8, then getting up at midnight, then every hour or two after that. He was in our bed most of this time, so I didn’t have to get up to nurse, but it was disturbing to my sleep. Like the other kids, we had to resort to a little “crying it out.” This is never an easy thing to do, but as a slightly seasoned mom I know it’s worth it. The first night he only cried for 24 minutes. That’s a new record for our kids. We’ve had a few bumps in the road as far as continuing go sleep through the night, but for the most part, I just get up once with him.

Really- his nursing is fairly limited. Not by my choice (except for the sleeping through the night thing), but by his. I think he prefers the fast flow of bottles when he’s really hungry. Nursing is a thing to go to sleep with- not the main source of food. I still plan on encouraging nursing as long as I can, but if he seems very disinterested after his first birthday, I’ll be ok with that.

Travel 2 weeks in a row??? Never again…

Last week was horrible… Left Monday at 8am and didn’t get home until Thursday night at 10pm. Between that time I was on 8 flights, went from Washington state to Washington DC (neither of which were intended locations). Had 3 hours of sleep the first night, 5, the second, and a little better with 6 the third. Many hours were spend in airports just waiting to see when the next flight was actually going to leave, if at all (weather delays, and President Obama in Chicago causing a 3 hour shutdown of the airspace). I stayed in three different hotel rooms, one without a refrigerator, and none with the little freezer part. As a result I wasn’t able to save any of my milk. It was a week of pump and dump in bathroom stalls. It would have been impossibly hard to save it, keep it cold, keep my pump clean, and keep track of my checked bag. Maybe I should have put more effort into it-I could have put ice in baggies and put that in my mini-cooler, but the trip was so mentally and physically exhausting that I wasn’t thinking straight either. I had to make the choice for those precious few hours in the hotel room. Pump, or sleep.

I was home for two days and now I’m on the road again. Thankfully this time, we drove and I will be in one hotel room for the entire trip (4 days 3 nights), with a refrigerator WITH a freezer portion. I’m hoping I didn’t kill my supply last week. When I was home for the 2 days, I felt like Winston wanted more than I could provide. Plus- I was actually TRYING to feed him some formula, so I could pump instead and leave him with at least some milk when I was gone. Last week was good because he didn’t have but a bottle or two of formula, but he whipped out the freezer stash. Had I know that I wouldn’t have been able to save any milk from last week, I would have saved half the freezer stash for him for this week. The poor thing is going to have 90% formula for about 4 days. I hope he’s not too gassy!

My husband also tried to feed him sweet potatoes last week and he wasn’t a fan. This baby doesn’t seem to like food.

Note to self – don’t skip pumping…

Yesterday a lot of “corporate” people were on location and we had conferences all day. Sure, I could have slipped out to go pump in my office, but I chose not to. I went home at lunch as usual, and tried to nurse, but Winston fell a sleep. So then, still feeling quite full I tried to pump, but realizing I had to get back to work soon, I didn’t pump but about 2oz each side. Now- considering my morning pumping usually ranges from 8-12 oz, this wasn’t very much. Then, again I skipped my afternoon pumping. By the time I got home I was feeling fairly uncomfortable. I nursed and pumped a bit, but the usual demands of my life left very little time for pumping. Winston ate pretty good that evening and before bed, so I figured everything was ok. Around 1am – Winston started fussing, which is typical. I got up to feed him and realized I was laying on a giant wet spot. It felt like the newborn/engorgement stage again- but just on my right side.
I fed him – he sputtered as I blasted him with milk, but eventually he got a full belly and went back to sleep. Usually I just keep him in bed with us, but I put him back in his bed and went to get some new, dry pajamas on.
Today- more conferences, but I pumped before work and again at lunch time. We should be dry tonight!

My excuse

For not blogging much- well, I’m a working mom. Nuf said..

At the moment I’m still pumping and nursing, although I’m usually lazy in the afternoons and don’t pump unless I feel like I’m going to explode, and we have started supplementing with a bit of formula. We had to when I was on my trip and my little guy out ate my stash, then again later that week when my husband took the boys to my parents house to baby sit while he took my daughter to the doctor. The milk was all packed and ready to go, but remained on the counter as my husband pulled out of the driveway. We live 50 miles away from my parents, so the only thing he could do was run to the store across the street from their house and buy formula and a bottle.

Since then, we’ve basically been supplementing when I’m lazy and don’t feel like pumping before I leave him somewhere. That isn’t often, but still…

So over the course of my trip, I pumped about 64 oz. Winston ate, over 100 that I had left at home, and then some formula. Now we have that 60 in the freezer for next time I have to travel which is next week. Going to leave on a Tuesday, early morning then fly back late Thursday night. The following week I will be leaving Sunday, and coming back Thursday.

We are going to start solids soon. I bought some baby rice cereal at the store this weekend and a jar of peas and a jar of sweet potatoes. Frankly, I’ve been too lazy to start solids. He’s not sitting up yet, but I imagine being the big ball of dough he is, it’s hard to support his own weight. I tried to weigh him at home the other day and I think he’s 21.5 pounds!!! Crazy considering his 2 year old brother is only 26 pounds.

So that’s all I have for now… It’s quitting time soon here at work so I can go home and see my babies!

First trip- day one

Over the weekend and towards the end of last week I tried to work a few more bags of frozen milk into the rotation so that I could save some fresh (refrigerated) for this week knowing I would be gone. Sometimes Winston doesn’t take a bottle for one reason or another, and it is always when it is frozen milk. I’m not sure if I have a lipase problem or not, but frankly, I’m too scared to check.

When I left this morning there was about 24oz in the fridge of fresh. Not much, but more than nothing. I fed him good before bed- per usual. He woke up at 1:40am, again per-usual so I just brought him to bed with us to eat as much as he wanted. Lately I have been putting him back in his pack n’ play as soon as I wake up again, or when he’s done eating (if I’m still awake), but last night I just left him in our bed so he had the all-night buffet option. My alarm went off at 4:30am and he was still snoozing away so then I picked him up and put him in his own bed. By the time I was ready to leave at 5, he still wasn’t awake –and isn’t it a sin to wake a sleeping baby? So away I went! Later I got a report from my husband that he woke up at 6am and took a bottle.

I got to the Denver airport shortly before 9:30am. I normally pump at 10am Mountain time so, the timing was perfect. First I decided to get some breakfast and then pumping was a must. I for some reason didn’t really feel like going to the bathroom and hogging a stall for 10 minutes, so I found a bench in an out of the way location in Concourse A, and went about my business.

I got out my little lunch box with all necessary equipment, put my laptop bag on top of my roller bag and rolled that in front of me, so I was actually quite shielded. I decided to just go one handed this time so I could fiddle with my black berry for entertainment with the other hand. After I had my nursing cover on I grabbed my favored pump- the Avent Isis and went to town. After the left side was done - about 4oz (and the capacity of the bottle attached) I poured the milk into a bag, and went to the right. Same story there. I poured the milk into the same bag, labeled it, and packed everything back up.

Now at this point, I don’t have any ice packs with me. I’ve read that fresh milk will stay good anywhere form 8-24 hours at room temperature. It will be about 8 hours until I get to my hotel so I’m not that worried. I suppose if I was I could go buy a cup of ice from somewhere, pour it into one of the Ziploc bags I brought and that would help.

Only one person looked at me kind of strange. It was right as I was starting. I probably did look a little funny- both hands under the nursing cover, moving around trying to get things sorted out. It was some old-man airport employee pushing an empty wheelchair. But what I’ve found is that if someone is looking at you- stare back even harder and they will usually look away!! Hahaha..

I didn’t pump again until around 5:30 (MT) after I was in my hotel room outside of Chicago and had my room service ordered. I pumped about 8oz total. I felt like I could pump more but I wanted to stop before my room service was delivered.

I told my husband to keep track of what Winston eats while I’m gone. You always hear that your pumping output is not a real indication of what the baby eats, so this should be interesting.

The hotel room fridge doesn’t have an adjustable temperature control, nor does it have the tiny freezer section. I can understand why, but it’s a bit annoying to me. I like to freeze my milk. I’m just going to try and prop it up against the back section where the cooling plate is. It feels like it could freeze thing. We’ll see!

Scary!!!

So we went out of town this weekend and had our neighbors come over to feed our dogs while we were gone. We just gave them the garage code and they came into the house that way. Sunday morning I get a text message from them saying they noticed our garage freezer door was open about 3 inches!!! CRAP!!! I had over 100oz of milk in there!!! I quickly called them and we determined that while some popsicles had melted all over, and a few things in the freezer door should be tossed, for the most part things were still cold, and the milk was in the very back so it was still good.. Thank God!!!! Next week I’ll be traveling for the first time since little W was born, and he has yet to have anything but breast milk!!!

Pumping while wearing a hardhat

I am a Food Scientist in product development by profession, so that means that I do a variety of things. At least 50% of the time, I’m just flying the desk, but for the rest of my time I’m in the lab, kitchen or factory. The location that I work at has a 24 hour factory. As one of the scientists at this location I need to be out in the factory from time to time conducting tests or observing. Today is one of those days. My schedule is going to be TOTALLY messed up and I’m a bit worried. For starters, there are two employees from our corporate headquarters here for the factory test. So not only am I going to be reliant on the schedule of the factory (which is always behind schedule) but I need to be available to entertain and tour around our out of town guests.

Right now it’s 9:58am Normally I am getting ready to pump. Not today! I’m waiting on the guests to be ready so I can take them on a tour of the factory. Then they are going to lunch (I told them I need to go home for lunch), and then we should be back at the factory around noon, which is when the test is schedule to start. Since nothing ever starts on time, that really means 1pm or so before the test starts and it is scheduled to last 4 hours. I don’t need to be out in the factory the whole time. I can come back to my office and pump, but I won’t know when until I’m there.

*****

Ok. I wrote the above this morning. Now it’s 4:38pm and the day has gone OK in regards to pumping, and I don’t have to be at work at midnight- that’s a relief!!!

True to form, the factory was running behind schedule. Our first test didn’t actually start until 2:30pm. I had gone home at 11 for lunch, to nurse W and to pump. I pumped one-handed while I ate lunch, only got 6oz total because I was in a hurry, nursed W – but he had just had a 4oz bottle before I came home so he wasn’t that enthusiastic about it, then got on a ladder and peeked up in our crawlspace because my husband had discovered that woodpeckers pecked a hole in our house and there was now a huge nest in our attic!! Great!!!

I went back to work at noon, and had a chance to pump briefly around 2. I only pumped 4 oz total, which is not a lot for me. I didn’t spend the time I needed nor, was I in the mood. I’m feeling mighty full right now, but I’ll be going home in a few minutes, so it should be ok.

I did discover one thing that made me pretty happy today. While I was in the factory I happened to see two doors that were labeled “lactation room.” Go my company!!! You rock!

Now time to do something about this hard-hat hair of mine!