Since a lot of women in my family told me they failed at breastfeeding, I told myself that I wouldn’t be discouraged if breastfeeding didn’t work out for me, even if I faced judgment. I needed to do what I thought was best. At first, exclusive pumping seemed like the best of both worlds. You are feeding your child breastmilk, but you don’t have bleeding nipples. Score! After a few attempts of breastfeeding and one bloody nipple, I decided that I was going to pump exclusively and give the baby formula until my milk came in.

There seems to be no one right answer for anyone when it comes to breastfeeding, formula feeding or pumping. I had no idea what I was getting into when I decided to exclusively pump. Here were some realizations:

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– My milk came in ever. So. Slowly. I feel like my milk production improved one drop at a time. Sometimes I would stare at the drops of breastmilk on the sides of the bottles and think that it took me 4 minutes to squeeze THAT drop. And it was going down the drain because it was just sticking to the sides of an empty bottle. Seriously depressing!

– It still hurts. I had to go see a lactation consultant and she winced when she saw my nipples! They were blistered, swollen and beat up from all that pumping. Some people’s nipple skin is more fragile than others and there’s not much I can do about it but try some ointments. I’ve tried all those nifty little ice packs, heat packs, and soothing whatevers but it still hurts to put on clothes!

– I’m permanently attached to the pump. It’s only been 7 weeks for me and I already feel like I have a more intimate relationship with my pump than my husband. 15-20 minutes every 3 hours, 8x a day = 14+ hours a week. (Do I have mommy brain or is my math right?) I can barely do one or two things before it’s time to pump again. I hate how in the middle of the night, my pump parts fall apart randomly because I assembled them in my sleepiness.

– I need a lot of stuff and the stuff is getting expensive. I am the opposite of a hoarder. I throw everything away! So when we couldn’t find counter space to put all of the pumping parts, bottle cleaning supplies, drying rack, sanitizing bags, and so on… it drove me crazy! My life was being drowned in plastic and my Amazon orders were always something related to pumping parts.

– I’m always washing and boiling stuff. I hate waking up in the mornings and seeing a pile of plastic that need to be washed and sanitized. I understand that people don’t believe we need to sanitize as much anymore, but I personally still like to do it everyday. This part sucks because I particularly hate doing dishes!

– Poo or Pump or Pick up baby!? I’m always in a bind because I don’t know what to do first when I’m alone. Sometimes the baby could be fussing for hours and I couldn’t put him down, but I was 1-2 hours behind my pump schedule. My breasts were turning into rocks and I would be forced to put down a crying baby to quickly pump for 5-10 minutes before Baby Pencil turned another shade of purple. And of course, there would be times when you desperately needed to do something as simple as wipe your nose or use the bathroom. I eventually learned to put the baby in the rocker and rock him with my foot while pumping and shushing him. Moms are definitely multi-taskers! (Breastfeeding would be so much better in this situation because at least you are soothing the baby and emptying your breasts at the same time!)

No breastshields fit. I purchased every single flange size there is and nothing fit me. The beginning of my pumping was a nightmare because I was using breastshields that were too small. I had to pick up and place the breastshield on different parts of my nipple. This meant I was hunched over, super focused, squeezing and basically draining myself physically as well as emotionally. I finally realized this and went up a size… then another size, then another size until there was no option left! I even rented the Medela glass shields because they are 40mm, but even those were painful and milk was flying everywhere. My boobs aren’t even that big! (I was barely a 34B, so boob size really has nothing to do with nipple size.) The least painful ones were from Pumpin Pals, and I highly recommend them for people who are having a hard time finding the correct size. To this day, I’m still not sure if I’m using the right shield correctly but I have no other choice! (Do I? Please comment if you know of something else!)

After realizing how hard it can be to exclusively pump, I began to look lovingly at breastfeeding. Perhaps I made too rash of a decision? Perhaps I should have tried harder to breastfeed and bear with the pain?

So one day, I felt a little adventurous and popped the baby on the boob just to see what would happen… and what the heck, he took my boob! What a nice baby to take my boob again after so many weeks of exclusively pumping! After that, I tried breastfeeding every now and then but this messed up my pumping schedule. Nursing would only work if all the stars aligned and he happened to be hungry (not too hungry) and when I was about to pump so I had a lot of milk. When the stars did not align, he refused the boob until he got his bottle.

There really isn’t that much information on the internet about exclusively pumping moms that suddenly decided to go back to breastfeeding. But I knew I had to make a decision and just stick to it. As much as I love bonding with him and watching him fall asleep latched onto my breast, I decided to stick with exclusive pumping. I had already spent 6 weeks figuring everything out and since I plan to go back to work soon, I need him to get used to being fed mostly by other people anyway.

I hope that I can stick this out and during the process I won’t turn into a hunchback from all that leaning over. I’ve tried the pumping bras but I really have to massage my weird shaped boobs in order to squeeze all the milk out, so the bra gets in the way.

Right now at 7 weeks I still only make about 3-4 oz on a good pump. I feel like I’ve tried every single breastfeeding tactic out there, including inhaling all those supplements round the clock and eating anything covered with oatmeal. I’m determined to make this work! (And since I rented the fancy pants Medela pump for 3 months, I guess I should use it!)

So… I’m still pumping and learning as I go, but at least it’s getting better!