I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: breastfeeding is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It is a lot of work and a huge commitment, especially while working full time. I met and exceeded my goal of breastfeeding for a year and now that I don’t have a goal, I’m just taking it one day at a time.

This week is the first one where I haven’t brought my pump to work since the school year began last August. I definitely did a happy dance when I packed it away on Sunday night, knowing that we would be reunited one day in the future, but not for at least another year. Now that I’m no longer pumping at work, I am so much more aware of how much time, energy, and planning it took as part of my daily life.

The Routine

5:30am – Wake up if I needed to pump before Liam woke up – there were a few months when I did this because he was eating more than I was pumping at work.

6:30am – Nurse Liam

7:00am – Pack pump bag unless I did it the night before, but that was rare.

10:30am – Pump at work: lock my classroom door, get a snack and water ready so I can reach them once I start, put my cover on, get my parts hooked up, pump for 20 minutes while eating and grading or lesson planning, put milk and parts in the fridge, pack up pump.

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12:30pm – Repeat the process above during my lunch break, heat up lunch before I start if needed.

3:20pm – Repeat the process above after school – it was really hard to not be available to my students during lunch and after school.

4:00pm – Get home, put milk away, and nurse Liam.

6:30pm – Nurse Liam before he goes to bed. Sometimes I’d nurse him between these last two feedings if he wanted to.

8:00pm – Wash pump parts and bottles from the day. I ended up having 4 sets of pump parts so I didn’t have to wash them constantly. In the beginning, I only had two sets and was using them both everyday, which made me super grumpy. I spent a little extra money on more parts and relieved a lot of stress.

The Breakup

Stopping pumping was like breaking up with someone. I had spent so much time with this machine for a whole year, and I couldn’t just quit cold turkey or I risked developing mastitis. I started by going down to one session a day a little bit before Liam turned one. This freed up my lunch so I could use it to just eat and relax – it was an amazing feeling! I could also be available for students who needed help during that time. Liam’s birthday was at the end of my spring break, so when I came back, I decided to shorten my one pumping session a little bit each day and by Friday, I brought my pump to work, but didn’t use it! At the time I usually would pump, my eyes started watering, not because I was sad about not pumping (believe me, I was SO happy to be done), but because that is my body’s natural reaction to skipping a feed (weird, I know). That weekend I packed the pump and all my parts up and put them in a closet.

Liam’s Reaction

That same week I weaned off the pump, I asked our nanny to stop giving Liam bottles and to just give him breast milk in a sippy cup. He wasn’t a big fan of the milk in the sippy, but he also didn’t seem to care about not having a bottle. At that point, he had gone down to just one small bottle a day and since it was after my spring break when he didn’t have any bottles, it worked out perfectly. I packed up all but two of the bottles because I know he’ll want milk in a bottle before bed if I’m not there, which is rare, but happens occasionally. Then, when he had his one year appointment, the doctor said since he was nursing three times per day, he actually didn’t need more milk than that. However, after going a few days without him having any milk when I was at work, he started waking up in the middle of the night. And while it could also be from his new teeth coming in, when he got milk during the day yesterday he slept all night last night, so I’m going to ask our nanny to give him a few ounces in a sippy cup just in case he was reverse cycling (read more about that here). Once my freezer stash runs out, which will be soon because I don’t have much, we will give him a little bit of cow’s or goat’s milk during the day instead.

Of course, the reward I’ve received for all this hard work is a healthy, happy, ADORABLE (if I do say so myself) baby boy who makes my heart sing with joy every single day. What more could I ask for?

When did you put away your pump for good?