Of Pumping and Producing

After heating up a fresh bottle of formula, I prop the bottle up for my 6-month hold son to hold on the floor. With a slight adjustment, he’s successful, and I turn back to the task at hand. I’m a little embarrassed that I consider holding his own bottle to be a huge accomplishment, but it leaves me just a little bit more free to accomplish other tasks while he’s happily chugging down his formula. 

As I dictate this entry he hears me speaking English, and looks up pauses his slow, synchronous suckling to smile with a big toothless grin- as if English is a secret language between us that goes back to a time before he was born. And he’s right in a way.  Most of my words that were spent at work when I was pregnant with him, explaining my thought process to attendings, counseling patients on their disease process, etc. All in English. 

…

Today’s Sunday and the end of the weekend. One of my tasks for the day is to go through my overflowing plastic tote of pumping supplies and discard things that I don’t longer need. It’s a long overdue task, I know. Sometimes I put off these things due to a little bit from the embarrassment. Maybe shielding my eyes away from the clamshell plastic pieces of the Willow Go (that I insisted to my husband was worth the $400-some dollars I spent on it, only to be used a handful of times) will protect me from the shame of that decision? Or the lactation massagers, or the nipple shields, or the silicone inserts for flanges that never quite fit right… Or the extra flanges that come in a size that actually fit me.

Now I won’t go as far to say that I regret choosing to breastfeed my son (if pumping counts as breastfeeding, which I hope to god is does because if not what have I been doing with my time??) but at the 6 month mark, both my son and formula fed daughter are equally happy and healthy. “Oh, you’re still doing that?” my husband will ask from time to time, and I have to come up with reasons to justify the answer of him continuing to help me wash pumping parts or struggle with an extra bag that I take to work daily.

Somehow, yes I am.