Hello Everyone!
So Abby is 11 months
old (technically next Thursday marks 12 months actually!!) We are planning her
first birthday party and I just can’t even believe it. It still feels like a
dream most days, honestly. I try and root myself in the reality but some days
my mother in law will send me a picture of her while I’m at work and I can’t
even believe how lucky I am and that I actually am a MOM to this beautiful
baby.
Developmentally,
Abby is doing great. She’s high in her percentiles and she is very tall! She is
wearing about 18 month clothes comfortably, which is in-SANE. She recently
started “crawling” or more so I call it, “inch-worming”. She uses her arms to
propel her forward and she pushes off with her feet, basically like an
inch-worm. My theory is since she’s very high in her percentiles for weight and
height, she’s so big that she can’t developmentally lift up her body to crawl
in the sense we imagine how crawling should be. Same likely goes for walking,
but we will see. She will now stand up
against surfaces but only for short periods. Just last week she started sitting
up on her own after crawling. So exciting!
Abby is so smart and
it blows me away every single day that simple things we teach her actually make
a difference. She follows commands extremely well (when she’s in the mood) and
will imitate a wide variety of sounds. Her favorite thing to imitate is “Ho-ho-Ho”
(no kidding) so she’s in PRIME shape for meeting Santa! She will say “Dada” and
“mama” now and seems to say it appropriately. She will also point to items,
such as “where is the blue circle?” Or “where is the pink diamond?” Or “where
is the red crab?”. I am so proud of her but not sure how we are going to afford
Harvard! Haha just kidding. But who knows! Her cutest new trick is opening her
mouth and saying “ahhh” when we say “What’s in your mouth??”. She also is
appropriately signing “more please” which is super cool!
Anyway, my main
struggle lately and motivation for writing is struggling with
breastfeeding/weaning/eating. Quick backstory, when I first started our
breastfeeding journey I had a HUGE oversupply. I would be able to completely
feed her just from one breast and let the other breast empty to a collection
container, often times up to 4-5 oz per session! I never thought that my
overabundant glorious oversupply would someday become what feels like a barren
wasteland. When I came back to work at first, I would need to use two bottles
per pumping session, often times filling one at 5 oz and halfway filling
another to about 3 oz, total of 8 per session. Now, at 11 months old, I am
lucky if I pump about 3 oz COMBINED in one session, and this has been this way
for approximately 2 months of trying lots of different supply tricks. I have
felt like not being able to produce what my child needs has been one of the
hardest parts along this journey and feels like natures attack on your ability
to be a good mother. The voice in my head is constantly telling me “Do not
measure yourself in ounces! Stop!” But it’s hard to not let it bother you. I
feel heart pains when I send her off for the day with only a limited supply of
milk and it literally kills me. I worry every day she’s not getting enough.
One of the hard
lessons learned that I plan to fix for future baby #2, is that I let so much
frozen milk go to waste. Here’s why. Like I said, in those early days I would
get 4-5 oz just from the other breast draining. I froze that. I probably froze
about 150 oz of doing just that. When I went back to work, I still had an
oversupply and Abby couldn’t use enough of what I produced before it would need
to go into the freezer. So about November more bags started trickling into
freezer supply. From November to May, I never had to dip into freezer stash for
her daily supply. Then I had to go on a trip for work and we had to prepare
what freezer stash she would use. Although I knew the golden rule was safe for
6-12 months, part of me felt skeevy giving Abby the old August/September milk.
Not only was it my oldest milk obviously, but I was worried on its collection
process. Since it wasn’t pumped out, it likely had very little fat in it since
it was just drained milk. Secondly, the device used to collect the milk was
basically just rinsed in between sessions, not sterilized. Go ahead, Gasp. I
didn’t even think about it at the time. My priority at the TIME was “how can I
realistically collect 5 OUNCES of breast milk into a device so that it
literally doesn’t SOAK my shirt every 3 hours??”, Instead of the thought I
should have been having “am I collecting and storing this milk in the best
manner in case I need to actually use it one day” (DUH).
So, for baby number
two, I am going to do a system that right off the bat to use my frozen milk as
soon as I go back to work, and freeze the fresh milk, creating a rotating
recycling system. Somehow I had it in m head this whole time that fresh was
exclusively better than frozen and I felt like taking frozen out of the freezer
was a failure on my part, meaning I didn’t have enough supply. Now I know
that’s preposterous and I wish I could use all that old milk!
My plan to wean has
been interesting, as I still have no idea what I am doing. I started two weeks
and it seems to be working well. Here is her current meal plan:
7 am-breastfeeds
9am- breakfast foods
& water
12pm- lunch and
water
1 pm- I pump at work
2 pm -6 oz bottle
5 pm- dinner foods
and water
8pm- formula 6 oz
10 pm- I pump before
bed
So the new addition
is formula…The girl that naively thought she would have her oversupply forever
suddenly found herself staring at all the formula options in a field of panic
in target. I tried so hard to exclusively breastfeed but when it got to the point
where it was stressing me out daily to make enough ounces, I bent. So now with
giving her formula, I can make an extra 4 oz that’s not being used for her bed
time, allowing me to essentially pump 7-8 oz a day now. I now see 2 fresh full
bags in the fridge and I can take a breath. I no longer cringe if she doesn’t
want to finish her bottle, thinking how the breast milk is wasted.
Update on pumping/
weaning: the above information was written about 2 weeks ago. Since then we
have survived our first family vacation. Between stress, not pumping correctly,
not drinking enough, my supply dropped even more. I decided to drop another pump
session this week and I am officially on the slope to weaning down 100%. My new
schedule for pumping is:
Breastfeed - 7 am
Pump - 6 pm (I no
longer have to bring pumping bag to work YESSSSSSSSS)
Pump before bed.
I will phase out the
bedtime one next week and basically breastfeed at 7 and pump ~ 7 pm every day. I’ll only produce
about 3 oz doing this but will supplement everything else she needs in formula.
I’m not sure what
the rules are for nutrition after she turns 1 officially. I know they say you
can start supplementing with cows milk instead of formula but I personally
refuse to give abby cows milk just based on personal belief and research. So
I’ve been researching other alternatives and haven’t come up with a decision
yet. Based on preliminary research I have found that Pea milk (made by Ripple)
seems to be a really good next in line milk with the necessary fats, protein,
carbs and nutrients that kids need. I am hesitant about it because when I drink
it it makes ME gassy, so I am afraid it will make Abby gassy. We’ve tried
little bits so far and haven’t seen too many upsets so far.
As for solid foods,
I feel like I am not feeding her enough. She seems content. But I find myself
in a rut always going to serve what she likes and what’s easy to make. She
loves grilled cheese like its her full time job, and she loves carbs/breads
just as much as me. I’m trying to push the veggies but she seems to have lost
interest in her solid veggies since introducing carbs (I wonder why lol). I try
and counteract this by serving puréed veggies before offering solids. I follow
some mommy toddler nutrition blogs and they are helping with some guidance !
I also started
reading “Toddler 411” and I highly recommend! It really helps break down how to
deal with what is about to come with entering toddlerhood.
Well, for those of
you that stuck in here and read this whole post, thank you! I don’t write to
satisfy anyone’s need for intense plot twists, I mostly just want to record my
journey and hopefully, hopefully, help another momma out there that may find my
journey helpful.
With love,
The new motherboard.
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