Seven ounce morning is a good morning indeed!

If there was one thing I could tell all new moms about pumping when they're first starting out, it would be to be kind and patient with yourself if you can't pump a "milk waterfall" right out of the gate. It took me a LONG time and LOTS of practice to get good at pumping - just like any new skill!  Some women will respond well to the pump right away, but many others (like me!) have to train themselves to pump well, including lots of trial and error.  But lo and behold, I got much, much better at it over time!

Here's today's 10 minute pumping session while I did online shopping:

I didn't have to try very hard for this, and I could have pumped more
if I'd wanted to (but Annika won't drink even this much at daycare, so I don't bother)

I've posted this photo before, but here's my very first pumping session when Maya was about 6 days old, which took like 25 minutes and I cried the entire (painful!) time:

Christmas Day, 2013: I worked very, VERY hard for this 0.5 ounce of milk

So see, new moms, progress can happen if you give it some time and keep trying!

Also, here are the twinsie babies this morning before school - I am so *in love* with both of them:

Maya wanted to have an "all orange twins" day


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dear Diary

I'm going to whine just a little bit here, but I am not actually looking for solutions/sympathy - I just want to vent.  On my birth club message board, we call such ramblings "Dear Diary" posts. We have had two major challenges this week, one being that Maya's nighttime sleep has gone into the shitter - not that she was sleeping that well before - but for the past three nights, she's been up every hour between 10pm and 5am, and then napped in my lap (but only  in my lap, and only if I remain very still) all morning to make up for it.  The only good part about this is that all the extra nursing has been helping me resolve bad challenge #2, which is that I'm currently battling my 5th clogged milk duct in 10 days - quite the record for me!  Clogged ducts are bad enough on their own, especially the ones that plug right at the nipple (oh lord, the stabbing pain!), but my coworker just had one turn into a raging case of mastitis and then an ABSCESS in the space of
Read more

41 Weeks

Image
A place where no woman should ever have to go!  No, there is no baby yet. We're off to see the midwife again now for more membrane stripping/non-stress test - I'll try to update afterwards. Here are some photos from this weekend: One of the many (fat) squirrels that inspired the cookies Friday's "Ugly Sweater Party" - husband won, actually! We got some snow this weekend, offering the opportunity to try to induce labor with.... ....snow shoveling!  I did our house (front and back) and all of our neighbors' houses too.  Clearly didn't work, but was fun anyway. Best part of the weekend - husband's parents came to visit, YAY!!  It was so great to see them :)  
Read more

Professor mommy

Image
Fantastic news all around -  we had an excellent and productive trip to the Amazon, I got the promotion to tenure track (still in the negotiation phase, but the offer is official - YAAAAAAY!), and my masters student successfully defended.  It took a couple weeks, but Maya has completely forgiven us for our long absence (she was pretty mad about it), and I've headstarted two whole flats of seeds for my garden this year, including a bunch of aji amarillo peppers so that I can make the Peruvian delicacy huancaina upon harvest :)  Life in our household is happy and vibrant! However, there are two things that weigh on my mind: 1) the insane increase in productivity/efficiency that I'll need to shoot for if I'm to get tenure here, and 2) the decision about whether or not to have another child.  Make no mistake, the first child didn't seem like a choice (in a good way).  If I couldn't both be a professor and have one child, then I didn't want to be a professor.  A s
Read more