Howdy, and welcome back!
This is a continuation post about my decision to stop breastfeeding.
I got a couple tips from some other moms about how to transition. This may be helpful to anyone who is stopping breastfeeding in general.
I wanted to sort of catalog what I’m trying and doing to help ease my breasts as I try to dry up my milk supply. So now that we are weaning from breastmilk and transitioning her to formula I need to dry up.
Yikes.
Yikes, because wow this is a lot. A lot to consider. A lot to go through. So many things.
Like literally anything and everything that concerns babies is a lot. And honestly generally taking care of her is not even the hard part. Is it a lot? Of course but in a totally manageable kind of way. My baby has a pattern. Eat, play, sleep, repeat. With about a dozen diapers inbetween. It’s great. I’m learning what her cries mean, what her signals are. All the good stuff. She is easier than breastfeeding.
Today is the first day I decided to not pump like normal. So usually I wake up super early around 5am or so, I pump until empty. I sleep through the night so I get the most milk now. Generally a total combined from each breast of 12-16 ounces. (This is a fairly new thing. I was barely barely getting 6-8 even in the morning after sleeping all night)
The last couple of days I’ve kept pumping as normal, but dropped a session. Today is the first day that I didn’t pump until empty. I’m attempting to train my milk supply to think I need less than I’m producing. So I only expressed when engorged. This is so painful. I’ve been spending all day massaging my breast, while trying to not stimulate too much. Too much stimulation, I’ve read, can actually make you produce more. So throughout today, I managed to pump out 2 ounces from each breast when I needed to. This happened about 4 times today.
Between the pumping to release some tension in my breasts, I put in a cold pack. I have some cloth ones that are thin and round to help ease your breasts in general. Because of the cloth I dont feel like these froze good enough to cool longer than a couple minutes. Which is why I hardly used them in the past. So I switch to bags of ice in a zip lock, with a paper towel around them so it’s not right on my skin. This felt awesome.
But I’m not sure it actually helped slow production like it mentioned online. I will try again tomorrow and we will see.
After a long day of work, and the baby’s new habit of screaming when she needs a nap. (It’s taking a lot of soothing to get her to sleep. And she only wants to sleep on me. But this will pass, I’m sure. For now we just cuddle and lose hearing.) I made a trip to Walmart for “no more milk tea.” BUT apparently they only sell it online despite the app showing it in stock in the store. So I opted for some jasmine tea. I read online this is supposed to help reduce supply.
The jasmine tea does not taste great. But it is what it is. I drank it down and crossed my fingers it helps. I’m now taking a hot bath for some relief with witch hazel Epsom salts. Going to massage again before bed and hope tonight I’m not waking up again in pain from being so full.
Throughout this process, since I’m trying to watch how much I express, I’m using the handheld pump. I really love this pump as I can control the pressure and it doesn’t hurt as bad. If I had the time and energy I would probably keep pumping this way. The electric pump is so uncomfortable. Not painful, but aggressive enough that it makes me sore all day. This manual leaves me feeling kind of raw but not painfully sore. Because I can control it better. But I don’t have hours upon hours of time to do this all day every day.
A side note: We are now up to 2 ounces formula and 2 ounces breastmilk. She is doing great. No noticeable stomach issues. My husband did say her poop looked a couple shades darker than normal. But we expected it would change.
I never thought I’d be so casually discussing my child’s feces but here we are.
I plan to keep updating as things go along. I am feeling a bit better mentally. It sucks that I’m still dealing with so much pain. It feels like the pain in my body, in different areas of course, hasn’t stopped since I gave birth. It’s only shifted and changed areas. I’m ready to see a change in my body and then hopefully my mental health. I really can’t wait to feel better.
It’s still there lingering in the back of my mind. I still feel foggy. I still feel overly tired. I still feel only sort of okay. But I do feel a little better. Im hopeful that is a sign that PPD may be going away soon. I know depression doesn’t always work this way. But feeling a twinge of hope feels like a good thing right now.
Until next time
Taylor – xoxo
Aimlessly On Point 