to be free : by jean

it's been about a month since i went back to working everyday, and i decreased my pumping times to only twice a day.  it's been GREAT only having to pump in the morning and at night.  now i'm thinking of trying to decrease it even more to only ONE pump a day.  freedom is right around the corner, i can just taste it!

i know i'm so fortunate for being a dairy queen  and being able to easily pump out 40 oz a day.  even now with 2 pumps, i get about 10-12oz per pumping session, so total, about 20-24 oz a day.  because i still have a good amount in the freezer, miles has plenty to drink from even if i stop pumping soon.

we are planning to go on a trip to Korea in october and i want to be selfish and not bring a pump and avoid dealing with all that there.  is that awful of me?  if we didn't have that trip planned, i may have been more open to pumping until miles was ready to transition into cow's milk.  i want to give him breastmilk until he starts drinking cow's milk, but i want to be free from the pump.  i've been exclusively pumping for almost 7 months and i just want to be done.  i'm so tired of getting my girls squeezed every single day, wearing a nursing pad in this heat and dealing with boob sweat!  gosh that sounds so awful, especially when you write it out like that!  my doctor says it's really up to me if i want to stop pumping and start giving him formula.  miles had breastmilk exclusively for almost 7 months and now that he's started to eat solids, soon his milk intake will decrease.  so i'm wondering if i just start pumping once a day for the next few weeks to slowly wean myself off and then once my frozen supply runs out, start him on formula.  he'll only be on formula for a few months before transitioning into cow's milk.

on top of that, am i gonna gain weight?  i sound so shallow, but i lost an extra 8 pounds on top of my pregnancy weight.  i would LOVE to stay where i'm at.  my friend told me that producing 1 oz of breastmilk burns about 26 calories.  that means every time i pumped out 40 oz a day, my girls helped me burn 1,040 calories!!  if i stop pumping, does this mean i'll actually  have to work out to keep the weight off??

on a sidenote, did you know that to help reduce milk production, you can drink shik hae (Korean sweet rice drink)?

sikhye (also spelled shikhye or shikeh; also occasionally termed dansul or gamju) is a traditional sweet Korean rice beverage, usually served as a dessert. In addition to its liquid ingredients, sikhye contains grains of cooked rice and in some cases pine nuts. (wikipedia)

mama lee (my mom) told me this and it seems to be a known fact among older Korean moms.  i told amy about it when she was weaning, so she drank one can a day and also put cabbage leaves on her girls (amy: I went to bed with a cabbage bar in my boobs!).  it seemed to work.  right amy?  (amy: Yup, it did!  Weaning took overall 1-2 weeks and wasn't all too painful.  Thank you, Sikhye!).

so i want to start drinking shik hae soon.  just to be clear...do i think formula is bad?  absolutely not.  do i think breastmilk is better?  absolutely yes!  i'm not one to think that formula is in any way bad for babies.  plenty of kids grow up only drinking formula.  if there were no pumps, miles may only have been fed formula since he never latched on.

clearly i'm a bit torn.  i know what i WANT to do, but i sort of feel guilty wanting to stop when i'm blessed with so much liquid gold.

when did you stop pumping or breastfeeding?  what are some methods you used to wean?

on weaning, did you know that if you stop too suddenly, that you can fall into depression?  i read about it in a cup of jo...one of my favorite blogs!