Read At Your Own Risk!

So it’s official. My boys will turn one in 17 days and as of today, I am no longer breastfeeding them. I started slowly weaning them about a month ago. It hasn’t been too difficult. I mean, I have those bittersweet feelings about it, but they’ve done just fine. They LOVE their bottles which has made it a super smooth transition. It’s just hard to believe that I’m really done. I really thought this day would never come…I mean NEVER come! I have so many thoughts about this past year and I wanted to get some of them out.

As I’ve mentioned before, my boys didn’t nurse well when they were born. Their sucking refluxes hadn’t quite fully developed so we were doing the whole, feed them through a syringe thing. Then we moved onto bottles. While I still had help, I would try to nurse them during the day and would do bottles for the night time feedings just because it was so much faster. It was during that time that my pump became my best friend! It seriously saved me! I felt reassured that my boys were getting what they needed through my milk. It put my mind at ease with the fact that I wasn’t physically nursing them all of the time. Don’t get me wrong…I’m not trying to preach about it or anything. I was just struggling with a lot of different emotions at the time and I ended up doing what I felt best about.

So, back to the pumping thing. We were a package deal, joined at the hip you might say. Those who spent any time with me during that time know what I’m talking about. Christmas last year comes to mind. I’m with all of this family, trying to enjoy the season even though I felt like I’d been hit over the head with a 2-ton brick. I was pumping so often that I just did it out in the open. I covered up of course, but you just couldn’t ignore the blissful beep from that pump! Certain thoughts come to mind. “Oh hi Wynn. (my sister’s husband who had recently joined the family) So good to see you. Don’t know you super well, but I’m just going to pump while we catch up…is that okay?!?? We’re family, so it’s all good, right?!??” “Tommy! (Shane’s Dad) How are you? You don’t mind if I pump while we open gifts do you???” My visiting teachers got more than they bargained for when they would come to see me. Luckily, they have been my visiting teachers for almost 5 years now and know me really well. I’m completely comfortable with them…so why not pump during the spiritual message for the month?!?? With all of the thoughts going through my own head, I can’t imagine what everyone else was really thinking. Everyone just let me do my thing, for which I am very grateful. Not to say that some jokes weren’t thrown out there. “Jersey Cow this…Milk Maid that…” I recall my brother Aaron opening the fridge & freezer and saying something like, “Don’t we have anything else besides human milk in this fridge?” (Some women have problems producing enough milk for their babies. Let’s just say, that was never even kind of a problem for me!) Someone else started singing the oh so famous “Pump Up The Jam” song. We all had some good laughs. My younger brother Luke was the only one who said, “I can’t believe you’re making light of something so special and sacred.” For me, it helped to have a sense of humor. It really was a stressful time for me and I needed to stay light-hearted about it all.

Eventually, I retired the pump. GLORIOUS DAY…for all involved! After 5 months of pumping, I was not sad to put that thing into storage. In fact, I’m pretty sure I never want to see that pump ever again! From that time on, I was able to solely nurse, something I thought would never happened.

The last 6 months have been awesome. In the beginning, there were so many times that I almost quite. I told myself that I would give myself 6 months and then re-evaluate. I can’t count the number of times I called my Mom to tell her that I was done and couldn’t do it any longer. Shane heard it even more. I had everyone’s support with whatever I wanted to do but for some reason, I kept at it. So glad I did. It got so much easier. Wasn’t even a big deal anymore. I’m not quite sure when it all changed, but it did. What had once been, by far, my biggest challenge was no longer an issue. Such a blessing.

And now it’s all over. Like I said before, bittersweet.