CAUTION: If you do not like tales of breastfeeding babes, then this is not the tale for you. No it is not!
June doesn't mess around when it comes to eating. From the day she was born she has enjoyed a hearty meal. She's a smart girl- she figured out real quick that one of the best things in life is kicking back and enjoying herself some good grub.
I am nursing June. I will admit that I wasn't real committed to it beforehand, but it turned out to not be too much trouble for me or June. As long as my body could successfully make milk, and as long as June could successfully drink that milk, there didn't seem to be too many reasons not to go ahead with it. In a way I feel like we kind of fell into breastfeeding. We didn't choose it so much as it chose us.
About a month after June was born I gave away almost all the formula samples that I had gotten from the hospital. We wouldn't be needing them! June was eating like a champ and my body was making more than enough milk to keep her happy. And away the formula went.
I'm sure you can predict where this story is going. Two or three weeks ago my milk supply decreased dramatically. There are a lot of factors that could have played into it. I have gone back to work every other day. The days that I work I feed June in between 5:30 and 6:30 am. I teach two classes and eat lunch before I am able to feed June again about noon. This means that she needs a feeding before I can see her again. And so, on my day off I am constantly trying to get ahead of the nursing schedule and pump a little extra here and there so that I have a bottle to send her with on those mornings. This makes my days at home quite chaotic as June wants every last ounce that I am able to spare, and is really quite a brat about donating her precious milk to future June. She's selfish like that.
I'm worried that going six hours in the morning every other day without pumping or feeding and then frantically trying to make up for it on my off day has got my milk supply schedule all sorts of confused. My body doesn't know what it's supposed to be doing.
Another factor contributing to the low milk supply could be that I went back on birth control. Freaking birth control- it's supposed to solve all your problems and instead it creates a bunch of new ones. I told the nurse I was still nursing, and she said she would give me a pill with a low hormone. Well, the other night I decided to read all the fine print and what do you know? Side effect is low milk supply and you should absolutely not be taking while breastfeeding. Thanks for nothing, nurse! Needless to say, I will be calling the office in the morning to see about changing up the b.c. (Always an awkward phone call to make during my prep at school. I swear I feel like anytime I call my baby doc from school there's an unsuspecting 17 year old boy who walks in mid conversation.)
(Sidenote: I know people say that breastfeeding in and of itself acts as birth control but I worried that my six hour stretch every other morning and the fact that June will go seven or eight hours at night in between feedings renders my breastfeeding birth control a bit too irregular to be effective. Or am I still safe to just rely on breastfeeding? The nurse said not to risk it, but we already figured out just how smart that nurse was.)
I wouldn't stress so much about all of this if June would just down some dang formula every once in awhile. I've created a total snob, though- she only wants the bonafide stuff straight from her mother's bosom. She spits it right out, scowls at me and then rolls her eyes like, "Please mom. You know I don't take that stuff." My biggest fear that she is going to be an insanely picky eater like her dad is coming true before my very eyes. And no, that's not really my biggest fear for my daughter. But it is a fear. And it is real. Because cooking homemade zucchini sausage soup for your husband and then having him say he'd rather have a $.25 cup of noodles is no fun. NO FUN I TELL YOU.
A couple of people have suggested that we try mixing formula with the breastmilk so that's what I've started doing on some of my feedings. June knows though. She ain't no dummy. She eyes me down like, "Woman? You can't trick me! I know this ain't the real stuff!" She takes it, but is sure to leave an ounce or so just so that I know of her disdain. If I'm lucky she spits a bunch of it up all over me- that will show mom not to mix to the golden breastmilk!
Anyway. I am certainly open to suggestions. I would love my milk to go back to its previous flows-like-wine state. June has made it pretty loud and clear that she would like the same. I do plan on calling the doc in the morning and getting the dang birth control situation fixed, (and if you want to tell me in the comments something as personal as what b.c. you were on while you were nursing, I wouldn't object) but I'm worried my milk supply is never going to be what it once was. Once your supply drops can you get it back up? Are we doomed forever to a state of endless misery and half-breastmilk-half- formula woe?
Please send help.
But please don't send Dwight. (And an extra ten points if you know exactly what episode that's from.)
