Don't Cry Over...

Spoilt Milk If you are a man, or if you have a weak stomach, this blog entry may not be for you. I am going to talk about Luke's milk...and it doesn't come from Kroger :) Don't worry there are pictures of Luke coming soon....lots of them! There may have been some foreshadowing a couple of months before Luke was born.....I asked Lydia if she thought I should really purchase a breast pump. She said I should, just in case.... Good advice! As you probably know, Luke wasn't an efficient nurser. So when I called Jackie (my lactation consultant) the day he was born, she said I needed to start pumping to help my supply come in. Boy was I in for a surprise- she had me pump 2 min. on low pressure, 2 min. on medium, and 10 min. on high. When I talked to her a few days later about how intense this was, she just laughed an 'evil' laugh. Not only was the pressure intense, but the time spent was very intense! I pretty much pumped after every feeding- 6 to 8 times a day! This was after nursing Luke for 45 min. to an hour. I was getting about an hour to hour and 30 min. of sleep between each feeding during the night. During the day, we were busy with doctor's appointments, etc. Every new mom can sympathize with how exhausted you are those first few months! Thankfully LOTS of hard work resulted in LOTS of milk! I think one of the best comments I've heard was from our speech therapist that evaluated Luke during his swallow studies. Once she saw that Luke had been aspirating, she said that he's probably not been sick because he had been getting breast milk. That in itself makes it all worth it! Well, we began running out of room for storing the milk and the storage bags we were using were quite expensive. So after awhile, we actually began POURING THE MILK DOWN THE DRAIN! Crazy, I know now! Once we discovered we could buy cheaper storage bags (which I liked better anyway because they say "My mom's milk" on them), we began freezing it again. There was also urging from Jackie :) She knew that once we started using it, we would go through it quickly. Sure enough at the end of July we started using 1 or 2 bags a day. In the middle of August I was trying to decide what to have for supper. I didn't really want a frozen pizza, but that's what I ended up deciding on. I got it out of the deep freezer and sat in on the counter while the oven heated up. When I opened it, I noticed it felt pretty soft....too soft (even though it had been sitting out for a few minutes). I headed back out to the freezer and felt of some other food, and then I noticed..........the MILK!!!! I went into panic mode! Matt and I begin throwing away food from the freezer inside to make room to move the milk. Meanwhile I call Jackie to see what could be done. She sadly said that anything that was slushy or thawed had to be used within 24 hours. Luke had started eating more from his bottle, but not THAT much. We fortunately were able to save most of it, but about 345 ozs. were poured out. I now pump 4 times a day and still use 1-2 bags of frozen milk. Hopefully there will be enough for 6 more months. We have a new deep freezer as well. It's frustrating that we had to purchase a new one, since the old one was less than 4 years old, but we upgraded to a larger size (and a better brand). I'm just thankful that I ate pizza that night and that the freezer had just gone out! These first 2 pictures were taken when I decided to organize the deep freezer. When we started using a bag or two of milk each day, I needed to know where the oldest milk was. This is approximately 1,000 ozs. of milk. I had originally intended to use these pictures in a blog titled 'Got Milk?'. This is what our freezer inside looked like when we moved it from the deep freezer. We were able to save some food in the bottom 3 drawers. The door was also full of milk. This is what we had to pour out. Matt was grossed out by the milk in the bowls, but I wanted to see the quantity. Going... Going... Gone.