Hello Dear Boobjuicers and Friends!
Mama Lisa emailed me asking for tips as she is heading back to "work" soon after a blissful 6 month leave. My response is below, hopefully it will be of some help to another mama about to pick up her Bessie and head to the donut factory. Also, I put "work" in quotes because I gotta tell you, hanging out with a bunch of relatively quiet grownups who are usually all potty trained seemed pretty darn easy by comparison...
Reply to Mama Lisa:
I'm so glad you emailed, I hope I can be helpful. Going back part time is smart, and it will still feel like a lot. You can totally do it, I just tell you that because a lot of moms feel really overwhelmed and skip straight past "this must just be hard, I bet all moms feel like this," to "I'm doing this wrong, I can't do this, it will be this hard forever." So hopefully when you hit that point you will remember that we all felt that way when we started to try to swing breadwinning, brestpumping, and everything we were doing before the tyke showed up. You get more efficient at it and it is totally worth it.
So, that said, I think a couple thoughts are that it took me a while to figure out my pumping routine, and until I did, my productivity was kind of crap. My concentration was crap too, the first couple days, freaking out about leaving Kiddo for the day, what if they ran out of milk, etc. Which alludes to my next point, below, but the ongoing theme here is to be patient with yourself those first few days/weeks/whatever it takes and don't let the adjustment period scare you out of breadwinning or breastpumping. I was still learning new tricks even when Kiddo had hit a year and I was starting to move off pumping...
So next point, and since you are already pumping you are probably well on your way, but the more milk you can leave for Kiddo, the more relaxed you will be at work. Even though rationally I knew the little dude would not starve if he got one feeding an hour late, I was always freaked out about having enough milk in the fridge and freezer to make it through the day, which I often barely did. So if you can build up a hefty stash, great, and if you can't, don't worry, my little guy and I made it and we never had a big back supply.
Lastly, as much as you will want to skip pumping on your days off from breadwinning gig, and particularly if keeping ahead on the stash is tricky for you like it was for me, I really recommend pumping at least once on your days off. Especially if your kiddo sleeps a good stint at night and you can sneak out of bed before him in the morning and pump when you are super full, you will find it easier to keep ahead of him on supply. At some point he will have an appetite increase right on Tuesday morning, so your body won't get the signals until Friday (you may get lucky, maybe he'll always have appetite increases on Friday morning, but I sure wasn't that lucky), so you might find you have worked through a backlog you thought was a whole extra days supply or something. It happens... (And yes, there were weekend days I just couldn't bring myself to pump, and somehow Kiddo never went hungry, or not for long.)
Good luck, enjoy the return to work, and congrats on the little guy!!! You are right, we breastfeeding moms must take care of each other!
Much love,
Suzi
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