I did it.

I survived a full week of being back to work and taking the baby bear to daycare. Man, it was hard. Like your best friend moving away kind of hard. But I made it, and I actually learned a few important things this week.

Daycare is not the end of the world. I think Mia actually likes it. I hate it when people refer to it as letting someone else raise your child. It’s such bullshit. Matt and I will raise our child, but yes, the wonderful ladies at the carefully chosen daycare will take care of her while we go to work to be able to provide food, shelter, clothing, and an education for our baby girl. If we were independently wealthy or one of us had the option to stay home with Mia, would we? You bet your life we would. But we can’t right now and we’ve accepted it and if you don’t like it then you can shove it up your judgmental asses. (Sorry, this has been bothering me for a while.)

I like working. My job is interesting, fulfilling, and I work with some pretty wonderful people (some of whom had the same experience as me with their own children, and have been overwhelmingly supportive as I cried on their shoulders last week.) I like being an equal to my husband, providing good quality health insurance for my family, and having the means to one day take Mia to all the wonderful places her father and I have been. To show her the world through our eyes, and to allow her to form ideas about the world based on what she sees of it, not on what she has heard about.

Mia loves me. Being away from the girl has made me realize that she really does recognize and long for me. When I show up for our lunchtime nursing date, she nuzzles on my breast a little longer than usual, and she stares into my eyes instead of getting down to business like she sometimes did when we were at home together all the time. It fills my heart up so much; I can’t even put into words what it does to me.

I am, however, happy to be wrapping up this difficult week. Weekend, here we come.

Growth Spurt!

Mia is going through a 3-month growth spurt. At least I hope that’s what it is. Girlfriend nursed for ONE HOUR last night. She hasn’t done that since she was about 6-7 weeks old. God I remember those nights, nursing for almost an hour, catnapping for about 45 minutes, then nursing again. And again. And again. I don’t mind these older spurts as much; she can go a few hours between the marathon nursing sessions, so that's manageable. It’s the daycare situation that is frustrating. The ladies keep saying that she’s still hungry, even though I keep upping her ounces. I am giving them bottles that contain more milk than I can pump in one sitting. Thanks goodness for the paranoid momma storage supply in the freezer.

I hope she doesn’t grow too fast. I am trying so hard to savor these precious teeny baby moments. There are never enough of them, don’t you think?

Working Full-time. Breastfeeding Full-time.

I went back to work last week, and I have to say, I was more anxious about the pumping than the work-related projects and challenges that were just ahead. The morning of June 1^st, I packed up my breast pump, shields, tubes, lids, and cooler, and threw on an easy-access-to-the-breasts outfit, dropped Mia off at daycare, cried my eyes out, got to work, cried my eyes out some more, and sat at my desk thinking, how the hell am I going to do this? Of course I know so many women who do it. I see them walk in and out of the sterile, creepy lactation room in the HR department all the time. And my sister did it with her kids. So there’s nothing to it, right?

Um, wrong.

I am on Day 5, and it kinda sucks. Here’s how it goes: I get to work and I put the cooler with the ice pack in the freezer and hope no one messes with it. (We have some nosy people here and if you’re not careful, some asshat could be using your breastmilk as creamer.) Then I work for a couple hours until it is time to pump. I gather up all my breastessories and head down to the gross lactation room. The table in there seriously has dried milk spots from the numerous breasts that came before me. I then strip down and pump for twenty minutes. After this is done I get dressed and pack everything up, then I go upstairs and quickly refrigerate the milk, again hoping it doesn’t get put in someone’s mid-morning coffee. At lunchtime I rush to the daycare to nurse Mia. (I am so so lucky that it’s close by and I am able to do this. Not only do I get to spend an hour cuddling with my sweet baby girl, but it does wonders for my milk supply.) After lunch it’s more tears and back to work. I try to scarf something down at my desk and then a few hours later I go back into the cave to pump some more. At the end of the workday, I gather up all this stuff and rush to the daycare, pick up the baby bear, and rush home to get the milk in the fridge asap. (You understand my urgency to refrigerate the milk if you know anything about Texas summers.)

This is just the daytime stuff. At night, after Mia goes to bed, I have to wash everything, store the expressed milk in the freezer, and try to find time to pump extra so the hubs and I can have some home supply in case he wants some daddy-daughter feeding time, which he loves.

It’s hard. At times I feel like I am having an affair with the pump.

That said, when Mia cries for her middle-of-the-night feeding, I bring her into my bed and she nuzzles my breast, no bottle between us, and she looks up at me and smiles, mouth full o’ momma, and a little milk dribbles out from the corner of her lips, and I know that I wouldn’t have it any other way.