Breastmilk Hoarder

milk hoarder

The saying goes “you can’t cry over spilt milk” but as any breastfeeding mommy who has every spilt expressed milk will tell you, you can and you probably will.  I view expressed breast milk like liquid gold.  You can’t just go to the grocery store or Target and pick up more and wasting my expressed milk is a truly traumatic experience for me.

When Honeybun was born, I decided I never wanted my children to have formula.  Being a first time nursing mom and having heard many stories of a mother’s milk “just drying up” one day (including my own mom), I became a breast milk hoarder.  I had collected and frozen so much milk that our first wedding anniversary gift from my parents was a large chest freezer since my breast milk was taking over our fridge/freezer (Honeybun had joined our family 11 weeks before).  I was determined that if my milk dried up, I would still have enough stored up to feed Honeybun to a year (at one point I had well over 200 ounces frozen).

Over the course of nursing three new babies, I’ve come up with a few ways for easily collecting and storing breastmilk.  The easiest by far starts  a few days after birth for me.  I found out with Honeybun that I’m a dripper.  As baby nurses on one breast, my milk lets down simultaneously on both breasts but obviously baby can only consume one side at a time, so what’s a savvy mommy to do?  Put a bottle under the other nipple and collect the drips.  Though Doodle is not yet 3 weeks old, I’ve already collected over 20 ounces of drips which hubby can give him if I decide not to take him to work with me over the summer.

While the “drip method” is great for early collecting, the way I collected so much when Honeybun was a baby was through actual pumping.  When Honeybun was 7 weeks old I started back to teaching dance 5 days a week but luckily I was only gone from her 1 afternoon/evening a week long enough that she required a bottle.  During my break I would pump and would generally get 4-6 ounces total and she usually only took 3-4 which gave me a small surplus.

I also pumped in the morning which is where most of my stock came from.  Sweet, considerate Honeybun slept through the night at 9 weeks old which was wonderful from a sleeping standpoint but left this mommy highly engorged and uncomfortable.  So, again being a savvy mommy, rather than waiting for my milk to reregulate, I began pumping.  First feed of the morning I would nurse her on one side and used a manual hand pump to express the milk from the other side.  In the beginning I was getting as much as 9 ounces from just the one breast each morning.  I continued this daily practice until Honeybun was about 10 months old and I realized my milk was not going anywhere plus I had more than enough frozen to feed her to a year if needed.

With Sugarplum I wasn’t so obsessed with hoarding.  Even though we had twice as much freezer space as everyone else I knew in Dublin, it still wasn’t enough for the massive stock I’d established with Honeybun.  Plus I didn’t have a work permit so wasn’t ever really away from Sugarplum anyways and she took much longer to sleep through the night so I never had the engorgement issue.  I did pump while feeding a few times a week, just to have enough for me to go to a dance class or have a night out with hubby but never got an extravagant stock built up.

We will have to see what Doodle requires.  At this point I don’t have a job which will take me away from him much but hopefully I’ll be doing something in the fall.  I also have a feeling he’ll be sleeping through the night early like Honeybun did and I already wake up engorged some mornings since he only feeds 2 or 3 times a night and is very quick before falling back asleep.  Guess I need to start making room in  the freezer!

4 Comments

  1. Amanda September 13, 2015
    • Melissa September 14, 2015
  2. Brittney Lira November 27, 2015
    • Melissa December 2, 2015