Ding Dong, the Pump is Gone

(Warning – the following post contains talk of boobies. If you snickered when you read the word boobies, this post is not for you.)

I turned in my rented breast pump a couple of weeks ago, a move that signals the end of all breastfeeding activities. It was a day that I dreamed about pretty much since the day I began using the breast pump. A day when I would no longer have to deal with the pain of breast engorgement, the hassle of pumping, or the cleaning of a zillion little plastic breast pump pieces.

Still, I felt a little guilty when I unceremoniously dropped the pump off at the Mobility Warehouse from whence it came. I used that thing approximately 1,350 times in the past year. I spent more quality time with the pump than with the dog. Perhaps a relationship like that requires a more formal ending. I probably should have buried the pump in the back yard and said a few parting words, but then I wouldn’t have gotten my deposit back.

I elected to begin expressing milk on a full-time basis after struggling briefly with the more conventional form of breastfeeding. During our short hospital stay after Lana’s birth, an endless stream of hospital nurses questioned whether or not Lana had “gone to the breast” yet. “Yes,” I told them. “And she decided she didn’t like it.” I suppose we could have tried harder, but the horror stories I heard about cracked nipples and the intense pain of breastfeeding did little to encourage me to push “the breast” on my reluctant child.

The nurses and lactation consultants were skeptical of my planned approach, believing it would be too difficult to keep up on a long term basis. And there were plenty of times when I felt like quitting – when the stress of expressing milk, putting it into a bottle, feeding it to my baby, cleaning the bottle, and repeating the entire process again two or three hours later seemed absolutely overwhelming. But I trudged on, content in the knowledge that I was doing the best thing I could for my baby and all too aware that stopping cold turkey would mean a slow, painful death by breast engorgement.

Now that it’s done, I feel immensely proud of my accomplishment. Breastfeeding is a daunting proposition, and the legions of breastfeeding fanatics (see The Art of Breastfeeding) and breastfeeding haters (the folks that shoot nasty looks at women who have the audacity to feed their child in public) make it no easier. In the end, it’s a very personal decision. I’m happy with my decision, happy that Lana has been so healthy in her first year of life, and happy to have that breast pump out of my house at last.