Girl’s Life

If the title isn’t fair warning that I’m going to talk about about pumping and breasts in this post, then I don’t know how else to warn you. (That’s mostly for my brothers. If they were disturbed at my use of a breast pad as a makeshift coaster before, I’m sure this won’t help matters at all.)

This post is to memorialize the fact that I am finished pumping! Man, does it feel good to say that. I have been pumping at work for the past nine months, and now that Sophia is officially a year old as of last Thursday, I have retired the old Avent ISIS. Although it will be weird to have my lunch hour for myself again and I’ll miss my daily reminder of the randomness that is my pump room, I am not sentimental about this stage ending at all. I am sentimental about Sophia beginning to naturally wean herself, yes. But pumping? Not so much.

I posted before about my random pump room. And I figured for posterity sake, I should post a few photos of the room so that you all can feel like you were there with me. The photo above highlights some of the room’s great quirks — the sick room cot, the wheelchair, the motivational “animals in the wild” posters. The photo to the left shows the room’s more practical side — the CPR demonstration poster, the big brown box of tampons, other box filled with random toiletries, industrial-sized roll of paper towels, and, of course, more peaceful nature posters. Because some insightful person figured the harsh white walls and three inches of leg room just might not be quite peaceful enough.

Pumping has been a huge commitment over these past months. But however much I dreaded the chore of it at times, I actually usually did appreciate the time to myself — time to get away from my desk, my phone, my email — and just sit and read whatever cheesy parenting magazine I grabbed that morning as I headed out the door. (Small digression: I seem to have gotten on some random mailing lists and now I receive a disproportionate amount of baby mags for the number of babies I have. And I still haven’t found the one that really suits me yet. Any suggestions?)

Anyway, back to pumping. Like I said, I enjoyed my daily alone time and will miss that. And I definitely enjoyed the fact that pumping meant I was able to provide my baby with the best source of nutrition even when I wasn’t around to give it to her myself. That girl sure does like her some good mama’s milk. But I am overjoyed to not have to spend so much time hunched over my breast pump in dire need of a deep tissue massage. And I am thrilled to not have to wash the thing every night and make sure I have clean bottles. And just today on my lunch break I ran to Target to grab some diapers. An errand! At lunch! I had forgotten how much I could get done in one free hour in the middle of the day.

I am glad to have been able to breastfeed for so long, and I am thankful that the breast pump made that possible. But hallelujah! I am done!