In those first few months of motherhood, I could usually be found walking around in a bra that allowed me to extract my boobs at a moment’s notice. It would only be a matter of time until they needed to be hooked up to a machine again while I awkwardly walked around trying to do things with two bottles hanging from my chest. My breasts felt distant from my body, more like a device permanently attached to me. In this phase of life they were not fully my own; they existed solely to feed my baby. I thought about stopping but I had a sense of attachment to the process - the accomplishment of growing my baby on the inside and continuing to grow him on the outside. The satisfaction when he stopped crying immediately upon taking the bottle.
Before giving birth, the US healthcare system gifted me a free breast pump through insurance and approximately no education on how to care for a new baby. The breast pump sat in a box collecting dust in the weeks leading up to my due date. I opened it briefly and was intimidated by the confusing array of parts and so I stuffed it back in the box. I didn’t imagine I’d have a use for this confusing machine since I was planning to nurse. How hard could it be?
When my baby was a few hours old, nurses at the hospital shoved my breast into my baby’s mouth, squeezing it in various directions while I sat there in a drugged haze feeling disconnected from the process. The next day they said he wasn’t getting enough from me and proceeded to syringe feed him a combination of formula and donor milk. I was alarmed - wasn’t my body supposed to be making milk? Looking back now, they should have told me everything was working fine and it takes a few days for your milk to come in.
When we got home from the hospital, I was determined to nurse but it wasn’t going well. Getting my baby to latch was painful, and my pain would scare him and then we’d both end up in tears. When he did latch, I was never sure if he was getting enough.
After learning I could boost my supply by pumping every 2-3 hours, I dusted off my pump, attached the suction cups, took a deep breath and pressed the power button. I watched as the tiniest drops made their way from the pump’s duckbill valve into the bottle, skeptical that this would be enough for my baby. Miraculously, the accumulation of tiny drops over 20 minutes started to fill a bottle and I stared in disbelief that I had produced a substance that could sustain life. I poured it into a bottle and my baby started drinking immediately.
Maybe from an innate desire or social pressure I couldn’t quite pinpoint, I was still determined to nurse. The internet will tell you to pump right after nursing if your baby didn’t get a full feed. I wondered what counted as a full feed and what I was supposed to do with my baby while I was hooked up to the pump. For a few days I tried this hybrid nurse and pump approach but it was too much for my tired mind. It would have to be one or the other. Before I settled on pumping, I almost scheduled an appointment with a lactation consultant because that seemed like what you were supposed to do if you weren’t having a magical breastfeeding experience. But pumping was working so well. My baby chugged the bottles, started gaining weight, and I loved being able to visualize the hard work I was putting in to make milk. In the end I decided I didn’t need more advice. Why fix what wasn’t broken?
Instead, I went all in on pumping. I joined a subreddit with thousands of moms exclusively pumping (EP as it is known in shorthand), which surprised me by being one of the most uplifting places on the internet. People posted their milestones, struggles, questions, and everything in between. “I made it a year!” one post said. In the comments everyone piled on with excited congratulatory messages and questions - “how did you do it?!”. “I want to stop,” another mom posted, the replies full of “Your mental health is more important than your baby getting breast milk” and “You have the permission of a random stranger on the internet to quit.”
With all the time I spent pumping, it even started to become somewhat of a hobby. It was hard for it not to - I spent about 3 hours every day actively doing it and another few hours thinking about it. Whenever I encountered another pumping mom, I’d ask excitedly about their pumping routines and equipment. Everyone seemed to do something slightly different and this fascinated me. I pumped while driving, at a restaurant, in an Uber, on a train, on a plane, at an airport, while working, and even at the Eras Tour.
Before I started pumping, I’d heard the term pumping thrown around and had even seen a few friends do it. Looking at it from the sidelines, it didn’t seem that hard. You just sit there and wait while the pump works its magic. Right?
What I didn’t see was the discomfort of having a vacuum suck your nipples, the bottomless bucket of pump parts and bottles to wash, the planning that goes into each pump session - deciding whether to pump while your baby naps or carefully squatting down to the floor to play with your baby while attached to a pump. I didn’t see the mental gymnastics of factoring your pumping schedule into everything you do, whether you’re leaving the house or having people over who you don’t want to see your nipples. Or the calculations to make sure you’re following milk storage guidelines - how long breast milk stays fresh at room temperature, refrigerated, and in the freezer. Or the sudden thirst that overtakes you the moment the pump starts, the feeling that if you don’t have water right this instant you will become a desert. I couldn’t see what happened in the middle of the night when you wake up bleary eyed, even when your baby is sleeping through, either to the sound of an alarm you’ve set or to your body’s alarm clock - a slight throb in your chest that tells you it’s time to pump.
With all these invisible struggles, some other invisible force pushed me to keep going. And going. And going.
Then one day, almost as quickly as the novelty of breastfeeding appeared, it faded. I hit rock bottom with pumping while out to lunch in a beautiful seaside town called Rock. I had planned my pumping schedule for the day around using my wearable pump while at the restaurant. Wearable pumps, where the pumping machinery and collection bottle all fit directly into your bra, are slightly less convenient than they sound. This pump had started to get finicky; sometimes I’d fill both bottles in a pumping session and sometimes I’d get nothing. With no other outlet for my engineering-oriented brain, I had tried debugging every aspect of it to find the root cause but my efforts were to no avail. I didn’t like how unreliable it had become, yet it was so much easier to take on the go than my other pump. After 20 minutes of conveniently pumping during lunch, I took the pumps out of my bra only to find measly drops of milk on both sides and promptly burst into tears. Our waitress looked on with confusion and a hint of sympathy.
Pumping was ruling everything I did and I wanted out. But like so many exclusive clubs, you cannot simply leave quietly. Stopping requires finding a formula that works for your baby and weaning your body. If I stopped too fast, I could get clogged ducts which sometimes lead to an infection called mastitis. I knew in my heart it was time to be done, but every time I thought about weaning a little nagging voice in my head would say “what if you could make it just a little bit longer?” The part of me that never wanted to look at a pump again was at odds with my hormonal desire to give my baby breastmilk and the guilt of not making it to one year of breastfeeding. I knew so many women who set these arbitrary breastfeeding goals before they knew what it entailed, and then felt guilty when they fell short. Why do we do this to ourselves?
As if I hadn’t learned anything from breastfeeding, with weaning I again made the mistake of thinking “How hard could it be?” Drop a pump, wait a few weeks, then drop another until you’re done. Physically, yes. Mentally, no. Weaning was supposed to give me time and my body back, instead it launched me into a pit of emotional despair. I was sad and angry in a way that felt beyond my control, crying for hours for seemingly no reason. It got worse a few days after I dropped a pump, then I’d be ok for a few days, then the hormones wrecked havoc again and it took everything in me to parent instead of curling up on the floor.
I did some reading and discovered the hormones your body produces to make milk also contribute to feelings of happiness and calm. When you produce less milk, these hormone levels drop and can cause sadness and irritability. Probably because it involved women, this sudden drop in hormones after weaning is only just starting to be studied. I wondered if weaning so slowly was doing me any good or if I should have gotten it all over with quickly. I felt trapped. I wanted desperately to be done, yet every time I looked at my decreasing milk output after a pumping session I’d feel a twinge of sadness. After all, wasn’t that a lot of motherhood? Doing the thing your gut (which, despite what the internet promised, did not melt away while breastfeeding or weaning) told you was right and then finding a reason to feel guilty or sad about it.
After nearly four months of weaning, one morning I pumped for 15 minutes, poured the tiny amount of milk into a bottle, unscrewed the pump parts and put them in the sink. I didn’t quite know it then but that was my last pump. As if he knew, my baby was hungry right at that moment for the exact amount of milk I had just pumped, making sure it didn’t go to waste. For the next few days I left the pump parts there at the bottom of the sink, feeling nostalgic every time I walked by. I’d rolled my eyes at the thought of having to wash pump parts so many times, but now I looked at them longingly, wondering if I should give them an honorary last wash.
Feeling somewhat numb, one week later I washed them just like I had hundreds of times over the past ten months. I could have thrown them out, but for a reason unbeknownst to me I instead set them on the counter to dry.
Before I packed up my pump to donate to a future mom, I checked the total time I’d clocked on it. The screen flashed: 518 hours. My other pumps racked up 154. Added all together, that’s 672 hours or 28 entire days. If pumping was a 9-5 job, it would take 4 months of working to hit that many hours. The time I’ve spent on my pumps accounts for over 10% of my baby’s age. However you spin it, that’s a lot. And I’m so proud.
Some final thoughts
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Pumping IS breastfeeding. Pumping and nursing are both forms of breasfeeding.
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Any amount of breasfeeding is something to be proud of, whether it’s 1 hour, 1 month, or 1 year+. It takes such a mental and physical toll on your body.
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If I didn’t have such a generous maternity leave I definitely wouldn’t have made it as long as I did breastfeeding. I’m so grateful for this leave and I know it’s a privilege.
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Any reason someone doesn’t want to breastfeed is valid.
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If you’re wondering how I checked how many hours I’d been using my pump, I found this handy hack for Spectra pumps. Also, the Spectra S1 was my favorite pump.
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If you made it this far, thanks for reading :)