Exclusive Pumping
Show your support
You may find it helpful to do weekly or monthly recaps. We had a chalkboard on our milk fridge (but a text to your partner works too!) and I used to write like January: 231 pumps, 107 hours spent, 1,560 oz of milk produced, $409.40 saved this month! (ByHeart is 41.99 and makes around 160oz of milk) EPing is a lot of work that always go unseen but little things like that I think can help put it in perspective for others. Either way, you’re doing great!
On top of all that, it’s a physical strain on your body to produce and express milk. It doesn’t have the same mental benefits as nursing (at least not for me, I never felt relaxed after pumping, I felt drained). I hated hearing “you can just stop” because to me it felt very very important to do it, so every time someone questioned why I was pumping, I felt personally attacked - post partum is a crazy time 😅 Pretty early on, I did a cost analysis of how much breastmilk cost per ounce on average for me to pump because I was sick of my partner saying formula was expensive compared to the “free” breastmilk. That did help him understand a bit. If you’re not doing it already, using the fridge method for your pump parts will save you a lot of time cleaning/sterilising. After the first few months, I switched to that and only washed/sterilised once a day, such a time saver. You’re doing an amazing job, your hard work is making a wonderful start for your baby ♥️♥️
I don’t think that’s feeling sorry for yourself to want someone to acknowledge your hard work sometimes. Like you said, it does take sooo much time. Especially when you’re not sleeping much already. Good job, mama. I see you.