Hi, friends! My name is Meg and I blog over at Meg O. on the Go. You can find me blogging about beauty, my babies, and my life. Come by and say hi sometime. I am not new to breastfeeding, nor am I new to guest posting for The Breastfeeding Diaries. You can catch my first post here!
I’m back to talk about my experiences the second time around. I am almost four months in breastfeeding my second daughter, Caroline. With my first daughter, Kennedy, it seemed to be relatively easy and we didn’t have any real problems or issues. She was breastfed for 13.5 months and weaned easily.
When sweet Caroline was born, she was born hungry and ready to eat. She latched on immediately and never looked back. But boy, was she hungry. She was very awake and alert during our time in the hospital (quite the opposite of our first sleepy baby who hardly ever woke up) and didn’t really seem satisfied until my milk came in. My milk came in on day dour and she finally was settled.
To be honest, our breastfeeding experience has been pretty much textbook. She is a champ. I feel like I’m doing a great job at this. It’s felt even easier.
But, the thing is… I am a full time working mom. I teach and direct high school theatre, and my job can be very demanding sometimes. If any of you have been in a play or did a sport in school knows the after school commitment it requires. I was able to take the full twelve weeks of maternity leave but once I was scheduled to return, things were going to get busy. When I went back to work after Kennedy, we were able to work it out to where I didn’t have much after school commitment, mainly because I was out January-March and there wasn’t much left in the school year. This time, I started the school year out on maternity leave and have the majority of the school year left, so after school commitments were unavoidable.
Since I would be away from my baby longer than I wanted (although I have been taking her to rehearsal with me!), I decided I needed to have a reserve of milk for her in the event I would be away from her longer than I anticipated.
One thing I did different this time around is start pumping around when Caroline was 3 weeks old. A lot of people will probably say that this is a little early to start pumping, but I am so glad I started then. I would pump once a day and then start freezing everything in our deep freezer. With my last baby, I didn’t do much of this and I certainly did not have a reserve of milk. While we always had enough for Kennedy, it literally was just enough. No room for error. This time, I have 50 bags of milk in the deep freezer in the garage. It’s given me such peace of mind. Having two kids means needing to be even more flexible than before… so if for any reason I need to be away from Caroline, she will always be well fed.
I already had a pump from last time, but I ended up getting another pump through my insurance for free. You probably think that may be excessive, but it’s actually been awesome to have two pumps! One pump I keep at school and the other is at home. I just bring the milk and parts back and forth. No need to lug the pump around. I also have some breastmilk bags at school and some extra parts in case I forget. Less things for me to transport back and forth means less things for me to forget!
Right now, even though we’re still working out the kinks of me being back to work, our breastfeeding journey is going strong. I’m hoping that we make it to a year, just like I did with her sister.
As mothers, we make so many sacrifices and breastfeeding is no exception. Although my breastfeeding stories are not full of complications and earth shattering advice, the biggest thing for me is making breastfeeding work, no matter what.
Be sure to catch up with the rest of the Breastfeeding Diaries at the top of my navigation bar.
