Goodbye, Breastfeeding; Good Riddance, Breast Pump

Celebrating National Breastfeeding Month in my own special way.

The headline says it all: I’m officially done breastfeeding and pumping! I didn’t really have a plan, other than that I definitely wanted to BF till CJ was 6 months. She’ll be 8 months next week, so we went for a solid 7.5. And I’m mostly really happy to be done.

Many of you probably missed my first post about BFing, since I published it before I started promoting the newsletter—you can read it here. But exclusively BFing for the first 4 months had me feeling very exhausted and trapped and did not work for me. Because of this, I started to resent it.

We started supplementing with formula around 3.5 months, with one bottle a day. Otherwise, I breastfed. I barely pumped because it was easier, since I was home with her. I also HATED pumping. Just everything about it sucked. It was time consuming, uncomfortable, and required extra cleaning. I loved the conveniences of BFing but didn’t love that it meant I had to get up with her every single night waking or that I couldn’t go somewhere alone for more than 2 hours because I’d need to be back to feed her. For this reason, I started to accept that pumping was a necessary evil and made sure I was always set up before I sat down so that I could do it while I worked, ate breakfast, or otherwise accomplished something. (This hands-free pump bra has been a godsend.)

Over the last four months, I slowly started weaning without any sort of plan. Every couple weeks, I’d drop a BF and add a bottle of either formula or pumped milk. For a few months, she was 50/50 breast milk/formula. About six weeks ago, I started pumping twice a day and breastfeeding only once, maybe twice, depending on the day. Almost every feeding became a bottle, and we were still doing 50/50 BM/formula.

And then my supply started to go down, and I let it. Instead of panicking and adding more pumps to keep it up, I decided to ride the dip. I stopped BFing almost entirely, save for special circumstances, and was just down to two pumps daily.

Two weeks ago, CJ woke up early in the morning and was difficult to console, so I breastfed her. Then last Monday, I breastfed her one more—the last—time. I was sick, so I wanted to give her as many antibodies as possible. I breastfed her one day and then from there, decided I’d just pump (now down to once a day) to make sure she had a bottle or two of antibody-rich BM each day.

And then last Thursday, I got almost nothing from my nighttime pump and decided that was it. I looked at my husband and said, “I’m done. It’s official.” And I feel like I’m supposed to be sad about it, but I’m not? I’m so relieved? My body has been sustaining another life for well over a year now, and I’m excited to have a break.

I got all that BFing bonding time with CJ, and now I do so many other things with her. We bond in other ways. I don’t feel like I need BFing for that reason. A little part of me worries about when she has a rough night, that I’ve now lost the number one secret weapon to soothe her. But I remind myself that she’ll be just fine. She is healthy and resilient and finds comfort in me and her dad, no nursing necessary.

So, this National Breastfeeding Month, I am celebrating stopping breastfeeding. I stopped on my own terms, when it felt right. I have around 300 oz of pumped milk in the freezer, that we’re now adding into the daily menu, along with formula and solids. We’re all happy, healthy, and thriving over here, sans nursing. And I can’t wait to pack up my pump parts and shove them deep into the back of a closet so that I don’t have to think about them again for a very, very long time.