My Weaning Journey
Five months later, and my breastfeeding journey is over. Honestly, it feels like it went on for a year and simultaneously just one day. It feels so long and so short altogether. I guess that is what I’m learning about motherhood though: two conflicting emotions can exist at once. Similarly as the concept of time, my emotions towards breastfeeding are very conflicting. I absolutely loved the actual act of breastfeeding, but I hated just about everything else. I loved those thirty minutes where it was just the two of us. The eye contact and smiles, the sounds, the miniature hands on my chest. I personally found it to be a bonding experience, which is not the case for all. While I loved that time and I’m so grateful for the ability to have experienced it with him, I disliked every other aspect of breastfeeding. The schedules, the time sucks, the responsibility, the fact that I was the only one who was able to feed him, the restrictiveness, and so much more. I started to dread it all and I was exhausted; physically and emotionally drained. For more on the exact details of my breastfeeding journey, check out this blog post.
During my time off social media and work, I started to realize that breastfeeding was no longer serving us. It was depleting me more than anything and I was running on empty. I’ve oftentimes reminded myself that to be the best mom I need to be the best version of myself and this sure as hell wasn’t it.
I had always set this “6-month” goal for myself and honestly, I can’t remember where it came from. I was forcing myself to keep going simply to meet this random date to prove to myself I could. Then, I realized how twisted it all was. Why would I continue to put myself through something I don’t need to suffer through? I want to enjoy motherhood and this time with my son, and ending my breastfeeding was the first step in doing that. Deciding to actually begin the weaning process was definitely daunting and not something I took lightly. It also was another example of how many things go undiscussed when it comes to postpartum. For so long I believed women just decided to breastfeed and then stopped whenever they chose to. Turns out, nothing about breastfeeding is that easy.
Since I had an oversupply and had already experienced mastitis early in my postpartum, I wanted to do this process slowly so that my boobs were able to adjust. I had the best intentions and I did in fact follow through with my plan in the beginning, but my body had other plans, and therefore I kind of went rogue. I’m sharing what I ended up doing with the clear statement that every single person is different and to please consult your OBGYN and/or a lactation consultant on all of this. I am very grateful to have had both help me along this journey.
My plan was to drop a feed each week, which is a gradual and slow plan that should work for anyone like me with an oversupply. Each feed I dropped was being replaced by a bottle of 50/50 breast milk from our freezer stash and formula, in order to introduce my son to it. During the dropped feeding time my boobs would definitely feel “full” as they were used to feeding, so the first day or two of that week I’d hand express a bit just to relieve the pressure or make sure I was wearing a tight sports bra. I dropped the first feed (1PM) successfully and so I dropped the second feed (4PM) the second week. Unfortunately, this is where things went a bit haywire for me. Given that I had a history of mastitis and honestly I’m not quite sure what else led to this, I, unfortunately, had a very clogged duct on day 3 of dropping the second feed. I did allll of the things to try and unclog it (vibrator on the boob, warm shower, dangle feeding, massages, etc) and the only thing to actually unclog it was having Joe suck it out. Yes, you read that right. Judge me all you want (if you are, I must say “fuck the patriarchy”), but if you’ve never experienced a clogged duct then I don’t want to hear it.
Because I was in so much pain and frustration for those two days that I kind of went rogue with my plan and wanted to speed it all up ASAP. I’m not saying this is the right thing to do, but since I had such an awful time just dropping 1 feed per week, I didn’t want to go through this every week for the next month. So, I brought in the big guns and worked on drying up my supply. For 4 days, these are the things I did to make this happen:
I took a decongestant (Sudafed) twice a day as I had been told that decongestants dry up the fluids in your body (ie mucus) including your milk
Cabo cream on my boobs
Actual cabbage leaves in my bra (make sure you break the center rib a few times)
Cold ice packs in my bra after anytime I was still feeding or expressing milk
Tight sports bras
Sunflower lecithin to avoid more clogs
When I was super engorged, I would take a hot shower and hand express to alleviate the pain without fully doing a feed to signal to my body to make more milk
Along with these things, I eventually dropped the 3rd, 4th, and, lastly, the final 5th feed. Each day I dropped one and then the last two days, for the final feed, I cut down the amount of time I fed and finished that session with a bottle.
Again, everyone is different, but this is what worked for us. It has been one hell of a ride and I am so grateful to have been able to be on it, but I am excited for the next chapter and the freedom ahead of us.