Weaning Chronicles – Week 10 – The Final Update?!?!?!

OUR FINAL WEEK IS HERE!

I’m (I think) done pumping. And I think this is our final update!

I have not touched a pump in about a week and have just been hand expressing. I kept a “schedule” and hand expressed in the shower every night for a few days, so about 24 hours apart, and then did what I could to push myself a little longer each day.

I’ve pushed myself for about 2 and half days with no expression. I hand expressed today (Sunday) because I just really didn’t feel good. I honestly felt like I was coming down with something and realized it could be my body freaking out a bit and might be what’s known as the “weaning flu”. It almost felt like I was getting mastitis so I hand expressed for about 2 minutes in a hot shower and felt much better. I’ve just been really achy and not feeling great so I am just resting as much as I can.

As far as symptoms, no insomnia, but as mentioned above, I’m just feeling really fatigued/run down. No breakouts but am having night sweats, so that’s not surprising. I also had some ups and downs yesterday and was more upset about some things that I’m not sure I would have been as upset about had I not been weaning. Wee bit of a meltdown!

I am working my way through the freezer stash and adding whole milk to the breastmilk. Hobbs is still getting about 15ish oz of breastmilk and each of those offerings have an ounce or two of whole milk to help introduce it.

I cannot believe how much time I have back in the day! I don’t think I realized how much “milk admin” time (thanks to one of the moms in the TMM community for that) I was spending each day. Excluding pump time, there’s all the time spent making bottles, bagging over supply, cleaning parts and bottles, putting things away, and then making sure you’re set up for the next session or next day. It’s A LOT of time. Like a lot. You should be really proud of yourself for any amount of time spent pumping!! I personally feel like it’s harder to do than nursing, but at the end of the day, it’s all hard. Having to be the one to make all the decisions for these tiny humans takes a lot of you. You’re doing a great job mama!!

Thank you to everyone who has followed along and read through these blogs and watched all the video recaps and have been so supportive!

You can watch my quick recap on Instagram here.