Weaning Week 3 is complete!
And with it there was a dropped pump session! You read that right – I took 3 whole weeks to drop one pump session.
I am an overproducer and each of my pump sessions is around 30 minutes as I have super late letdowns so I trimmed my third pump of the day down super slowly (I pump 4x a day). I took my time reducing the session by a few minutes and then would hang there for a few days, sometimes closer to 5 to ensure that my body was getting the signal but wouldn’t cause any undo stress
I was also moving my second and third pumps closer together so once I got my third pump down to 10 minutes, it made it really easy to drop it completely and adjust the time frames between pumps. I now go about 9.5-10 hours overnight and about 6.5-7 hours between day time pumps for a total of 3 sessions.
I did have insomnia, night sweats, and anxiety BUT I also got my cycle right as I was dropping that pump session so all of those things could have been my cycle OR weaning OR both. There’s no way to tell, but that’s show biz baby.
I would love to just be done pumping. Like, never pull my pump out again. But I think there is something really important about going slow. I rushed dropping from 5 to 4 pumps. I did it in a week and it was SO rough. I felt crazy, like I was coming out of my skin, and everything upset me and made me mad. I think in a day and age where everything is fast and delivered overnight, we tend to expect the same from our bodies and that’s unrealistic.
You grew an entire human being in your body and worked really hard to feed that human with your body. It’s 100% ok to want to be done and have this be over with but protecting yourself and your body in this is so important too!
I am going to hang at 3 pumps probably for a majority of week 4 and slowly shorten my pump in the middle of the day and will report back for the end of week 4!