Pumpaholic

(please forgive the stream of consciousness rambling)
Ahem...

My name is Paige, and I am a pumpaholic.

My child is over a year old, and yet I cannot seem to cut down on the pumping. I pump four times a day - once in the morning after I nurse and before I leave for work, twice at work, and once at night before I go to bed, a few hours after I nurse. I am aware that at this point I DO NOT need to pump this much, and that I DO need to cut down on the amount of milk that Carter drinks at school on a daily basis (20 oz.) and prioritize solid foods now that he's getting older. Basically, the priorities need to flip-flop. So if I want to keep him on breastmilk (emphasis on the IF), I don't need to produce as much anyway, if I'm cutting out a bottle or two. Plus, I still have 130 ounces of frozen milk in the freezer, which I've been cycling through recently - using some of the older stuff and refreezing new stuff - so even if I didn't pump enough for two or three bottles, I have a back-up stash to pull from.

Every night, I decide that THAT is the night I will drop the nightly pump, and yet every night it's the same angst running through my head - If I drop a pump, I won't produce as much! If I don't produce as much, what will I feed the Roo?? Then my rational mind says "Uh, perhaps some of the massive stash of frozen breastmilk in the kitchen? Or perhaps some FOOD." but somehow I can't manage to stop.

I always planned to breastfeed for over a year, so I am not trying to wean him completely. The tentative plan is to just keep nursing him morning and night until I get pregnant again, potentially sometime next year. However, I do know that he needs to begin taking more of an interest in actual food instead of sucking down four bottles of breastmilk a day, nursing AM and PM, and therefore being almost totally disinterested in solids. I give him cow's milk here and there but he doesn't seem too fond of it, certainly not compared to the fanatical verve with which he attacks his bottles and my boob (both of which he can actually say - brilliant!). I know that I have to rearrange his eating schedule at school to include more food and less milk, and begin to incorporate daily cow's milk in a sippy cup in lieu of a bottle or two of breastmilk. I KNOW THIS, but somehow I can't bring myself to shake up my routine and stop the pumping madness!

It would be so nice not to wash 87 zillion pump parts and bottles every night! On the same note, it would be so nice not to wash little plastic Gerber containers that I use to transport his food to school everyday because I don't want him to eat the questionable snacks his daycare provides. It would be so nice not to have to root through poopy diapers, dump his business in the toilet, and the wash it all every few days. It would be so nice to have him come home with TWO DIRTY SIPPY CUPS and that's IT. And yet I choose all of this. What is wrong with me??

WHERE IS MY INTERVENTION?

Speaking of sippy cups, that's a whole other ball of wax. I've tried probably a dozen cups by now - several were flat-out rejected, a few he'll suck on here and there, but the only cup he will reliably drink from is a Muchkin straw cup. Generally I just give him water in it, but I tried putting cow's milk in last week and it was neither a whopping success now a massive failure, so perhaps I will proceed with that. The American Academy of Pediatrics says no bottles after 1, but if I want to keep him on breastmilk, it doesn't seem likely that he's going to kick the bottle anytime soon.

Oh, sigh. Double sigh. Yawn. Blargh. Am I nearing the end of pumping, cloth diapering and food-preparing? Or am I just feeling cranky? Time will tell.

So there you have it. I am Paige, and I am a pumpaholic, looking for treatment.