It was time.

We had a big first last night. Collins had her VERY first bottle of formula. No worries, she didn’t bat an eyelash over it. We are going to Beaufort this weekend for the water festival and my mom wanted to leave today and take Collins with her (since she is still keeping her for us…until Monday and she starts day care!). In a way that forced me to give her formula; but it was time and I am completely okay with it. For the longest time I had SUCH a supply built up, I could have left for a week and Collins would have had enough b-milk to last her thru. Over the past month it dwindled to the point where I was only about three feedings ahead. Crazy. It was a combination of her eating more, me not pumping as much, and being on vacation there were several nights where I drank enough to dump. For me, it was all a point of pride; it’s silly really. But, I was proud of the fact that I had been back at work since she was 8 weeks old (she’s 23 weeks today) and she still had not had any formula. That was HARD work. Pumping is hard when you are at work all day, moving, going out of town, etc. But, it was getting to the point where I was dreading it sometimes. And I promised myself that I wouldn’t let it be like that. Now, I feel like the pressure is off; she can have formula…it’s OKAY. The past few weeks I have been toying with the idea of quitting b-feeding, but now I think I am just going to pump as much as I can and not stress if I can’t. I’ll nurse her if it’s convenient, if it’s not…she can have formula. Again, it’s OKAY. (Clearly, this post is all about me justifying this to myself, ha.) I don’t know how long I’ll keep up with b-feeding/pumping from here, I’m just happier knowing now that I don’t HAVE to. It’s a relief in many ways. There were just so many nights when I dreaded pumping before bed. Now, I will if I want to…and if not I won’t. I know doing that my supply will eventually probably dry up…but I am okay with that. I’d ideally like to b-feed 6-7 months total…so I’m not very far away from that.

Going into this whole thing, I had NO clue what all it would take, how I would like it, whether it would work, how long I would do it; but I can say now that I am PROUD of myself for being able to solely breastfeed/pump for FIVE months. It’s amazing what the body can do.

We had some AMAZING friends come over last night to see the house and bring us dinner. It was so nice to take a night off from house work and just sit back and hang out and relax. The girls took lots of pics of "little c" as her daddy likes to call her:-)

Mid burp.