Pumping update: tales from the supply room

Deficit worries...

So Daniel is 10 months old, I've been back at work 7 months, and I'm still a twice-daily inhabitant of the repurposed supply room, aka the Mother's Room , at work.  Daniel still hasn't had a drop of formula since the NICU, and I still have over a gallon of frozen milk in storage. 

Which is all great, but there is a bit of trouble in paradise.  For the first 8 months or so I was pumping not just an adequate supply but a surplus, so that I could pump for the Mother's Milk Bank 3 days a week and still build up my stash.  But somewhere around the 8 month mark my cups stopped running over and seemingly overnight, I went from surplus production to deficit. 

At first I thought it was just a temporary drop but came to realize it was a permanent adjustment to Daniel's increased solid food intake.  It took me by surprise but I guess it shouldn't have; in comparing notes with friends, it sounds pretty common among moms who nurse past 6 months.  I've started taking fenugreek and drinking mother's milk herbal tea.  Not sure if they're helping much, but I'm doing everything I can.

The good news is that I have enough of a stash that even with about a 6-12 ounce deficit per week, I still have enough milk to continue feeding Daniel 12 oz of pumped milk a day until his first birthday and perhaps beyond.  The bad news is no more pumping for the milk bank.  I've got about 150oz in storage already allocated to the bank, and at least for now I'm still planning to donate it, but I'll keep it in the deep freeze till we cross the 12 month mark and successfully introduce cow's milk.

In hindsight, I should have stopped or limited by milk bank donations once Daniel started eating at least 2 solid meals a day.  Maybe for the next go-round I'll taper off donating once solids are introduced and then stop donation pumping altogether once we increase solids.  I think we'll finish okay this time, but now I know what to do differently next time.

Pump up while we pump
When you're a working mom, you don't have a lot of extra time, so you have to be a super multitasker.  Which is why I'm surprised it didn't occur to me sooner to take advantage of my pump breaks to sneak in a little exercise. 

A friend of mine at work is also a nursing mom and we both use the Mother's Room.  Last month she mentioned that she was thinking of bringing an exercise ball that we could sit on when we use the room.  So I built on her idea and brought in some dumbbells so we could get an upper body workout too.  Obviously when you've got tubes running from you to a pump on a table, your range of motion is somewhat limited.  But I've found I can get in a pretty good workout in 11 minutes, working shoulders, triceps, biceps, back, and abs.  I'm not saying I'll get that beach body just from pump break workouts but every little bit helps!