Crying Over Spilled Milk and The Breast Pump Overlord
When I found out I was pregnant with baby #2, I was wise enough to know that even though I had kept my first child alive, healthy, and happy for three years, I didn’t know shit. I knew enough from observing the people around me that no two kids are the same, and just because you have some experience, it doesn’t mean you have any idea what you’re in for … and MAN, that could have not been truer for us.
But one thing I was confident and super excited about, as I mentioned in an earlier post, was breastfeeding. After a rough first couple of months with my daughter which included thrush, among other painful issues, we went on to enjoy a nearly two-year long breastfeeding relationship. While I was in it, it felt like a pain sometimes—having her so attached to me, being the only one who could comfort her, feeling like a human pacifier, waking up 2340234208 times a night for over a year.
But in retrospect, it was such a gift. When we went out, all we needed was a diaper and spare outfit—her meals were handled. I could hop on a plane at short notice and visit grandparents and friends with just a small carry-on containing clothes for me and baby. In her first two years, with the aid of the boob, my little girl, husband, and I flew nearly two dozen times, including trips to Mexico and Hawaii with family. Since I worked from home, I hardly had to pump.
In fact, the pump was more of a novelty than anything else.

This time around, for a cleft palate baby who can’t create a latch, the pump is the only way he can get even a drop of milk from me. The pump is a necessary tool, my BFF, and my prison warden, all rolled up into one. For the past nearly 5 months, I’ve spent an average of 3 hours every day attached to a medical grade pump provided to me by the NICU, mostly from the comfort of my own couch or home office, but also in a curtained phone booth at work, in the car, at a campsite and, my favorite, standing topless in a gorgeous dress in front of several glamorous bridesmaids in the bridal suite at my brother’s wedding.
I despise the pump. I am mad at the pump. I rely on the pump. I respect the pump. The pump is a season of my life, a necessary, agonizing, but short season.
When your baby can’t latch, your body doesn’t get the necessary signals it needs to happily make milk. So even with all of the time spent dutifully at the pump, my days of producing milk for the little guy are numbered. I recently discovered that the modest amount of milk I was able to freeze over the past few months as backup is not acceptable to him flavor-wise, due to some evil turn of events otherwise referred to as “high lipase”—it all has to be thrown out. He only accepts freshly pumped, never frozen, perfectly warmed up goodness, a little at a time and only when he feels like it. FFS. Add to all of this drama the occasional dramatic spillage of several ounces of freshly pumped milk, usually at the hands of an insane preschooler, and it’s fair to say that I’ve shed my fair share of tears over spilled, wasted, unconsumed, and rejected milk.
This particular breastfeeding journey is going to end far earlier than I dreamed it would, and it’s going to have to be OK. For the sake of my family, the time I am missing out with my daughter, and frankly my sanity, it has to be this way. But I know that there is a little part of me that will always ache for what could have been.
