So long Symphony.

Chris returned my pump last week and I hate to admit it, but it was a little bittersweet.  I guess that's just how it is when you've spent hundreds of hours attached (willingly or not) to something.  When breastfeeding didn't work out for me, I decided to exclusively pump.  I pumped every three hours (8 times a day) for the first twelve weeks of baby's life.  When I hit week 12 I reduced it to 7 times a day.  I pumped everyday at 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, 7pm, 10pm and then set the alarm at 2 am to pump once more in the middle of the night.  I did this until baby turned 6 months.

I remember getting this panicky feeling every time it was beyond the 3 hour mark and thinking man this is gonna ruin my schedule and how in the world am I going to get in that extra pump if I don't get home and my milk supply! - it's going down ever minute that I wait!  Those crazy blogs and forums I tell you made me sick in the head.  And because I spent so much time attached to the pump it gave me extra time to read more pumping blogs and forums to make me really go crazy.

I traveled everywhere with my pump. In fact, when I went to Boston I brought two pumps with me.  My trusty Symphony and my travel pump just in case god forbid something happened to my Symphony during the trip.

I've pumped while driving. I've pumped in Chris' dad's car, Chris' mom's car, my sister's car and my dad's minivan. I've pumped in the bathroom at work before they had the pump room "ready.  I've pumped on an airplane, at the mall, in parking lots, back offices at work with paper taped over the window. I've even pumped hunched in a corner at SFO while Allison watched Christopher.

At the 6 month mark I decided to reduce it to 6 pumps a day.  I dropped the 2 am pump and that was a world of difference.  For the first time in 6 months, I actually slept an entire night.  I didn't set the alarm and I didn't have to stay up until midnight to pump.  It was wonderful.  I kept this up until the 10 month mark and then slowly went down to 5 times, 4, times, 3 times, 2 times, once a day, every other day, every 3 days and then stopped.

Anyways the reason for this post is the picture on top.  That's our work's "Lactation Room."  We moved into a new building last year so they had to create a lactation room.  The Japanese folding screen hides the main door.  If the screen wasn't there, you'd look out onto the twenty or so developers that sit outside.  It took HR over a month to get that screen.  For the first month, if the other gal that pumped with me in the room needed to get in, she'd knock first which was my clue to swivel my chair so my bare back faced the door and she'd open the door just wide enough to slide right on in.

Oh and these are the walls in our lactation room.

Me and the other pumping ladies are pretty sure this room used to be a bathroom because it had this rank odor for the first few weeks we used it.  It was so bad in the beginning that they put a fan and potpourri to hide the smell.  I'm not kidding.  I actually pumped in the ladies' room for the first few days because I couldn't stand the smell and well you know it's pretty bad when you'd rather sit in the bathroom to pump.

Anyways, it's all better now.  Well the walls are still the same, but the smell is gone and now we have a Japanese folding screen.  And tables and chairs and a computer.  I don't know.  Our HR manager talks like she's from the valley and dresses like she's going clubbing and the rest of the company, well it's mostly male and engineers so I don't think I should have expected much.

The pump has been returned and my life is back to normal.  The baby drinks formula and seems to like it just fine.  He turns one in a few weeks.  It's crazy how time flies. It certainly didn't feel that way the first 6 months of his life but now looking back on it, it really does.  I think if we have a baby number two, and breastfeeding doesn't work out again I'm going formula the whole way.  I'm definitely not going through that again.  Been there done that and well I'm all done with that thankyouverymuch.