Mums R Best

expressing breast milk

i’m still fully breastfeeding my son and actively pumping breast milk at work. my daily routine is, nurse my son directly in the morning about 5:30 am and then, once more before i leave him at my parents’ house. in between that, at about 7 am, i will pump milk at home. sometimes, he doesn’t get up at 5:30 am to be nursed and will want to be breastfed at 6+ am. if that happens, i will not pump milk at 7 am because the interval between breastfeeding and pumping is too close. i try to eat half boiled eggs (2) every morning so that my son obtains the protein from the breastmilk. i’ll pump milk for 20 minutes at 11 am, 2 pm and 5 pm. i’m lucky that my company allows us to take an hour lunch anytime from 12 noon till 2 pm. so, i’ll eat my lunch (packed from home) at 1:30 pm – 1:50 pm then, i’ll get ready to pump my milk from 2 pm – 2:20 pm. after every pumping session, it takes about 5 – 10 minutes to wash the parts and store the milk in the fridge. my breast milk pumping tools include:

• a breast pump (dual breast pump) and tubing
  a container to keep breast pump parts (2 flanges, 2 valves, 2 diaphragms, 2 milk collection bottles)
• a container filled with small ice packs to transfer expressed breast milk (ebm) from office back home
• an empty container to store the milk bottles in the fridge because sometimes, office fridge may be exposed to bacteria from expired items
• ice bag
• cloth to wipe the parts dry after every pumping session
• extra milk collection bottles

a tote to keep the breast pump and parts so that i could discreetly carry everything for my pumping session and thereafter to wash up.

however, i wash everything in my office pantry. i keep a bottle of liquid detergent in my office. first, i will keep the milk bottles in the container and store the whole container into the fridge. then, i’ll rinse the parts. i will then squeeze a little liquid detergent into another container which i use to store the parts and pour hot water into it and mix with some tap water. the parts will be soaked in the container and then rinsed over with tap water. after that, i will dry the parts with the cloth.

there are colleagues who asked what are they and i’ll tell them honestly, “i breastfeed my son and i breast pump at work. hence, these are the tools”. there are also men who asked and i’ll tell them the same thing. for malays, i’ll just explain, “susu ibu untuk anak”. slowly but surely, people will learn that breastfeeding is part of my lifestyle now. and i do have many female colleagues who support my endeavour in breastfeeding and that truly helps me to continue breastfeeding my son.

after i reached home, i will distribute the milk in containers for my mom to feed lyan fung the next day. at this point, i will leave 6 bottles of 4 oz for each working day. sometimes, he will take 5 bottles, sometimes 6. i only managed to pump about 3 – 4 bottles each day at work. so, i will have to pump the extra 1 – 2 bottles after he sleeps, in the middle of the night or during weekends. i’m a little paranoid about not having enough milk for my son. so, i always make sure that i have at least a dozen more bottles in my house’s freezer for emergency.

part of the reason i’m blogging about this is because when i realised it was soon time to return back to work, i didn’t know what to pack, how to store, how to wash and etc and i hope this post will help new mothers out there.

when will i wean him off? for now, i’m going to say, i’m going to let him wean off by himself. if he wants to breastfeed until he’s much older, so be it. as long as i could, i’ll breastfeed him and keep pumping milk for him.

Labels: Breastfeeding

posted by kiLikiNa @ 12:18 AM