The cow is back!

I wasn’t going to post this here… I guess I was/am afraid that you all would think I was totally nuts, well more nuts than you already think I am. But bugger it, I am nuts… so here it is.

The cow is back in business!

Everyday, a couple of times a day for more than a year I hooked myself up the milking machine to express breast milk for the girls. First when they were teeny tiny, Dobbie the House Elf’ looking creatures in hospital and I was using the ‘mean green milking machine’ and pouring it in via a tube in their noses. Later when they came home but were still small and using all their energy to remember to keep breathing, we’d alternate breastfeed and bottle feed and I was pumping with the ‘big blue pumper’. Later still when their reflux was out of control and they were not interested in milk in any form, and then after the reflux had settled some and they needed to gain some weight and grow, and even after that, when we were still medicating for their reflux and I needed something to hide it in, then I was using ‘my friend mini’ (notice how each breast pump I had got named?!?).
All that time I pumped.

I got damn good at it, even if I do say so myself. I found some awesome online resources and support. I learnt some tricks to double pump hands free so I could play computer games or surf the net. ‘The girls’ (and by that I don’t mean the Twinadoes) got the hang of it and would happily ‘let down’ as soon as they heard the ‘brrrrrchu brrrrchu‘ of the pump starting up. I could double pump, surf the net and jiggle two babies in rockers with my feet… yes I was a milk making legend!

I HATED it.
I swore that next time around I was NOT GOING TO EXPRESS… no matter what.

Well here we are five months into this ‘one child born at term (and then some)’ caper and I am back in the milking sheds, but this time by choice and not necessity.

I am expressing ‘a bit’ of EBM so that Muski can play with it in a sippy cup while we eat dinner. He will not have a bar of a bottle (which I am secretly very pleased about, my little booby boy!) but he likes to chew on the rubbery end of the sippy cup and after a few days figured out that the breast milk tasted ok from that thing too. Even better, it means I can ‘hide’ some infant gaviscon (yes it seems I just make all my babies with reflux) in the EBM and he is none the wiser.

So here I was today back in the familiar position; one hand on the mouse one hand on ‘my friend mini’, my mini electric medela pump, pumping and clicking away happily. I expressed just on 130 mls in about ten minutes! These girls have not forgotten how to be milked!

whoooo yay for me!

I am the cow.

The cow is back!

Mooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!