This is a public service announcement for breastfeeding moms.

Since Allie started sleeping through the night and going from 7p-7a between feedings, I have been waking up in the mornings terribly uncomfortably engorged. The other morning I woke up early after having nightmares that I was trying to get home to pump but got lost and couldn’t get home, so I tried to go somewhere like a public restroom to pump, but I couldn’t find my pump. And then I tried to find a store that sold pumps to buy a handpump to just do it anywhere, but couldn’t find a store that had them in stock. I woke up in pain.

So what I’ve been doing when I wake up at 4, 5am afraid my boobs were going to burst, was quietly take the handpump with me into the restroom, and sit on the toilet and pump out 2 oz each side. It’s just making me slightly more comfortable. I don’t pump till I’m empty because I know Allie would wake up and want to eat in a couple of hours. I also don’t pump earlier than that, like at 3am, because I’m still afraid she may have a random middle-of-the-night feeding call after I’d just cleaned myself out. I did see a potential problem with just pumping out the top 2 oz from each side and storing those 4 oz in the freezer for a future feeding, tho. Most of that pumping is foremilk (it’s practically blue, looking like skim milk), which is high in lactose and could cause the baby to have gas if not balanced out with hindmilk. So I don’t want a future Allie to be uncomfortable after that feeding. I decided to call Kaiser’s lactation clinic for advice.

The lactation nurse wasn’t all that concerned about the bag of mostly-foremilk. She was more concerned with my being overly engorged after 8-12 hours of no expression. If the baby were eating less and weaning off, 8-12 hours wouldn’t be a big deal because I’d be producing less, anyway. But since the baby is still very young at 15 weeks old, and I’m not at a point where I want my milk supply to lessen, she doesn’t want me to send my body the signal that we don’t need to produce milk for 12 hours at a time. That was a concern I had, too. What I didn’t know was that, as she told me, the over-engorgement for such a long period could cause an infection. She said if I get a fever or if my breasts feel painful and get red, to go to the doctor for possible mastisis. Her suggestion is that I pump before going to bed. Unfortunately, I’ve been going to bed between 8p-9p, so not a lot of time has gone by since I last fed Allie to get a lot of milk out.

I tried it her way last nite, and sure enough, I only got out something like 2 oz total. That’s very little milk considering I have to spend half an hour storing the milk and washing and drying all the pump parts afterwards. Hardly worth it. On the other hand…mastisis.

So now that it’s 10p and an hour past my new bedtime, I think I’ve stalled long enough to hopefully get a good drain before I hit the hay. I’m exhausted tonight; for the first time since she was 6 weeks old and I accidentally discovered she sleeps in her own crib at night better than in our room, I failed at putting her to sleep after her bedtime feeding. Usually, she is so drowsy after nursing at night that she only protests a little when I put her in her crib afterwards. If she protests, I’d just put the pacifier in her mouth and she’d fall asleep sucking. Sometimes the pacifier would fall out and it’d wake her up, she’d whimper, I’d replace the pacifier, and she’d go to sleep again. This may happen a few times before she’s down for the night, so I’d stay in her room for a little bit after putting her in her crib. No biggie. Since she found her thumb the other week, however, she’s rejected the pacifier. That was good in the sense that she could self-soothe so I didn’t have to stand by for pacifier duty. It was bad because the pacifier was the only way I knew how to put her to sleep so it took all control from me. I’d wondered what I’d do if my only method of putting her to sleep for the night disappeared, while hoping I’d never have to find out. Tonight, she had a FIT after I put her in her crib after nursing. She rejected the pacifier, and screamed and cried so hard I panicked. Mr. W took over and tried to pat her, played her musical seahorse for her, picked her up and rocked her over his shoulder in the recliner, nothing worked. I was instantly nauseated. She was likely just overtired, since the jackass neighbor ran his circular saw in the front yard all day, keeping her from napping more than half an hour on 2 naps, and then he took a break in the late afternoon and resumed using his saw outside after dark when I was trying to put her to bed! After nearly an hour of inconsolable crying, Mr. W finally let me take over. I did what I do during naps: held her so that her right cheek is against my upper chest under my chin, she sucked her left thumb (her fave to suck on), and she finally, somewhere in between convulsive piteous heaves, fell asleep on me. I then laid her in her crib on her back and altho she woke up, was too tired then to protest and went to sleep soon after.

I happened to talk to Nanny Susanne after that and told her what happened when we tried to put Allie down. She said it sounds like Allie was overtired, and told me what she used to do when that happened with a baby she was caring for. She basically described the same thing that I ended up doing with Allie, and described the baby’s reaction, which was the same as Allie’s. This makes me even more comfortable with Susanne.

Man, it’s never one-sided with this baby business. She’s sleeping through the night, which is GREAT, but then I may get a boob infection because of it. She’s up in hysterics instead of going to sleep, but the hardcore crying so drains a baby that she’ll konk out solid afterwards so that’s GOOD. I wonder if I’ll ever get used to this.