All week at work, I’d been seeing my milk supply gradually diminish. I’d kind of expected this, because the baby is able to get out more milk than the pump, so pumping 3 meals out of 5 tells my body that less milk is needed. The opposite is true, however. I was dismayed to go home yesterday and learn that Jayne had again bottlefed Allie 4 times in the day, despite each bottle’s quantity being a lot more than before. Overall, Allie took 23 ounces by bottle alone yesterday, whereas I only brought home 12 ounces from the 3 pump sessions at work. Even as the day goes, the milk supply drops by about an ounce each time. Feeling the pressure, I pumped last night at 10:30pm, after I’d napped for about 45 minutes. I figured that since it’d been 4 hours since Allie had her bedtime feeding, that I’d be able to get out a good amount. My body was not cooperative; after half an hour of working with the hand pump, alternating from side to side, hitting each side twice, I only got out one ounce total. I was frustrated and upset. That’s a long time spent pumping, storing, washing and drying pump parts, and losing sleep for very little gain.

I’m hoping that the 4 bottles a day at 6-7 ounces each the past 2 days are just Allie doing catch-up for the 3-day calorie deficiency she went through the first half of the week, and that she’ll go back to a more manageable pace soon. I have a stockpile of milk in the freezer, but she’s going through them really quickly. At this pace, I will fall behind in about a month even if I breastfeed exclusively on weekends. It could be that she’s going to be ready for solids earlier than I’d anticipated, if it seems that a liquid-only diet is failing to keep her full anymore. And that’s the next huge learning curve for me and Allie.

Oh, and I feel the bond with Allie stretching thinner. Yesterday, despite my holding her, she kept turning to look left and right, pulling away from me, refusing to look at me. She doesn’t do her big welcoming smile of recognition at me anymore. 🙁