It turns out we couldn’t have picked a better week to have our first holiday of the year – a post-Easter staycation. The sun shone practically every day last week and all four of us have been sunkissed.
I’ve got a red nose, BB has pink cheeks, Misery Guts has t-shirt marks and even Little B has a touch of colour despite copious amounts of sunblock and the repeated ramming of a sunhat on his head (why do they never, ever stay on?)
Holiday activities included meeting a baby goat, hunting for Easter eggs, playing on Granny and Grandad’s lawn, eating chocolate, walking in the New Forest, eating more chocolate – and ice cream, dusting down the Birkenstocks and wearing shorts which had a year off last summer owing to the bump of Little B, and entertaining friends on Brighton Pier.
But the absolute best bit was a week off from pumping breast milk. How do I hate thee. It always seems to be a race against time to get enough milk to leave for the days I’m working away from home, and despite pumping while away at work I never manage to express the amount he’s consuming.
Every day I wake up knowing I need to express at least 6oz over the course of the day in addition to feeding Little B in order to have enough. And not only is the pressure of this knowledge stressful, so is finding the time to do it. It’s stressing me out just writing about it.
Hats off to anyone who goes back to work full or part time and still manages to exclusively breast feed. I honestly don’t know how they do it.
And who’d have thought the best bit about a holiday could be a break from expressing breast milk? I must be losing my mind…
When I would Breastfeed my baby she was always fussy afterwards. I thought it was because I didn’t have enough for her. But in the end milk itself just wasn’t enough. While I was at school I would pump 12oz and she would eat 32oz. So we started giving her some rice in her milk and it worked! I hated it because I now have to pump constantly. Every 3 hours. But it’s so worth it to know that my baby is happy with a full belly!
Wow that’s dedication! It’s such a juggling act isn’t it, Little B goes through about 26oz when I work away, and I come back with about half that pumped and spend the rest of the week trying to add to it. I’m so lucky I only have to leave him a couple of days a week…