The End of Liquid Gold

Just pulled the very last bag of break milk out of the freezer tonight!

I can't believe we really actually made it past the one year mark! I want to celebrate by not having to think about how many adult beverages I have or by going out to buy a brand new normal bra :)

Yup that last bag of milk says May 29th. That was the last day I actually had enough to freeze, then I completely slowed down. I actually started writing this post shortly after that, mid June, but just never got around to finishing it.

I always knew I wanted to try my hardest to breastfeed my child if I could in the beginning. After I survived the hardest part of those first few months my goal was to make it to one year. I never gave much thought about how you stop. I figured once we got past that one year mark I'd start reading and researching it. I imagined he would just want to keep on breastfeeding forever until I pulled the trigger and  I  would have to start weaning him. It never really occurred to me that he might just start doing it on his own or that it would happen before he was a year old. 

But it's happened.

Just a few months ago this kid wouldn't even take a bottle from me or anyone else if I was around. He took a bottle no problem at daycare, two a day in fact. He even takes bottle from grandparents or babysitters when they watch him. But there really isn't a need for him to be given a bottle during the weekend or nights unless someone else watches him because basically nursing is just so much more convenient. Even if we have a date night he no longer needs a bottle before bed, I nursed him once in the evening then feed him his dinner of solids and that's it.

So it actually worried me a bit that we would be in big trouble down the road when one year had come and gone and he was still attached to the boob. Plus he has no interest in sippy cups, no matter which type or brand I tried. But I figured we'd cross that road when we got there and kind of pushed the whole topic from my mind.

It started the first of June. 

Around 5:30 is the usual time I get home from work and nurse him right away but since we're in baseball season I leave work 30 minutes early to pick him up and then we play a little bit beforehand. Right in the middle of the week things changed.  I picked him up from daycare, we came home and sat down on the living room floor to play for a bit. Right on schedule he's hungry but when I try to nurse him he just kept pulling off and on, just refusing to want to eat. Luckily I had extra bottles on the frig for daycare the next day so I pulled one out, warmed it up, laid him on the floor, and handed off the bottle to him.

He had no problem taking his bottle. He chugged it until it was completely empty, held it up and threw it on the floor like saying "Cashed it!!"

Since that evening I'd offer him to nurse but he wanted nothing to do with the boob but only in the evenings, just that one feeding. Later that week, Saturday came and he nursed for everything else except that evening feed and continued that through all of the next week. The weekend after that he decided he no longer wanted to nurse during the day either.

My supply most definitely decreased. I continued to pump once a day at work and once at night before bed to keep up with bottle for daycare  for w couple more weeks because I don't have as much milk frozen as I thought I had. It seriously seemed like a ton, but when you count and add it all up it's wasn't. It was only like 135 oz., I give him 3 - 5 oz. bottles a day. Worst case scenario if he quit nursing altogether we would have only make it a week. There's no way I wanted to supplement with formula when we are sooooo close to that one year. Not now, not yet!! But I quit pumping because it wasn't amounting to as much as how long it took to do set up, pump and wash everything.

Luckily MJ kept his first morning nursing session.

I called our peds office 2 weeks before his 1st birthday since we were cutting it close and down to 50 ounces, we were given the green light to start transitioning to cow's milk by adding it slowly to his breast milk bottles. I started with just 1 ounce of cows milk to his bottles for a few days then would increase it by an ounce every few days or so. 

We just made it!!

Tomorrow and Monday's bottles/sippy's will be the very last of a mixture. From then on out MJ will be on all cow's milk, aside from nursing in the morning still. Not sure how long he will keep that up or how much longer I will let him until we're are completely donezo!