Filewizard’s Blog

Jude was breastfeeding withen 15 minutes of being born.  We got off to a good start by avoiding pacifiers, avoiding drugs during labor, etc.  I pretty much didn’t stop breastfeeding my entire hospital stay… or so it felt.  All of a sudden you become a Mom, and your changing 4 “dirty” diapers and 6 “wet” diapers a day.  You’re charting what the “dirty” ones looked like and when they happened.  You soon come to understand what a true sleep-less night is while you lay in bed and stare at the little creature you’ve created with amazement.  There’s just so much more to “do” at every minute of everyday and you just simply never stop.  I was so focused on breastfeeding “by the book” and making sure my milk came in strong that I ended up having an oversupply of milk.  I went back to work when Jude was just 6 weeks old and spent my morning break, lunch hour, and afternoon break in an empty office pumping so that she would have breastmilk while she was at daycare.  I remember my best day of pumping I produced 19 oz.  during and 8 hour workday.  I felt like freaking SUPERMOM.  Jude always drank 3 bottles of 4 oz. while she was at daycare so she only needed 12oz.  so… you do the math and you see how I ended up with lots of extra frozen breastmilk in the freezer.  After awhile it was obvious that I had more than what Jude was going to consume and they don’t last forever in the freezer, so I started looking for what to do with the extra.  I was NOT going to throw away all that time and effort.  Any Mom that pumps can tell you that stuff is “liquid gold”.  I ended up finding a wonderful resource.  Milk Banks.  Milk banks take donor breastmilk, pasturize it, and give it to babies, usually pre-mie’s, that for whatever reason, don’t have their Mothers breastmilk.  IT SAVES LIVES.  There is simply No COMPARISON between formula and breastmilk, especially to a pre-mie baby.  

I ended up sending 130 oz.  of breastmilk to the Denver Milk Bank (http://www.bestfedbabies.org/mIndex.htm).  It is one of my proudest achievements of my life.