(Warning: boobs are mentioned in this blog post. Many times.)

Ingrid was not even 6 months when I went back to work. She breastfed exclusively until a week or two before I had to go back to work. Our breastfeeding relationship was far too important for both of us to stop at that point, or even cut it to just mornings, evenings and nights. Now over 3 months later the situation hasn’t changed much… The first thing she wants in the morning is the boob. The first thing she wants when we get home from nursey is the boob. I barely have time to get us both free from coats and slings and bags and shoes, and she’s already making her “want boob now” noise (which is a throaty kind of cry, almost like a cough – very distinctive). I sometimes suspect that she spends her entire afternoon looking forward to that moment. And of course there’s the evening wind-down boob-in-bed session, and the cosy quiet night feeds.

At nursery she gets expressed milk from a trainer cup. (She never used a bottle. First there was no need, and at 6 months it would have felt silly – that’s the age when some babies start to wean from the bottle – so a cup it was.) Very conveniently for me, there’s a quiet room at the nursery at work where I can express and store milk. It has a comfy chair, a door I can lock, and a fridge. So for the past 3 months I have been a very steady visitor to the nursery. Twice a day, every day, and no meeting is important enough to make me skip this appointment (although I do flex the times) because if I do skip it, (a) my boobs will explode, and (b) Ingrid will have no milk for the next day.

For the benefit of those of you who haven’t been involved with babies recently, the most common way to express milk is to use a breast pump. There are electric ones and manual ones. If you want to see one in action (sans breast), head over to DadLabs for a video!

However I never got along with either the electric pump we bought, or the manual one I tried. Both hurt me, and the results were puny. So I do it the old-fashioned way, the way cows have been milked for thousands of years: by hand. And it’s given me a whole new appreciation of how much hard work milking is – and a new respect for the milkmaids of earlier times. I wonder if those milkmaids got RSI? I certainly get stiff shoulders and tired hands. Let’s assume, conservatively, that during each 15-20 minute session, I spend 10 minutes actually expressing milk. And let’s say that I do 2 squeezes per second. Well, probably a bit less – say 3 squeezes for every 2 seconds. That’s 10 * 60 * 3 / 2 = 900 squeezes, twice a day. A good workout for the fingers!

BB (Before Baby) I knew in an abstract way that babies eat and drink breast milk, and that it’s good for their health and digestion and all that. So of course I was going to breastfeed. But I somehow imagined that once you introduce babies to “real food” they would prefer that, and maybe just go on breastfeeding a bit for comfort now and again. The reality, as any mother could tell you, is quite different. Most babies are happy to live mostly on breast milk for far longer than the first 6 months. It is possible to wean them despite this, of course, but it takes an effort. Online mothering forums have tons of questions about how to stop breastfeeding.

I used to think that extended breastfeeding (past a year or so) was for extreme mothers, barefoot and with dreadlocks and batik clothes, who carry their babies in cloth slings and sleep in the same bed with them. (Slight exaggeration, but not by much.) Now continuing to breastfeed seems like the most reasonable, natural thing to do. Oh, hang on, I am one of those crazy hippie mothers, wearing my baby and sharing a bed with her… and giving birth at home… missing the dreadlocks though. Do you think I would look good with dreads?