Milk Paranoia

Remember the days of too much breastmilk? When I thought that perhaps I could feed a village? Those days are gone. I still have enough for the boy, but the back stock is pretty much gone.

When my dad started taking care of Finn three days a week, I started to suffer from milk paranoia: the ungrounded fear that I would run out of milk and have to resort to formula. And indeed, Finn did go through the freezer stock pretty quickly. But even though he's established a two-bottle-a-day habit, and I can easily do that in The Bunker, I still have flashes of the MP.

The first day of day care, I appeared with four 4-ounce glass bottles of frozen breast milk and four empty bottles, convinced that he would devour them all, and hoping that he would not be mad that there was not more. When Pete picked him up and reported to me that the boy had only had two bottles, leaving two frozen, I was surprised. It has been two ever since, and he takes one or two when he is with Ellyn. I know some of it is that he's eating more solid food, but another part of it is plain activity. He's surrounded by other kids at day care, plus, he actually naps. In fact, were Finn to be adopted into a Native American tribe and given a name, I think it would be "Naps at Daycare." He even napped in his pack-and-play thing for Ellyn.

Not for mama.

In any case, the MP still clings to the edges of my irrational conscious state, but I can talk it down now. I pump two or three times a day at work and bring home enough for the next day. I would like to bring home just a little more, to be sure and to perhaps even start building a back supply again, but if I start to think about that too much now, I'll get all shaky and worried that I won't have enough milk, and I have too many other things to do.