A goal achieved! We did it!

What a day to celebrate!  You're one year corrected now!  And I did it!!!  My milk lasted until today!!!  When you were discharged last year we had two deep freezers full of milk!  Pumping while you were in the NICU was hard.  Waking up in the middle of the night to pump for a baby who was laying sickly on the other side of town was a burden.  Milk doesn't flow out of a tired and stressed momma very easily or when your baby is behind a plastic.  I put up walls around my heart and those walls made it hard to provide milk for you.  And for me it was harder than most.  Lactation consultants couldn't believe how long it would take me to pump.  15 minutes they said...HA  that's BS!  I would pump 30 minutes before my milk would start to flow...and then another 30 minutes until enough came out...then add on the time that it took to wash all the parts and bottle the milk.   And if I fell asleep during that time, my body shut down...nothing would come out.  I cried...many days and nights I cried over pumping.  Stupid pumping.  Why did I put myself through this?  It hurt, I wanted to quit...SO BADLY I wanted to quit!   Pretty much every day pumping in the NICU I wanted to quit.  I would dread the hour when my watch would beep and it would be time to hook up.  I'd tell myself..."One more day...I can make it till tomorrow.  I can quit tomorrow, but I'm going to pump today.  I just can't quit today."  Day after day after day I had these thoughts.  Day after day...I made it one more day.  I was pretty stubborn...and with Joe's encouragement I kept going.

I wanted to give you the best...and breast milk IS the best even if your belly couldn't handle the milk I pumped for you many of the days and you were fed via TPN IVs.  By the time you were discharged my love for you, persistence, and stubbornness had stored up enough milk to fill two large deep freezers full of milk!  I had high hopes of my "breast-feeding rockstar" from the NICU doing awesome breastfeeding at home too!  But when you were discharged nursing became difficult.  Sometimes you had trouble breathing and so you had a hard time eating.  Other times you just liked the bottle that you had grown so accustomed to in the NICU better than snuggling and suckling at my breast.  But my original goal was to give you breast milk until your adjusted birthday (Dec 12)...and at a minimum until your regular birthday.  But you made it SO difficult!  There were many days I doubted that we would achieve either goal.  You liked your bottle, you liked to be active, you were distracted by all the sounds your siblings made, you liked biting me, you were my first baby to give me painful mastitis (several times).  So you got more and more bottles and less and less of me because you needed to grow and so I had to give in to the bottle.  There were days I actually liked it when you woke up at night to nurse because you were calm and snuggly and fed really well like a nursing baby should!

I prayed that somehow my milk supply (freezer and me) would last till your birthday in August...then I prayed that somehow I could keep nursing you after my Disney World trip (because I continued to pump on that trip)...then I prayed that somehow I could make it to that original goal of Dec 12.  And the Lord heard my prayers and answered them!

Thank you Lord!  I definitely couldn't have done this on my own!

I knew that my milk was best for your immune system and I was stubborn.  I had set a goal in the NICU and we were going to achieve it!  I had breastfed Abby and Jeremiah until their birthdays and I wanted to give that to you as well.  And the Lord certainly helped make that happen!  Today you had your last bottle from the freezer and even though you are still nursing 1-2 times a day, I foresee you weaning very quickly when we switch you over to formula bottles.

But today we celebrated more than with cupcakes and Chick-fil-A.  We celebrated with a bottle of breastmilk!  Cheers Joshua!  Well done!

The last frozen bag!

The last bottle

Happy Due Date!