Ready to quit

Ready to be done with pumping, give her the freezer stash and just go to formula, tell me I’m not (or am) crazy. I knew this was going to be a lot of work and be exhausting, but damn.

I’m just shy of 5 weeks postpartum. I haven’t been great at pumping every time she eats…I feel like sometimes it’s just so hard to work that into my day (takes 20-30min to eat, awake for another 1-1.5 hours where she wants to snuggle or interact, pumping for at least 20min, set up and clean up) especially in the morning when I just want to go back to sleep for a nice nap. I definitely feel like I was an oversupplier at first (getting around 35oz per day), and I have a freezer stash already, nothing crazy though. But I’m finding it stressful just trying to keep up with all of this, I’m pretty sure my supply has dropped; which I am not at all surprised by because of how often I don’t pump. I did get a little sad about that at first, but part of me is ok with it too. I don’t really have a problem switching to formula, I had just wanted to get some great immune system benefits for my baby. I think it’s amazing that my body can do this and I’m grateful that it hasn’t been a huge struggle. My original goal was to get to a year. After I started doing this, I changed my goal to be 3 months when I went back to work.

But honestly, I’m ready to throw in the towel here. I love spending time with my baby. I love spending time with my husband. And I feel like pumping takes away from that time. I’m also convinced my baby knows that I’m hooked up to the wall and starts screaming 5min after I’ve started when it’s just us home or I’m trying to let my husband stay asleep. Lately I’ve just been so unmotivated to pump and I have some feelings of resentment every time I look at the thing. I tried to make pumping a little “me time” thing by playing a puzzle game while I do it or reading my book, but it hasn’t really helped much. So am I crazy for wanting to stop pumping?!