Hanging up the horns

I'm heading in to San Francisco tomorrow. My old team is having a "team meeting," and Brian, my old boss, invited me to come along. See, because that team travels so much, you can easily go for weeks or months without seeing your teammates, or even Brian, for that matter. So roughly once a quarter, Brian blocks everyone's calendars so that they won't have customer visits, and holds a team meeting. The meeting is usually light on business and heavy on fun. (And alcohol.) Tomorrow, for example, there is a 1-hour meeting in the morning, and then we're taking the ferry to Sausalito for lunch (with drinks), followed by a cruise on San Francisco Bay (with drinks). I'm looking forward to seeing my old teammates again and saying goodbye.

And I'm really looking forward to not pumping.

That's right. My last pumping session was on Thursday, May 22nd -- 7 months to the day after my return to work. I have officially hung up the horns.

Tomorrow's team meeting will be a perfect bookend to my working-and-pumping career. I remember another team meeting, on October 15. It was one week before my official first day back, but as I said, these team meetings are pretty infrequent, and for this particular one, two of our senior managers came along, in addition to the rest of the team. So I made a point of attending.

That was the first day I left Littles alone with Maria, and it was very, very hard. I remember sitting on BART heading in to the office, listening to Rob Thomas' "Little Wonders," remembering how I used to sing that while dancing around the living room with Littles when she was a newborn, when my return to work seemed so far away. I couldn't believe that I had just left my little baby with someone I had only met twice.

And then there was pumping. The plans for that day were similar to the plans for tomorrow: Brief meeting in the morning, followed by a ferry to Sausalito for lunch and hanging out, then a ferry back to the office. I had hoped to arrive early to have some time to pump, but that didn't work out. I ended up excusing myself on the ferry and pumping in the bathroom. At the time, I thought that was awful. Now that I have more bathroom-pumping experience, I can honestly say that I wish all bathrooms were like the ones on the ferry. At least it was clean and had an electrical outlet.

That was at around 11 AM. I wasn't able to break away to pump for the rest of the day. I decided to forego pumping on the return ferry trip, opting to pump when we returned to the office instead. At that point, it was 5:30 PM and my breasts were about to explode. Unfortunately, the receptionist goes home at 5:30 PM, so I wasn't able to get the key to the pump room. I ended up ducking under a table in a conference room and hoping that no one would walk in on me.

This is why I'm really looking forward to not pumping tomorrow :)

It's been a long and crazy 7 months, but I've made it through, somehow carving out time and space to pump where there was none, day in and day out. Littles will go straight from breastmilk to cow's milk. No formula for my little girl.

On one of the mommy message boards that I frequent, there was a discussion a few months ago about whether moms should feel proud for making it to a year on breastmilk alone, no formula. Some respondents pointed out, "Women have been breastfeeding for millenia, so why should you feel proud if you breastfeed too?"

OK, point taken, but I doubt that my great-great-great-great-grandmother had to slip into a bathroom on a ferry and hook herself up to a plastic contraption to provide breastmilk for her baby. And I know she didn't have the lure of an almost-(but-not-quite)-as-good breastmilk alternative staring her in the face every time she went to the grocery store.

So yeah, I'm proud that I woke up every morning and turned myself inside out to give my baby the best. It was not easy, and I certainly don't look down on moms who do choose to supplement with formula or even switch completely, now that I know what goes into keeping a baby on breastmilk for a year. That doesn't mean I can't feel proud of myself for successfully taking the hard road.

Although I'm done pumping, I'm not done nursing. Littles still nurses once in the morning and once in the evening, and due to our impending move, I have no plans to wean her further in the coming weeks. I may even end up pumping again, during my business trips to Seattle, to maintain my milk supply for those morning and evening feedings.

Still, as I put my pump parts away this morning (at least temporarily) and prepared to give Littles cow's milk for the first time, I couldn't help but realize that this is the end of a big chapter in her life, and in mine.

On to the next one :)