Pumping at work until 10 months

@bettinahalvorson I have a 2 1/2 year old and have recent experience with this, and currently have a 9 3/4 month old as well. To make sure I had enough frozen milk to make it to when my daughter was 12 months old I took the average amount of milk she drank at daycare, multiplied that by the number of days she went to daycare each week. Then multiply that number by how many weeks of daycare you want to use only frozen milk (if you plan to be done pumping at 10 months then it might be 8-9 weeks).

Once you have the number of oz. you need to have frozen- Inventory the ounces you frozen already and compare to see how much you still need to pump (or if you need to).

When you are ready to begin the process of eliminating pumping you will want to start slowly to reduce your milk supply so this process can take a few weeks to a month. From my experience, you can start by reducing the number of ounces you pump in each session by an ounce or so- or even eliminate 1 of your pumping sessions if your body is comfortable with that. After a few days you can reduce the number of ounces you pump each session a little bit more and continue reducing as you can until you can go all day, while being comfortable, with out pumping!!!

I am looking forward to the day I no longer have to pump as well, let me know if you have any other questions 🙂

@lindseymarx Got it. That is very helpful. Did you still nurse on the days off or also added those into your calculations. I am just not sure if I am off on Saturday and Sunday and I just want to nurse him and not give bottles if that would ruin my work on stopping to pump or if I would not even be able to nurse during the day anymore?

@bettinahalvorson That is a very good question. Since right now you are able to freeze some at the end of the week you should be able to start reducing at work when you are ready and still be able to supply enough to nurse on the weekends. I can't recall exactly what I did 2 years ago but really by 11 months babies milk intake goes down a bit because they are eating more table foods so I think that gave me an allowance of a couple of bottles during the weekend days if I wasn't making enough to nurse.

On your calculation you could always count the weekends into it to make sure you have enough stored and if you have more than you need then you get to use that past their 1st birthday. Probably better to have to much then not enough.

Weaning is a gradual process, so once you start you will get a feel for how it is going and can make adjustments if you need too. Maybe you will just need to pump once a day for a couple of weeks- when the time comes you will figure out what you need to do.

Thank you so much for the insight! I think this will help me tremendously and I can't wait to be done pumping. 🙂