So here is my dilemma, I am really struggling to get by on the broken sleep that I have had since the girls were born. I suffered through the pumping every 3 hours for the first 2 months and my body adjusted to sleeping in short stretches. Then when I went back to work I stretched the schedule out to every 4 hours. Lately I have been so tired because I am only getting a total of 7 hours of sleep broken up in two 3.5 hour stretches at night. I pump at 7:30pm, go to bed around 8:00 or 8:30 and sleep until 12am where I get up to pump. The pumping and cleaning up takes 30 minutes and then I try and go back to sleep until 4am when I have to get up to pump and get ready for work.
So I'm thinking about eliminating the pumping at 12am and sleeping straight through for 8 hours. As I type this I am actually drooling at the thought of sleeping 8 hours straight through now that the girls are sleeping through the night pretty consistently. Now, I am concerned that my supply may drop if I try to eliminate the middle of the night pump. I think that any woman that only has one baby would do just fine with going through the night, but when I have two mouths to feed I am hesitant to make a big change that would affect my output. I do have a pretty nice stash in the freezer that I could use if I needed a little extra milk to get though each day, but I hate to start using that until I decide to wean off the pumping so the girls could still have my milk for a little while after I quit.
So what do you all think? Should I go for it, try it out, and see what happens? Or should I not mess with a good thing since I have a great supply?
Oh and I had promised some pictures last night but Jesse decided to procrastinate on his homework to the point of almost not finishing his last assignment in his class. He had the laptop the entire night and I was unable to upload the photos. I was very upset at him for playing video games all weekend and waiting until the last minute to do his homework which left me all alone to take care of the girls. Jesse was warned with bodily harm if he ever pulls a stunt like that again.
So tonight I plan to get some of the photos from the last few days up on the blog for you all to see.
Once again, thanks for reading. Your comments are appreciated. :)
McAllister Family Reunion
5 years ago
Could you maybe add an extra session in during the day? In the times that you do pump during the day do you make enough to feed both of them for the day. I would look at what you're putting out and how much they are eating. It really is a hard thing to mess with to know what will happen. But think, if you were exclusivly BFing and not doing the EBM thing then you wouldn't be emptied at midnight anyway.
ReplyDeleteWhen you start cutting that out you're likely to get more at the 4 a.m. pumping session than you get now.