I'm so pumped up

Now that Zoë is mobile—and therefore getting into everything all the time—I've been cutting back on pumping, working my way down to once a day, then once every few days, and now only when I need to. Andrew took in my last donation to the milk bank this week. By my calculations I've donated 4855 ounces to various milk banks (one in Colorado, one here (and a little bit straight to my friend Annie's little boy)).

4855 ounces is equal to approximately...

• 38 gallons
• 143.5 litres
• 135912 grams
• 300 pounds
• and eight months of pumping every morning and night.

In health class (back in high school) my teacher once defined passion as being the first thing you think of doing when you wake up in the morning and the last thing you think of before you fall asleep at night. If that's the case then I've certainly been passionate about pumping the past several months. 

I've pumped at home, in the car, at my mom's house, at my in-law's, at church, at a hotel, and while camping. For the longest time I wasn't able to do anything until I'd pumped in the morning and I wasn't able to fall asleep until I pumped at night—like literally could not—so I'm not sure pumping really falls into the category of passion unless eating and breathing are also included. It was more of a necessity than a passion.

Just yesterday morning I decided I couldn't live one more second without pumping again, so I did. Fifteen ounces later I could put my arms down comfortably. And that was after Zoë had had her fill.

Clearly I'm not free of the pump yet but it's nice to not be so tied down. I don't know what I'm going to do with all my free time now. Oh, wait. Yes, I do. I'll follow this cutie around cleaning up all her little exploration messes...

I've felt at once guilty and liberated by the decision to stop donating milk but, as it says in an article I read about giraffes yesterday, "since milk is costly to produce...a mother is expected to save it for her own offspring." It's time to put my extra milk energy to use elsewhere.

******

Edited to add that I just got my certificate of appreciation from the WakeMed Milk Bank and they say I've donated 4,379 ounces to them, which means I missed something in my records. My total is probably more like 5560 ounces altogether, which is more like 43 gallons (only 5 gallons off...no biggie, right?).