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My littlest one is 6 weeks old! Can you believe it!? I can’t! I have a new appreciation for mom’s with multiple kids AND a career outside the home.
My little Aubrey is super adorable, and doesn’t cry too much. She does whine and fuss, but I’ll take that over hysterical crying any day.
She started having a bad case of baby acne starting at three weeks. I think it was because the doctor told me to start giving her the Vitamin D drops and me starting to drink milk. Well, when I stopped the Vitamin D drops and started to take milk out of my diet – her face cleared up! I didn’t think that you could have an allergic reaction to Vitamin D – I mean doesn’t that mean you’d be allergic to the sun?
With Aubrey, she seems to be nursing better than how my oldest, Ansley, did. With Ansley, I stopped nursing at 6 weeks and started to exclusively pump. I think it was because I introduced the bottle to her super early (three weeks), and she preferred how the milk came out in the bottle (versus spraying her face).
I know I’m fortunate because my milk supply is fairly healthy. This time around, I decided to pump early in order to take advantage of my supply. As you remember, when I got pregnant again with Aubrey, my milk supply diminished within a couple of weeks. We had to switch Ansley to formula at around eight months. Let me tell you, that formula is super expensive stuff. A tub of Similac cost $25. And I think she went through two of those a week! (I mean, add in diapers…that’s like a car payment a month). What’s funny is that before I started using formula, I either gave away those coupons you get in the mail for $5 off or sell them on eBay (I made a ton of money on them). Then, Ryan made fun of me because I needed them in the end 🙂
Its been said that breastfeeding allows you to lose your pregnancy weight faster and allows you to eat a little bit more. Well, with my first, the baby weight came off fairly quick. I think with Ansley, I was down to my normal weight after four weeks. With my second, Aubrey, not so much. I’m still 15 pounds to what I was before! Ugh! So I’ve started to count calories. And to make myself feel better, I’ve been going to thebump.com. I found a post about post-pregnancy weight and how far ladies were along on their weight loss by the age of their baby. You can find it here. I also found this article on how to lose the baby weight without really trying – what I took from this is that I’ll start wearing my baby more 🙂 In the last two weeks, I started hitting the gym and making use of my membership fee. I’ve been going every other day and spending an hour on the elliptical. My goal is to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight by the time I go back to work (in another six weeks). My ultimate goal is to get back to my wedding weight! We shall see…
Anyway, back to my milk stash. I figured I’d share how to store my milk stash, because I think its fairly efficient and saves a lot of freezer space. I don’t store in bottles because it takes forever to thaw. Instead, I use the Lansinoh milk storage bags.
1. Once I pump, I poor the milk into the bags.
2. I push all the air out as much as I can before I seal the bag.
3. I lay it flat in the freezer so that it freezes evenly.
4. I then place them into boxes vertically (see photos below) which allows me to save some room.
5. I used old medium size USPS boxes to store my milk in with the tops cut off. Each box holds about 30 bags.
P.S. Note, I don’t store them until I have at least 5 ounces. So, if I can pump only 3 ounces one night, I’ll put it in the refridgerator until the next day when I can pump 2 more ounces.
Crossing my fingers that I can keep my supply up when I go back to work! Hope this was useful!
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