My Wedding Pumping Fiasco

You guys! What a weekend! My husband and I had a wedding to attend on Saturday, one that I’ve been excited about for a long time. If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that my youngest son won’t take a bottle, but I really hoped to leave him home for this one because it featured bowling after the reception.

Thankfully, we found a sippy cup he’d drink from about a week ago, so I knew we’d have a delivery system to get him his milk while I bowled the night away.

Getting the milk for him proved to be the biggest challenge.

I have plenty of milk for this baby. He has thigh rolls! And back fat! Oh, I love it. Plenty of milk in there. My “problem” is that I’m never separated from my baby and so I never seem to have an opportunity to pump any extra out. I’ve asked friends about their strategies for this. Some folks pump from one breast while the baby nurses on the other. Some people have babies who actually sleep for more than 2 hours and they pump during long naps or “first thing in the morning.”

I put that in quotes because my kids are up for the day at 5 and I just am not getting up earlier than that to pump when I’ve been up every two hours all night! I digress.

I managed to scrape together 7 ounces of milk and my mom arrived in town the day before the wedding, so I thought I’d be able to pump while she kept my babe happy. The only problem? He had bitten me earlier in the day…hard! Hard enough that I have little baby tooth marks and a bloody nipple

He’s teething and I know he didn’t do this vindictively. I’m not angry that he bit me. I was, however, alarmed to see blood spurting out of my breast while I was pumping! Friends, it looked like I was pumping a strawberry smoothie. It was that gross.

Horrified, I experienced several thoughts all at once: 1. That is the most alarming thing I’ve seen in a long time. 2. My baby cannot drink that! 3. Now how will I ever have enough milk for him while I go to the wedding???

I immediately called my La Leche League leader friend to ask what was going on. She investigated and told me the bloody milk was indeed safe for my baby to drink. Which is a shame, because I’d already dumped it down the drain in disgust.

By this point, I was really stressed out and upset. I had some All Purpose Nipple Ointment slathered on my bloody boob, but I still needed milk. I wanted 10 ounces to have for the 9 hours I anticipated being away from my baby. So then, I called up some of my lactating friends and I asked them for some milk.

I have friends who could take gold in the Lactation Olympics. These gals can express! Since I left several frantic messages, I got a few offers. One friend immediately said she could cover me and gave me 4 ounces, frozen in flat little bags, neatly labeled. One friend said, “Oh here! Take this 6-ounce bag. It’s the smallest portion I have in my freezer.”

I just stared at that huge bag of milk. It might as well have been a gallon jug! Six ounces! I certainly had more than enough and even extra to cover any potential accidental spills! How do you even begin to say thank you for such a thing? (I guess by publicly thanking them on the Internet?)

I put on my fancy dress (one that was beautifully equipped for my pumping needs during the wedding), managed to coordinate my husband’s tie, and went out on the town with my husband. Just the two of us. And it felt so great.

Sure, I had to excuse myself every few hours to pump, but I brought my husband with me and we got to have some nice, quiet conversations while I pumped milk that was, happily, blood-free. (I had checked before hand and made sure there would be a room available for me to do this. No potty pumping this weekend!) I even took a bag of Mother’s Milk tea with me to drink with cake. There were cookies. I danced. It was beautiful.

In the end, I was too tired to stay out late enough for bowling.  But now I have some spare milk in the freezer!

Where should I go and what should I do while my baby stays home to drink it? The possibilities are endless. This story definitely has a happy ending.

What about you? Have you ever had a pumping fiasco? Leave us a comment to let us know what happened.