Feeling Positive

This is what nursing looks like with the Lact-aid. 

This morning when I woke up, my boob was leaking! For most people, this wouldn't be cause for celebration, but it hasn't happened to me for a while. She nursed this morning, then I pumped 1.5 oz (0.5 from the side she'd nursed on and 1 oz from the other side). That's more than usual. I'm hoping it means that milk production is on an upswing. We've done some really quality nursing with the Lact-aid in the past couple of days. Sterling suckles really well for much longer than she used to because she actually gets milk out. It's a little bit fiddly to use; I keep having to adjust it because when she moves her mouth she sometimes moves the tube to a place where she can't suck milk through it anymore. She's much more effective at milk removal from the breast, though. I'm not sure if it's because she's suckling longer or if she's actually more efficient now that her tongue and lip have been snipped, but if I pump shortly after she's nursed I don't usually get much out. I used to pretty consistently pump about 0.5 oz after she'd finished.

Mike and Sterling reading together this morning.
Not related to nursing, but much cuter than
what I'm talking about in this paragraph.

I'm choosing to not look at the other possibility - that nothing has changed. It had been quite a few hours since she'd last nursed from the boob that was leaking this morning, so it's possible that it had longer to fill up than it normally does. For a couple of days after the first appointment with the LC, the amount of supplement she was taking went down by about 3 oz. That doesn't sound like much, but really it's one whole extra feeding that I was producing (or that she just wasn't eating). The last two days, it's been back up. I think that might be because she enjoys nursing more than she enjoys the bottle, so she'll just drink more that way. And it's possible that I'm not pumping anything after she nurses because production has actually gone down.. but I'm choosing to not focus on any of the things in this paragraph.

Breast Pump

I'd been waffling between getting a new breast pump and getting a used one.

The FDA recommends that they only be used by one person. I'd been leaning that direction, then I talked to people who've actually used them and I looked at a video of how it works. No fluids actually go into the pump part and all the external parts are replaceable. There's no possible way that milk could get sucked into the pump and then get spat back out into the external parts. New Medela breast pumps are $300 roughly.

I changed my mind. I decided to get one on Craigslist. I found one that was being advertised that the lady said had only been used a couple of times. She was selling hers for $160. It came with a bunch of extra pieces, too. I went through it and cleaned everything today. All the external pieces can go through the dishwasher, but we're waiting till closer to when we'll need it.