7 months and counting.

Well almost 7 months,  that my sweet baby Rza has been gracing us with her presence. Almost 7 months that I have been breastfeeding her as well. Im super proud of myself with this because I didnt last more than 3 months with her older brother. When I decided to go down this path, I made my goal a year even though I had no idea what I was going to do when it came to feeding/pumping at work or where to start. I also had no idea that I would go through a period of trying to maintain my supply as well. I reached out to various groups on Facebook to see what others have done to help maintain their supply and had been told things like fenugreek, Gatorade, oatmeal, beer, you name it. I decided that I was going to go the fenugreek route even though I was running the risk of smelling like maple syrup on a regular basis. I will admit, during the week, I did great taking my pills around the same time each day, but on the weekends, you were lucky if I even opened up the medicine cabinet at all. I did notice that I was able to maintain an average of  11oz Monday through Friday since I nursed on demand on the weekends, but I cant help but to wonder if I took the pills on the weekend as well if the results would have been better.  It wasn't until we came back from a music festival in Ohio that I noticed a big drop in production, Im talking a total of 5oz pumped one day and 7oz the next. At that rate, Ill never be able to keep up with sweet baby and her needs since shes eating about 14 oz a day. Oy Vey! Since I am out of the fenugreek and Ive done a little bit more research, Ive decided to start taking Milk Thistle this time around and go hard on the mothers milk tea as well.  I will be more diligent on taking my pills on the weekend, although the tea may suffer if we are in motion and its hot outside. I was also fortunate enough to order a batch of emergency lactation brownies from milky-mama.com and am anxiously awaiting those to come. Stress is a factor that can help deplete milk, and I thought I was doing a good job managing it, so Im not really sure as to why Im seeing such a decrease, but here I am. Its all good though, I set a goal for a year and as of tomorrow (the 5th) I will have successfully breastfed for 7 months, I only have 5 more to go, and as quick as August rolled up on us, Im sure January will do the same.  Ill update this post with results of the milk thistle and the emergency brownies, until then...

Peace