One Year Milestone

Alhamdulillah I have now reached the 1 year milestone of breastfeeding Maisarah. I am very grateful to Allah for making my breastfeeding journey rather smooth-sailing. I had a breezy start in which I only had 1 or 2 incidents of blocked duct. This was easily remedied by taking a pin and princking the blocked duct (seen as a white spot) on my ni*ple. I got this solution from surfing the internet. Luckily the blocked duct did not cause mastitis.

After my confinement and starting work, I was blessed with perfect timing (thanks to Allah) as I had no classes for 6 months since I got back to work during the middle of a semester and this continued to the 3 month long holidays for students. So I had my own sweet time in the office to manage my work and still take time to express milk for Maisarah. Furthermore, I made the right decision to get an electric double breastpump (i.e. Spectra 3). This was really money well spent. So with I was able to pump 4 times a day, and was able to store lots of expressed breast milk (almost 120 four-ounce bottles) for Maisarah. At that time, I was worried the management was going to send me on a 4-day team-building trip.

When I started lecturing again in July, with the help of the Spectra 3 pump, I managed to maintain expresing a total of 16-20 oz per day for Maisarah's daily consumption. However, I had to reduce my pumping schedule from 4 to 3 times a day as I had to prepare lecture notes for my new subject and rush in and out to lectures. Soon fasting month came along in September. I was again afraid I couldn't maintain my daily output so I made sure I ate rice for sahur. During the fasting month, I managed to get 16 oz of milk per day so I had to dig into my frozen stock. By the end of the month, I had used up 20 bottles from the stock pile.

Now that it has come to 1 year of being a fully breastfeeding mommy, I am proud to say I can strill manage to express 16-18 oz per day. I now express twice in the office and my stock pile at home is at 110 four-ounce bottles. InsyaAllah, I will try and continue till I hit the 2-year mark in November 2009. But for now, I am very grateful to Allah for allowing me to last this long. Everything after this is a bonus for Maisarah and I. My target right this moment, is lasting till May 2009.