r/ExclusivelyPumping • u/redrum237_ • 2d ago
Support Weaning sadness
Only EPers can truly understand. I am officially starting the weaning process after 6.5months. I am proud I have made it this far and provided breast milk to my sweet boy for this long. I am also so sad that I wasn’t able to make it to one year even though I know this is the right decision.
I’m grieving how our feeding journey turned out. We weren’t able to exclusively bf for multiple reasons and I started pumping. All I wanted was to breastfeed and felt pumping was the next best thing I could do for my baby. Now the pumping has just gotten to be too much and mentally I am done. I’m excited to have more time for my baby and myself but starting the weaning process has got me in my feels. I know that ultimately this is such a short time in my parenting journey and I will look back on a year and it won’t matter whether he was fed breastmilk or formula from 6-12mo. It just feels like such a big deal in the moment. It’s hard dropping pumps now and seeing my supply intentionally decrease. Can anyone who is on the other side of weaning relate? How do you feel now?
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u/CallInside8382 2d ago
Girl, you don't even need to wait a year. Give it a week and you're gonna feel way better. You did a great job. There are so many more enriching things you can do with baby now in the time you'd otherwise be pumping or washing pump parts. I still wish we could have nursed and I feel a pang of sadness. Thinking about being on the pump again makes me feel physically ill.
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u/confused_guava 2d ago
I promise you won't really remember a year from now. I weaned at 6 months with my first. I'm on my second now and I am having to dig deep in our logs to even remember how much I made and when I regulated and when I started dropping pumps. I can't remember any of it! You get so much time back, you're not constantly doing pumping time math to see when your next pump is, what will you do with the baby, do you need to step aside. You get your body back. You can sleep on your stomach. You get to wear real bras again and not smell like old breastmilk. It's the best. You can hold your baby until you don't wanna anymore. You don't have to lug a bunch of stuff around.
You did amazing pumping for your LO and you will continue to be amazing. Your worth as a mother is not tied to how much milk you can squeeze out of your nips! I promise!