B.A.B.E. Week 43: Balancing breastfeeding… wardrobe choices (part 1)

Elle's fine motor skills and comprehension are at the forefront of her development.  She understands words like "bye" or "baby" (referring to the stuffed animals that she loves to cuddle).  She also has gotten really good at putting the toy rings in the designated spot or putting her bottle lid on her bottle of pumped milk. 

Pumped milk brings up this week's topic: breastfeeding.  A caveat -- Am not blogging about this to promote breastfeeding – we hear about that quite enough – thank you -- and am not blogging about because I think that breastfeeding is the best thing since sliced bread.   Indeed, I have struggled with breastfeeding, and consequently thought about it a lot and that is why I am blogging about breastfeeding in the hopes that my lessons learned can help other folks on their unique breastfeeding journey.

On Friday, Elle will turn 10 months old and I feel that I am still learning tips about breastfeeding.   So I thought that I would use the next few blog posts to concentrate on my top lessons learned.  My lessons learned run the gamut from overproduction (mastitis 3 times in the first month) to underproduction (various times that I would like to have pumped more milk or felt like I wasn’t producing enough milk).   But today because  I have limited time, I will start with the easiest lessons learned -- wardrobe choices.  Here are my top four lessons learned.

#4  Not wearing dresses

Don’t expect to wear dresses while you are lactating unless they have a plunging necklines or some other way to access the milk supply.   Dresses are often super inconvenient for both breast pumping and nursing.

#3  Handsfree bra

I have noticed that I pump much more milk when I am wearing a breastfeeding hands free bra rather than attempting to hold the pumps myself.  Also, the handsfree bra is great for pursuing your normal life (e.g., typing on your laptop).  In fact, I heard of one facial surgeon who pumped using a handsfree bra as she commuted in and out of work.  (She also talked on her blue tooth headset and ate a sandwich as well… a little out of control doing those 4 things at once but you get the idea.).

#2 Using your normal bra

Even though I just extolled the virtues of the handsfree bra, it can be a pain to take on and take off.  So when you are pumping at work, you can often jimmy-rig your pump system into a normal bra.   This is a huge time saver.  One caveat is that I don’t seem to pump as much when jimmy-rigging the system.  Can’t seem to fully relax into the pumping.

#1 Wearing 2 shirts

My best tip on wardrobe choices is to wear two shirts – one to cover your torso and another shirt to cover the top of your chest.  Thus, when you lift up your top shirt to allow your child access to nurse, there is another shirt that covers your stomach.  I use this method often and don’t actually use a nursing cover because I feel that the two shirts are sufficient.  With two shirts, you don’t see any of my flesh and it allows my daughter to look around while I am feeding her.  As one of the shirts, I like to use a nursing tanktop.  That way, I don’t have to wear a nursing bra and I find them very comfortable.