One year, one month and two weeks.

That's how long I expressed for.

From the moment I found out that Elizabeth had a cleft lip and probably wouldn't be able to breastfeed, I vowed to provide her with expressed breast milk for at least one year. I'm very proud to have achieved my goal.

How easy it would have been for me to buy a tin of formula every week instead...but I simply could not do that. My baby deserves the best, not an inferior imitation.

The first six months were the hardest. I literally was a slave to my breast pump- expressing every 3 hours meant that I had to plan all my daily activities around pumping sessions. I had an abundance of milk and our freezer was struggling to cope. When Elizabeth was a few months old I found a mum and baby in need of donor milk and was only too happy to help out.




As the months wore on, Elizabeth's feeding requirements changed, as they do. She started sleeping through the night after her surgery at 4 and a half months, so the overnight pumping stopped. We introduced her to finger foods around 6 months and she was eating a fair bit by around 8 months, so she was taking less milk at each feed. Before I knew it, I was only expressing 3 times a day.

About a month before her birthday, I started to think about weaning. Although she still loved her booby milk, I wanted my life back. So I dropped down to two sessions a day. After two or three weeks, my supply started dropping right off and I went to one session a day. Gradually I went from a 200ml yield at each session to 100ml. Then I started noticing that my breasts weren't feeling full at the end of each day, so I skipped a day. Then another. Elizabeth refuses to have breast milk now, pushing the bottle away if we try to give it to her.
Now it's been 3 days since my last pumping session and where I once had firm, full breasts I now have two pathetically small, loose, soft dumplings. But I know that when I look at them, I'll be proud of the fact that they fed two children for thirteen months each.