My postpartum daily schedule is quite mundane. Routine is the name of the game, with the only variation being weekdays to weekends and back. It certainly helps that my mother-in-law has been staying with us, especially as I have been experiencing the most brutal lower back pain since three weeks prior to delivering my youngest. (I am very much looking forward to my doctor’s appointment this week.) As such, I am terrified of walking my newborn around the house and won’t even go near the stairs while carrying him.
Feeding a newborn is a highly personal choice and it dictates my daily schedule. I attempted to nurse my firstborn, as we struggled to get him to gain weight in the days after his birth while still in the hospital, I came to the conclusion that fed is best. We rotated formula, pumped breastmilk, and breast feeding. Eventually we dropped the breastfeeding and weeks later, the pumped breastmilk. These days, I am nursing the littlest one at least once a day and pumping several times a day. I call these “wellness shots” or “power shots” and call for a milk pickup from the second floor where my pumping station is.
I try to nurse the littlest one any time I am in the home solo or when we are both on the second floor. Otherwise, I pump every three hours for about twenty to thirty minutes a session. I am using the Medella Pump in Style now, but had better luck in the past with the Medella Symphony. We rented the latter, as it is a hospital grade pump. On that note, I have to recommend this bra for hands-free pumping. Even if you are tethered to a pump and an electrical outlet, as both Medella pumping models require, multitasking is possible albeit limited.
Luckily we have been blowing through laundry, and it all needs to be folded.
