Got Milk

When I reflect back on my whole journey of Motherhood...where I am now and where I was three years ago, I'm overwhelmed with feelings. Feelings of accomplishment, feelings of happiness and most importantly, feelings of gratitude. I'm truly blessed to be sitting here with a happy, healthy, almost 7 month old little girl.

We didn't have it easy but we also had some great things happen.
We struggled with infertility for years and went through alot of disappointing cycles, failed inseminations and no answers. When we took a big chance with IVF, we got lucky and were able to conceive after our first cycle. That's when we thought things would be in our favor. However, my pregnancy wasn't easy either. Shortly after my 6th month, I was hospitalized and diagnosed with atrial fibrillation and struggled with afib episodes weekly the rest of my pregnancy. It was not fun and I was constantly worried about my heart and the growing baby inside of me. But when I went into labor and delivered Eva, everything went smoothly and I couldn't have asked for a better birthing experience.

We've been fortunate that Miss Eva has been a great baby. Some mothers conceive naturally and easily,  and some mothers have an uneventful pregnancy. What I have is milk. And lots of it. 

Breastfeeding didn't go easy for me and Eva in the beginning and after struggling for two weeks with many tears, I decided to exclusively pump. That was a very hard decision at the time, but in the end, Eva was still getting my breastmilk and that was the most important thing to us. I think since I started pumping so soon, when my milk came in...it came in. I had alot of it. I was pumping two to three times more than Eva was taking at the time, so I started freezing all the extra. When Eva was two months old, we had to buy a chest freezer to store the extra frozen milk because our freezer was full! I admit, I became a little obsessed with my "stash". I pumped every four hours, almost religiously, even up once or twice a night pumping. I would even. feel a little panicky when I didn't freeze as much as the day before.
Fast forward to when Eva is 6 months old and I have a freezer in our garage with 700 ounces of frozen breastmilk. I came across a page on Facebook that connected women needing donated breastmilk and woman who had some to give.  I came across a woman named Annie, who was a breast cancer survivor and had a double mastectomy. She never thought she'd be able to have kids again and when she found out she was pregnant, she was heartbroken that she'd be unable to breastfeed  Her story touched me as my mother and mother-in-law are both breast cancer survivors and I had a freezer full of breastmilk just sitting there. This was an easy decision.

Today Eva and I met Annie!

I donated 300 ounces of "liquid gold" to Annie..it was an armful!!

We were able to sit and sip on lemonades and chat about Motherhood, the struggles we had to get here and how grateful we both are for where we are today. I saw the tears of gratitude in Annie's eyes as she thanked me for my donated milk and really, I was grateful for her and her strength and letting me do something to help her. I have never felt more selfless and content with a decision. I look forward to keeping up with her "Baby Lucky", who is due mid-April.

I encourage anyone who has been as lucky as me with a large milk supply, to donate. There are many resources out there including Eats on Feets (www.eatsonfeets.org) and Human Milk 4 Human Babies (http://hm4hb.net/index.html)

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