Could it have been my milk all along?

My original breastfeeding goal, from before I even had Morgan, was 6 months. Then, after I had her and we hit the 6-week mark, I ran into issues with oversupply and overactive letdown, so I started to pump exclusively. For anyone who doesn't know, that is a crazy amount of work. Not only are you "breastfeeding", you're bottle feeding, too. You have to pump for a total of 2 hours a day, plus milk handling time, plus feeding time and bottle/equipment cleaning time. Where does sleep time fit in there? It doesn't, really. To get a good output you have to pump once between the hours of 1 a.m. and 5 a.m., when your prolactin levels are highest. This really only applies for the first 12 weeks postpartum, but I found a high output even after 12 weeks, so I continued to pump around 2 a.m. each night. I started out pumping 8 times a day, then worked down to 7 times a day, then 6 and then 5 times. I pumped the days away, hoping that I was giving Morgan an immunological boost and I believe I did so, but in the end I had to stop breast feeding, as something in my milk was irritating her skin. We weren't sure at first, so we started giving her soy formula and I kept pumping to keep my supply up, just in case. Well, after a few days on full-time soy formula, her face magically cleared up, as did most of the patches on her body. It was an amazing transformation. Once we saw the drastic improvement, we decided we didn't want to risk adding any breast milk back to her diet, so I started the process to wean from the pump. Ouch! That was pretty painful. I pumped for like 2-3 minutes when I was very engorged - just enough to relieve the pressure. I wore cabbage leaves in my bra (yes, it works), drank sage tea, etc. I soaked through a whole bunch of bra pads, but my milk is pretty much gone after about 2 weeks. That's not bad, considering that I thought it would take 6 weeks to complete the process. I was a little aggressive in my efforts, only pumping when I absolutely had to, so that sped things up.

Morgan was baptised on Easter Sunday and it was nice. The poor thing had a little flare up of her eczema, though, but it wasn't too bad. I forgot to wash her baptismal gown (bad mommy!) and that might have irritated her skin. She was very well-behaved and the only time she cried was when they went to pour the water on her head. It wasn't because of the water, but because she bucked in my husband's arms and the deacon bopped her on the head with the water pitcher. Poor baby! She let out quite a cry and everyone thought it was because of the water. Other than that, she was a happy, albeit wiggly, baby. Here are a couple of pictures from the day:

The cradle cap on her head is also almost 100% healed, too. It's really amazing. I thought it would never go away. You can actually see her hair, now, not that she has much.

She's just a super happy baby in the day time. She smiles such a precious smile and I almost can't stand it. It's just in the evenings, that she gets a little fussy. I think at night, there isn't anything to distract her from what ails her and she's alone with her gas pains and itchy skin.

Her tummy is still adjusting to the switch to soy, and her stools are getting a little softer day by day. My poor baby's face turns tomato-red when she strains sometimes.

It has been about 11 days since I blogged, so I'm trying to think of what I'm forgetting. I took her to lunch where I used to work. She was all smiles.

Today she has her follow-up appointment with the dermatologist. I think he's going to be amazed at her progress. I know I am!

I think she's going through a growth spurt, even though one isn't due for another month. She has been very hungry last night and this morning. She's mastering so many of her toys and it's amazing to see all the faces she makes and she's developing her own little personality. She turned 5 months old yesterday!

Well, I better go get a few things done around the house. She's content in her jumperoo. :)