To celebrate Pump Momma Pump’s 7th Birthday, I’m sharing the “7 Things I Wish I Knew” at the start of my pumping journey. Here’s #6: Partner support helps exclusive pumping work. I wish I knew just how active a roll my husband would take in supporting my pumping journey!
Important note before I begin: My husband did not get paternity leave. He took a few vacation days while our first baby was in the NICU, but otherwise went to work every day of the work week. Working his day job did not affect his ability to support me when he was home, and I am grateful for a relationship where I felt fully supported during my maternity leave, sharing parenting responsibilities as 50/50 as possible, when possible.
He was one of my biggest cheerleaders
Every pumping mom needs a cheerleader! Someone to listen to their goals and help them achieve them! My husband was totally on board with whatever feeding goal I had in mind before giving birth and attended a prenatal breastfeeding class with me. When I ended up exclusive pumping, that plan changed, but the support did not. We ended up liking the exclusive pumping lifestyle because it helped him take on a more active role in feeding our children.
Not everyone was on board with my choice to exclusively pump. Some people didn’t hide their disappointment that I chose to pump instead of nurse. Others questioned what was in my bottle and judged me, assuming I was formula feeding. My own mom didn’t even “get” it, you know? But Greg did. He was totally on board and even talks to his friends about it! It was really hard at times, but he stuck by my side. He was and is one of my biggest supporters and I am so grateful.
He fed the baby more than I did!
This was especially true in the NICU! Most of the time we spent there, I was pumping while my husband fed and changed our baby. But even after the NICU, when we was home and I was pumping, he was usually the one feeding the babies. It was an incredible bonding experience for him and definitely a help to me!
He was nervous at first, because unlike my years of experience caring for a younger sibling or children I babysat, he had no prior experience with babies. He was also nervous because our first baby was small and connected to wires and tubes in the NICU! The NICU nurses showed him how to feed, burp, and change our son. With a bit of practice, he grew more comfortable. He had a whole routine for feeding and burping down, and quickly became a pro at it!
We split nights
We call this “protected sleep.” My husband is even a total fan of the method and talks about it often. From the graphic below, you can see that as an exclusive pumper, I pumped once in the middle of the night, until my babies slept through the night, staring at 1 month postpartum (I pumped twice in the night for the first month.)
Every time I pumped, I would leave out a bottle of freshly pumped breastmilk on the counter for the next feed (this is OK to do if you feed it within four hours) It really saved time from when we used to use bottle warmers, rookie mistake.
My husband is a night owl so, he was often good to be awake until midnight or so, so taking the first shift was easy for him, and preferable. This way he also got that solid block of sleep right before work. No, he did not get any paternity leave, and he had a desk job, so it was OK if he was a little tired. I mean come on, mom is literally caring for another human being all day and we think it’s OK for her to be the tired one? …Patriarchy. Ugh.
How was my sleep protected?
When I was off-duty, I’d sleep in our bedroom with a loud A/C on. Getting that solid block of sleep did a world of wonders for me in those early months, we were both as rested as the other. It was great for empathy, let me tell you.
If baby needed to eat right at 2 AM, dad would feed the baby while I pumped. If dad already went to bed, I would either pause my pumping session and feed the baby, or feed the baby while I pumped, which became easier with practice.
He took on dish duty
We didn’t figure this one out right away. At first, I thought only I knew how to do this properly, so I did it all. That became tiresome VERY quickly. I taught him the safe way to clean pumping supplies (see advice for cleaning HERE) and soon he was able to help me out by taking on dish duty for pumping and feeding supplies.
After I had my second baby, I developed postpartum anxiety disorder and had a really rough time of it for awhile there. At this time, we reviewed our household jurisdictions and he took over ALL dish washing (did I wash dishes here and there? Of course… but feeding (whether it be pumping milk, packing lunches, or cooking meals) became mostly my duty and washing up became mostly his duty.)
As you can imagine, this helped support my exclusive pumping journey. I also did the fridge hack, which involves storing my pumping accessories in the refrigerator between sessions so he only watched the whole batch every morning and every evening. (I really should write a whole blog post on the “Fridge hack” but for now, you can read about it in the highlights on my Instagram page.)
>>> Note to the reader: I usually create blog posts to offer advice, tips, and tricks to apply to your own pumping journey. I kept this particular blog post personal, because I am sharing what worked for us, in our own family dynamic. Everybody’s family works differently and my experience may look similar or very different than yours. In no way am I instructing you in how your relationship should work or how your household should run. If you do get inspired to try any of the things that worked well for us, I hope they work well for you too!
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