Good bye..so long...farewell!!

When the babies turned one we said good bye to a lot of things.

Bottles!! They were being fed about 7 ounces at 7, 11, 3 and 7. At this point they were all holding their bottles themselves thanks to Marks work on the weekend. I felt bad and always tried to hold at least one of them since that was one of the few times of the day they were snuggled. We took away their middle of the day bottles and started giving them sippy cups with milk. Since I was still pumping I mixed in my milk when it was available. I thought it would be harder to get rid of the morning and night bottles but I think it was more of a crutch for me. I liked knowing that they were getting that full bottle of milk so they would get the required amounts and many nights at 6 they were crabby and the bottle helped. Next, I eliminated the morning bottle. Mark on the other hand still liked to give it to them on the weekends (he knew they liked it and he loves to be the hero). This was all fine and dandy until they starting turning the bottles over and were basically dumping them everywhere. I came home and all of the bottles that were left in the cabinet were on the counter and were going to be 'thrown away'. So that was the end of that and they were done with bottles.

So long formula......hello milk. I this would be a great easy step and it was, but a gallon of milk a day...gees. It is a good thing that we have an extra 'beer/milk' refrigerator. I could not imagine if we did not have an extra fridge, we would have to do to the store every day. One day when I was at costco I looked at the cart in front of me and there were about 10 canisters of formula so I asked her how many kids she had and of course she too had triplets. I knew her name from the multiples group and we she was saying how nice it will be not to have to buy formula and then she looked at my cart and laughed because I had 6 gallons of milk. I told her that was her future cart. Milk is definitely much cheaper than formula, but we did get a break since we used about 50% less formula since I was supplementing with breast milk. It was still a small fortune and someday I will calculate it all out,...maybe when they are all out of diapers.

I had been trying to wean off of pumping and it took me about a month of being in sheer and unbelievable pain most days. This pain is like no other. There is nothing good that comes from it and you never know when it is going to go away. I was making approximately 45ounces of milk a day so my body definitely had some adjusting to do. I was so happy to be able to return that pump to the hospital and 'get off the machine'. I have to admit it wasn't terrible and it forced me to sit down and either read or watch a show most of them time. I am really proud of myself too for actually doing it for a full year. I will admit that I do miss my friends. I now know what it would be like to have a breast implant and go up 3 cup sizes. Maybe someday, but not that large and I'm sure they would be filled with something other than milk. I also miss the 500 plus calories that I was burning sitting still. I can definitely tell that workout is gone. I'm trying to get back into a routine of actually working out since the babies are getting so heavy to pull around the neighborhood. It is nice to get out by myself too.

Big strides were taken and of course the little troops did well.