I forgot to add my flair, it’s just a rant? I guess

I was an oversupplier, I worked really hard to become so because with my first I wasn’t able to produce a lot, I was just barely enough for him and I went dry at around 3 months. I knew I wanted to have a frozen stock of breastmilk in case I went dry again.

Well my newborn is a little over three months now and I ended up taking the same path I did with my first but I did so willingly. The toll it was taking on me and the obsession I developed with the numbers was becoming unhealthy, my already terrible mental health was starting to deteriorate fast, and after several discussions with my fiance we decided that it was best for me to stop pumping and switch to formula once we were getting low on the frozen milk. And so after pumping over 3,000 oz and saving almost 4,000 dollars in the process I stopped.

It was hard, it wasn’t what I pictured for my breastfeeding journey at all. My baby was born a month early via emergency c section, spent a little over a month in the NICU and developed a bottle preference which was the first hiccup in my journey, then I was planning to pump for a full year and ended up having to call it quits many months before I wanted to. I’ve cried about it, I’ve thought about putting in even more work to try and start re lactating again but in the end I knew this was the best thing for not myself but for my whole family.

I am now down to my last bags but I’m already giving him full formula bottles, and find myself tearing up at the idea of using my last 4 oz bags. After several days of mixed bottles I felt comfortable enough to start using full formula bottles today and he’s doing wonderful with it. And know this it makes it even harder to use those last few bags.

I don’t want to use them I want to keep them, they hold so much of everything we’ve been through in just 3 months. I plan on using one bag to eventually get some breastmilk jewelry made of it, but I just can’t bring myself to use the others. And god bless my fiance, he supports me in every decision I make with them. I told him I don’t want to use them because it makes me want to sob like someone who just lost their family pet, I told him though he can use them as long as he leaves one bag for me. He said he won’t touch them and that he doesn’t see why we’d have to use them since we are already full formula, that they aren’t taking up any space in the freezer. I just feel so sad about it all. I know fed is best I just wish things had gone differently and I haven’t really fully dealt with the emotional attachment I have around my breastmilk.