I miss pumping!

Little one is now almost 13 months old. Soon she will move to the toddler room at daycare where they will not deal with baby bottles. So a couple of weeks ago we dropped one of the bottles of breast milk at daycare and replaced it with a sippy cup of whole milk. She has been doing great with this, and since we have a reasonably large stash of frozen breast milk at home after my trip in January I have stopped pumping at work. Once the frozen milk runs out little one will get only whole milk at daycare ready for her move into the "big kids" room. I plan to continue to breast feed her while we're together for as long as is mutually desirable (as per the AAP recommendation), and I can't see either of us wanting to loose the evening snuggle time any time soon.

I always thought I would be delighted to stop pumping at work. Well here's the unexpected thing - after all my earlier whining about the time pumping takes out of my day, now that I have stopped I miss the breaks. Twice a day I had an excuse to go to our fancy new lactation room and read parenting magazines or listen to music. OK - I could take this break without actually pumping, but I never do. There always seems to be something more pressing (even if it's just reading the news online).

I guess I'm also a little sad about the end of this era in little one's life. I keep having to remind myself that she still gets a lot of breast milk in the evening, at night and in the morning. I feel funny about using up the frozen milk I worked so hard to build up and which I have been so protective of. I worry that an unexpected trip will come up and little one will need that milk, but of course she would be just fine on only whole milk and many babies are totally weaned at this age.