CD1 and the amazing disappearing milk

My period started yesterday. With the DJ pregnancy, the cyst prior to that, and the miscarriage before that, I haven't had a real period since, I think, November 2009. Damn. Relatedly, I think, my milk supply has tanked. I see a lot of possible contributors, but no definitive cause.

At DJ's four-month appointment, we were still nursing every 2 hours. The doctor said he should be able to go four hours between feedings. We found he could happily go three hours, but then there was more nursing at night. Then the whole not-pooping-for-almost-two-weeks-thing hit. For comfort's sake, we started nursing more frequently and offering DJ a binky when he was cranky, which was pretty much all the time. He's now a total addict. That's also when he started solids -- first just prune puree (#notpooping), then ,when things resolved, 2T oats and 2T of a fruit or vegetable twice a day.

Over the course of this, my milk supply dwindled. Pumping never yielded much; 3 oz from one breast was the most I'd ever gotten. But in the last three weeks, I've only gotten 1.5 oz total from both sides, and sometimes not even that.

I went back to nursing every two hours to promote more production and, hopefully, avoided regular formula, but it was obvious that DJ wasn't getting enough to eat. So now I nurse first (if I'm awake and around) and then we offer formula. Since we got more generous with formula, he's stopped nursing at night. He still wakes up a bunch of times, but now they're binky-replacement missions. Great.

The interwebs has not been helpful. Breastfeeding support websites say nothing about this. The BabyCenter forum for February babies has a whole bunch of posts from breastfeeding moms noticing a serious production slow-down around the same time. Unfortunately, every thread like that immediately gets 30 posts from others saying "We're still going strong, and I pump a few extra gallons every day and use it to water my houseplants" or whatever. Yeah, well, shove it up your generous earth-mother asses!

I'm sure lacto-fundamentalists would say we never should have offered supplemental formula or the pacifier. That I should have pumped more strategically and consistently. That I should take fenugreek and blessed thistle. That it has absolutely nothing to do with my breasts being small and DJ being big. That I can still relactate. That apparently I'm just insufficiently committed to maximizing my child's nutritive and emotional well being (though I should be proud of myself for trying!).

I don't know for sure what happened. It seemed like I was barely keeping up with his needs anyway, and the introduction of solids and the occasional formula bottle finally tipped the balance toward weaning. And now we're choosing to go with it.

I'm mostly OK with it. We can still nurse for the oxytocin and antibodies. I can miss feedings more easily and ditch pumping all together. In the inelegant parlance of dairy farming, I was planning to "dry off" and try to "breed back" before the end of DJ's first year anyway. And I really don't have a problem with formula. When I hear about people who formula-feed from the beginning, I don't get even one whiff of "oh, gee" about it. Maybe my sadness has more to do with my period arriving than the facts of the case.