15 hours, 15 months, 100 gallons

On my birthday post, I said I "might go for just a bit longer."  Well I guess I've done that.  Dropping to only two pumps per day made it incredibly easy to just keep going.  About a month ago it occurred to me that weaning at 15 months would be cool since Naomi lived for 15 hours.  Then a little over a week ago I was waffling, so I thought I would sit down and calculate my ounces again, since I had not done that since the birthday post.  I was blown away to see that I was at 99 gallons!  I had really thought I was too far off and output was too low to reach it.  Not only that, but crunching numbers showed me that if everything was maintained I would hit 100 gallons at exactly 15 months.  The beauty of these numbers all aligning makes all the measuring worth it. ;)  (Although seriously, if I am ever exclusively pumping again for any reason, I won't let myself even start tracking it this closely!  Measuring to the milliliter is nuts.)

Because I didn't wind down over this last week, I'm not actually done today.  I am only getting 12oz a day (less than a third of what I was getting a year ago), but I don't think it's healthy to go cold turkey, so there will definitely be some more gentle weaning time.  It is really hard to mentally accept the idea of not pumping anymore though.  All that stuff they say about creating habits is true.  The groove of sitting down to pump, pouring and freezing milk, washing parts is entrenched into my day.  It still takes great mental effort to even grasp breaking this routine.  It's my autopilot that my day is built around.

I hit the 100 gallons with my morning pump, but forgot to take a picture.  Between that and knowing I won't be home tomorrow morning, I decided to do "one more" full hour-long pump tonight, shown below.  So I'm not done like I thought I would be, but I'm closer, right?  That's what I keep telling myself. ;)

(Six ounces.  In my pre-EPing days, this would have looked like a lot to me!)