People Butter

Lately I've been noticing that when we go for a walk, the milk that I'm carrying gets all sort of clumpy. It's not gone over -- I can tell that by smelling. But it's just sort of...gritty. It doesn't seem to happen in the car, just when we go for a long walk. The past couple of days have been worse than usual, even, and if you're pumping, you know how much it hurts to throw out even a drop, much less a couple ounces (Okay, I'll be honest -- it didn't smell at all bad, so I fed it to her and she didn't seem to mind. But I felt bad doing it.). So during our walk this morning I ruminated on the mysterious clumpy milk, determined to find the cause.

I do make particularly creamy milk -- after it separates in the fridge, nearly 3 ounces in a 4 ounce bottle are cream. So I thought that might have something to do with it. Then I thought maybe it had something to do with bouncing. The walk in to town isn't over the most level of ground. But I still couldn't figure out what was happening to the milk. I mean, even fresh milk was doing this -- halfway to town it looks like I spilled cottage cheese in the bottle. So I'm thinking Is that what it is? Am I making people cheese? Can I sell this? Is it Vegan? Now, when I was a little girl, I was a huge fan of the Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder (well, up until the part when she starts courting. What the hell kind of name is "Manly" anyway?). And I remember that she described the churning of butter. And it suddenly occurs to me that with the assistance of Dr. Brown, I'm making not people cheese, but People Butter!

Tip o' the day: It doesn't have to suck so much. "It" in this case being your pump. I learned after several weeks of extremely tender nipples that turning your pump up all the way is not only not necessary, it can actually cause damage to your nipples! I finally found this out from the manual that came with my Medela PIS -- my hospital LC had encouraged me to "work up to full speed" on the hospital model and no one told me anything different about the rental pump. I now happily pump at about half suction.