Quitting - what to do with the last of the milk?
My baby was born premature. Because of that and some surprise medical issues, she is tube fed and struggles to eat from a bottle, let alone nurse. As a result, I started pumping in the NICU and have done so for over 4 months. I would have stopped sooner or never done it at all if she'd been typical, but I don't know, I guess it just felt like something I could do for her that nobody else could, so I've continued to the detriment of my mental and physical health. I've never had enough supply to exclusively feed her (fortified) breastmilk despite trying every trick in the book, so at this point, for my sanity, I've started to wean off pumping entirely. Sort of a gradual decrease -- I'm down to 2-3 ppd which means about 2 feeds are milk.
She's been on a bottle strike for a bit, but after we discovered she needed a faster flow nipple, she started crushing bottles. We're talking going from 20% of the bottle after 40 minutes of fighting to finishing 4 in a row, each in 20 minutes or less. It's huge.
But... those were all formula bottles. We tried milk this morning and she immediately started rejecting the bottle again. Our guess is it's the flow because she's never shown a preference before, and she's never had a problem with refrigerated or frozen milk. Switching back to the old size didn't help. So, I'm done. I'm crying about it but I've cried every day about this baby. It's more important to me to get her off the NG tube than to give her breastmilk.
That said I still have some unfortified milk. And I'm engorged, so I need to pump at least once to relieve some pain, which means I'll have probably another 2oz. I don't want to throw it out, but I'm not sure what to do with it. I know it's good frozen for a few months but I'm not sure how to get it into her besides trying to sneak a little in here and there. Any suggestions?