Saturday, Jason and I went to Jen and Ben's wedding and left Sierra with her grandparents.  It was our first time being away from our little girl for an extended period of time.  Grandparents took Sierra to a craft fair and said she did pretty well with everything, including eating from a bottle.  For my part, I did pretty well too. 

I breastfeed Sierra and a breastfeeding mama away from her baby has to do something about the large amount of milk that accumulates in the boobies.  Namely, I had to pump between the wedding and reception (this was about as long as I could put it off) or bad things would happen.  Thankfully, I have a very  nice and efficient breastpump and I was just going to hunker down in the back of the car and spend a quick 10 minutes or so relieving the pressure.  Then, kindly, and even better plan came up.  My friend Taran, who lives not too far from where we were, offered her apartment for my pumping needs.  I figured that would more comfortable than whiping out my chi-chis (thank you, Kelley, for the terminology) in the back of the car. 

First, though, we had to get to Taran's house.  Seems simple, right?  We just follow Taran and she leads us there.  Wrong!  Taran got lost going to her own house!  Ha!  Okay, to her credit, she didn't know the area where the wedding was very well and she was close to finding the way.  Anyway, after pulling over in a bank parking lot, Jason and I entered Taran's address in his parents' GPS thingy and we were there in no time (thank goodness we had the GPS). 

I settle myself in Taran's living room and pull out my breastpump and then realize, Shit!  I left some pieces in Virginia!  I had the pump itself, but I had stuck all the parts in the dishwasher before we left so they would be ready to go.  Unfortunately, I failed to remove them from the dishwasher and put them in my bag.  No problem, though, because Taran lives just two blocks from Target!  This would have been great if only Target had all the pieces I needed in stock.  They were out of the box that is all the parts together, and they had two of the three parts for sale separately.  I decided to just try and see if the pump would work without all three parts.  It looked like it might because I had the part that connects to the breast and the part that directs the milk into the container.  I was missing the valve, but I thought the milk might just dribble on through. 

Back at Taran's, I was setting up the pump and had unclasped the front of my nursing bra under my shirt.  Then I looked down to find a giant wet spot where I had leaked all over myself.  Yes, I really needed to pump!  I stopped, rinsed out my shirt and Taran threw it in the drier for me.  Finally, I connected everything up and turned on the pump ... nothing.  Turns out, the valves are a really important part because without them, it doesn't work. 

Well, crap.  "There's only one thing I can do now," I said.  " ... I'm going to have to hand express."

Then my darling husband chimes in with, "Waitwaitwait, let me get this straight.  You're going to milk yourself like a cow?!"  Well, yes.  Honey.  And thank you for making that analogy.  I had read the section about hand expressing in my breastfeeding book, but I never thought I would have the occassion to use that skill.  I do, afterall, have a very nice expensive breastpump.  Thank god I did read it though!

Taran set me up with a plastic cup and a hand towel and away I went.  Nine ounces of milk later (it had been six hours since Sierra last ate at this point), I put on my freshly dried shirt and was ready to go. 

"Holy cow!  I can't believe all that came out of you!" said Taran. 

"Exactly," said Jason.