Waiting for signs

I received this text from Max, exclusive provider of most of our toddler's meals:
1. carefully select most expensive organic foods  2. cut into tiny pieces  3. pick up tiny pieces off floor  4. throw away
Baby-led feeding naturally leaves me looking for signs of change in Sam's eating habits.  But, much like signs of spring this year, they're just not showing up.  Sam tries lots of foods but still throws most of it on the floor  and drinks milk by the gallon. 

Signs of increasing appreciation for solid food would encourage me that it's OK to reduce pumping milk.  Absent these, I reduce pumping milk anyway because I'm tired of doing it.  The result is that instead of feeling like we're moving forward, I feel like I'm giving up on the effort.  Reducing to two pumps a day has decreased my supply to less than 8 oz. a day.  We make up the majority with cow milk.

The WHO's "minimum two years of breastfeeding" talks into one ear, while the voices of my many sensible friends and family who think it would be perfectly fine to wean talk into the other.  I'm pretty confused right now.

A flexible machine

It's amazing to think about how flexible our bodies are about energy input.  We can fill up on almost anything and the engine will keep on going for a good long while.  Imagine if you could put any old liquid in your car--gasoline, Coke, tequila, milk--and it would just go!  But we know there is a price to pay for less than perfect nutrition.  So we try to eat well and hope for the best.

But there's one group of humans for whom we DO understand perfect nutrition: babies.  Millions of years of evolution have perfected human milk.  This seems like a unique opportunity.  

There are some big differences in animal milk and human milk.  Human milk has a much smaller percentage of protein and calcium and more iron and fat.  Goat milk is a little closer to human milk on these, but it's closer to cow's milk than human milk.  According to trusted breastfeeding resource kellymom.com: "All the nutrients of human milk are significantly more bioavailable than those of cow's milk because it is species specific (not to mention all the components of mother's milk that are not present in cow's milk). "

So to this opportunity for perfect nutrition, I say game on until life dictates otherwise.