Who knew there would be math involved?

Apparently my pumping has become a really good lesson in why you pay attention in math class. Especially for that dreaded “train a leaves the station at this speed….train b leaves another station at this speed, where will they meet?” question.

Maybe you can help.

In 50 days, my baby turns one. As I've said before, more power to those who continue past one year, but my love affair with my pump ran out months ago and I'm counting the days. My supply is rather low these days so I need to continue my regular pumping schedule to maintain it. Four times a day: on the way to work, 10 a.m., 1 p.m. and 4 p.m., then I nurse at about 7:30 p.m. and maybe once at night.

My baby eats five times a day on average. She gets two bags of milk at day care and nurses prior to leaving in the morning, once before bed and then maybe once at night. When I'm with her, we excusively nurse.

I have 175 bags of milk at home. Let’s assume day care has enough milk for this week and won’t tap into my supply at all. I pump about two bags each day. On the weekends, I generally pump an additional bag but use none.

Between now and her birthday she needs 250 bags of milk (could be 200 but let’s go with 250). As I mentioned, I have 175. I need 75 more bags of milk today to make it to her first birthday. But since every day I continue to nurse, I produce two bags PLUS nurse, I actually go down by three bags every day. In addition, starting in two weeks, I'll move to summer hours, which is a four-day week schedule. So that's an additional day of no day care and not taking into my resources.

I'm calculating somewhere around 20 days. Anyone with more math skills than me care to chime in?