Indecision

Now that I got this question addressed with some advice from you all, I'd love some input on a larger issue. Yes, it's hardly tough to skip a feeding for a single night out on the town away from baby, but what about a whole weekend away from baby?

My group of New Zealand girlfriends is having another reunion in October in the awesome city of San Francisco. I would love to go. I want to see these girls so badly. We always have such a great time and I have awesome memories of our reunions (not to mention the trip to NZ). I would love to really enjoy SanFran since the only other time I've been there was on a work trip. But how would this ever work? I can't tell if I'm just trying to talk myself out of it or if the roadblocks really are insurmountable.

First, the inconvenience of pumping. It's easy to say that I'd just pump every three hours and probably dump that liquid gold down the drain rather than worry about safe storage and transport. But let's really think about it. Am I really going to ask these girls to put up with me needing to go back to the hotel every three hours? They're young, active, fun-loving girls who aren't currently encumbered with things such as pumping schedules. My need to pump would put a pretty big cramp in the plan to spend a whole day at a music festival. The thing is, I'm not so much worried about my discomfort. I'd go sit in the bathroom of some place (though I draw the line at Port-o-Johns) and pump if I had to. I'm more worried about those awesome girls having to put up with me.

The logistics of pumping. Let's say I'm the definition of a mom-on-the-go and I'm using my supercool traveling pump. Will the batteries even work well enough to get the job done? Will my milk supply drop because the pump isn't as good as extracting the milk as June is?

And you know what time I've been going to bed these days? About 9:30-10:00 pm so I can get up at 5:00 am, sometimes with a short wake-up or two in between to put the pacifier in June's mouth. How could I keep up with these girls?

And how could I ask Michael to watch June by himself for 2.5 days? He loves that baby girl. He is so sweet with her and would be just fine. But I know how important it is to have a break, and I know it'd be a lot of work. We have plenty of milk for bottles stashed away in the freezer but he'd have to do all the work of defrosting, making and cleaning the bottles all while having our more-and-more active Junebug to take care of.

And lastly - and probably most difficult for me to think about - how could I stand to be away from this baby girl for that long? For five months I have been by her side. The longest I've been away from her has been 10 hours. I don't know how well I'd do without her giggles and grins and coos for that long.

What are your thoughts? I'd love to hear any opinions.