Flying/ Pumping/ Supply/ Bottles

cmsdouglas

This summer, DH, LO and I will be flying to visit family for 3 weeks.  LO will be nearly 4 months old.  We will fly from NC to TX, drive to and spend one week in OK, drive to NM and spend a week there, and then drive to CO and spend a week there.  We'll fly out of CO back to NC.  I'm wondering if I need to take my pump with me.  There are several things I want to take into account here:

1.  I currently pump 3x per day at work to leave bottles for LO.  I'm a teacher, so I'll be done with school in June. 

2.  On our trip, I'm going to be with LO all the time and do not foresee the need to give any bottles of expressed milk.

3.  BUT, I've heard that if you stop giving a bottle, LO can forget how to take it.  I am definitely going to need her to take a bottle when we get back home - especially when I go back to school in August.  Has anybody else heard this or had experience with it?

4.  Also, if I stop pumping for those three weeks, will it hurt my supply or will my supply be fine since I'll still be nursing LO?  I pump more at school than she eats while I'm away - I'm freezing the extra.  But she also cluster feeds when I get home and does a bit of reverse cycling.  I would probably be really engorged, wouldn't I?

5.  If it does cut down on my supply, would I be able to get it back up by the end of August (we'll get home mid-July)? 

5.  It would be really nice NOT to have to take the pump on the plane since we'll already have so much extra stuff to carry.  And I don't want to have to worry about taking milk through security.  

6.  If I do take it and pump, what do I do with the extra milk?  She won't be able to eat all I'm pumping since I'll also be bf'ing her most of the time.  I can't fly with frozen milk - it would thaw and I can't keep it in the fridge/cooler for 3 weeks either.  And we won't be visiting again for another year, so letting family keep it in the freezer isn't really a great option either.  I'd hate to dump it all out! 

 Ok - so that's really long and I'm probably way over-thinking it.  I posted something similar on 0-3 a while back, but didn't get very many responses.  I know it's still a long ways out, but I'm already worrying about it!