Good Articles

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/science/03milk.html?_r=1&ref=health

http://thestar.com.my/health/story.asp?file=/2010/8/1/health/6702591&sec=health

Nadia’s growing up milestones

I think I should jot down Nadia’s 1^st year milestones before I forget them. It’s fun to see baby growing up, seems like every month, she will have new behaviour. Besides crying and wanting to feed, here are the details of other things that she can do as far as I can recall:

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The Birth of Nadia

As of today, Nadia is 13 months and 4 days old. It’s not hard to recall back her birth details. I guess all mothers don’t forget how their babies were born. My estimated due date (EDD) for Nadia was 12-Sept-08, she was born 5 days earlier on the 7^th.

At week 39, my belly is getting heavier and I felt so uncomfortable already, walking, sitting and sleeping became so hard. In my mind I did wish that I can give birth that week, as my OB would be away on holiday during my EDD. During my week 39 checkup (on 6^th Sept 08 to be exact), there was signs of labour already, and OB let me go for the contraction monitor scan (I don’t know the medical term for this) to look at the contraction rate. OB asked me to get ready, it could happen within a few days though. I was happy there were signs and hoped that I could give birth on that day.

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My breastfeeding experience – Part 3

When telling people I still breastfeed, I think these things must have crossed their mind:

• I have a lot of milk – Nope, I struggled to keep up with my baby’s demand. I feel that my milk supply is just nice for baby’s demand. If I want to keep stock, I must pump more often. My ebm stock is not much, only can cover 2-3 days feed now.
• I have many people that support me – Not initially, as mentioned before, I have no relatives or friends at that time to give me advice because they don’t breastfeed exclusively.
• I don’t face much problems – I faced a lot of problems as mentioned in my previous post.

To me, husband support is very important for successfully breastfeeding. My husband supports me as much as he can, bringing me all the breastfeeding information and helping me to find out about how to store ebm (expressed breast milk) correctly. Till now, he’s still in charge of sterilizing bottles and ebm storage. There is a mothers club at his workplace, which encourages breastfeeding, and he knows a few of his colleagues that breastfeed exclusively. He helped me ask them for tips, and it gives me motivation because I know that many people are doing this, and I’m not alone.

Talking to a breastfeeding consultant or an experience mother is also important as I have no one to consult at home. When my baby was 2 weeks old as I was about to give up, I called up a breastfeeding consultant (got the number from a parenting magazine) and we talked for an hour. She encouraged me, and brushed away all the issues I faced as small problem and very normal. I gain more confidence and continue to breastfeed with better mood. However a few days later, I was feeling down again and wanted to give up again. Then I know I have to self motivate constantly or else I will easily stop. So I read the breastfeeding articles everyday to remind me of why I should continue. When the government nurse came to check on me and baby, she also motivated me by praising me and giving guidance to me. I need to thank the nurse a lot as she also encouraged my mom to support me and told her the benefits of breastfeeding. This nurse breastfed her baby until 2 years old and told me how happy she is with her boy’s progress. She told me not to give up. I also get encouragement by my gynecologist. His 3 children were all breastfed exclusively for at least 6 months.

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My breastfeeding experience – Part 2

Within 1 hour after Nadia was born, she was put on my breast to latch on. She latched on very well. At that moment, I thought well, it wasn’t that hard. However, for the first 2 days, I really didn’t realize that I wasn’t producing milk yet. I was really puzzled why baby suckled for 1 hour and can’t seem to be full, if let her go, she will cry out loudly until the whole face turned purple, like not enough oxygen. That really made me scared, and when she cried, most of the time I will put her to breast to prevent her from crying till purple again. At the end of the 2^nd day, the milk started to come, and the breasts became as hard as stone. I felt so painful when pressing on them. The nurse let me use the hospital breast pump to pump out the milk. I tried using it for half an hour but less than 1 oz came out, and I was so tired.

Baby fed very long (up to an hour or more) on breast, sometimes slept mid way. I thought can rest a few hours before she wakes up to feed again, but within an hour, she will want to feed again. As I sent back baby to the nursery, a moment later the nurse will bring her back mentioning she cannot settle down and seemed still hungry. As I fed her for more than half an hour and let her go, she will still cry out angrily again. I extended my stay at the hospital for another 3 days due to baby had jaundice. Since I exclusively breastfeed, I thought it’s better for me to stay there while she underwent her phototherapy. During this time, I learnt to lie down to feed her so that I can also rest. While at night, I will pump out breast milk, the output wasn’t a lot. Causing me to think I don’t have enough milk.

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My breastfeeding experience – Part 1

Breastfeeding is the toughest experience I had after giving birth to Nadia. As of now, I still breastfeed her, I have never fed her with formula milk yet. First 6 months she was totally exclusive breastfed while after that she started with solid feeding and breast milk remains her main food. I never thought I can do it for so long, as during the 1^st two months, I felt like giving up almost every single day.

When I was pregnant, my husband and I know that we want to breastfeed our baby because we were exposed to the benefits through articles and antenatal class, and I think most people know that breast milk is the best. But, equipping ourselves with the benefits is not enough; I wasn’t prepared at all with the challenges I was going to face. I wish I prepared myself more by asking the experience mothers on how they can breastfeed successfully. Because breastfeeding needs a lot of support and commitment, and to me, I need to self psycho to keep going. And I think I can understand why people stop or start mixing with formula to ease the pain.

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Resuming my blog

It’s been almost a year that I stopped blogging. I never thought that I will want to continue this blog when all my time is occupied by my baby, work and sleep. But then I figured that I can spare some 30 minutes a week to write about anything that happens in my life especially about my baby and my experiences in bringing up this little one. When this thought came to my mind, the first thing I want to change is this blog’s title; it cannot be Pregnancy Blog anymore, as this blog is about me and my baby too.

Hence, I renamed my blog to become “CH’s Blog”, as simple as that. And I even changed my blog’s template. Stay tune for more updates from me as I do have a lot in my mind that I wish to share, something I would love to keep as diary too

Finally…

Needless to say, baby has arrived. She was delivered naturally on 7^th Sept 2008. And she is 7 weeks old as of now. Baby was 3.45kg and 52cm long at birth. It’s tiring caring for newborn, add up with breastfeeding, I never get to sleep 8hrs straight from my delivery till now and I guess I need to get use to it. I am starting the new chapter of my life, no matter how tiring, it is worthwhile when baby smiles back at me and to see her growing everyday is a wonderful experience. I am stopping this blog for now, thanks all for reading this piece of my experience. Tata…

Week 38 – Patiently waiting

Baby weight = 3.3kg

My weight = Total weight gain so far is 15.5kg

Yeah, I’m patiently waiting for baby to come out. This morning I went for my checkup and to see whether there’s any sign of early delivery. And the result is no, it’s not going to happen yet, at least not over this weekend. At this stage, I’m scared thinking of how labour is going to be, and I’m really feeling scared more than excited.

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Week 34

A summary of my week 34:
Baby weight = 2.4kg
My weight = Additional 1.5kg sigh!!!

Baby is growing more hair and the water around her is good. From the ultrasound scan, we can recognize the umbilical cord as the Mickey Mouse sign as described by the OB, something cute like this:

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