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.

When we were discharged, we went back to my parent’s house for confinement. I still continue to breastfeed my baby as usual like at the hospital. Whenever she’s hungry, I will feed her, regardless of how many hours gap, it can be an hour or 2-3 hours, since breastfeeding is on demand, and each feeding session can take up from 30 minutes to 1 hour at that time. To constantly need to feed her like that was extremely tiring, and I was also need to take care of myself after child birth. When baby cried, I also felt like crying. I guess the emotional is pretty much unstable after child birth due to hormone change. To let myself have better rest at night, baby will be fed with expressed milk at night, meaning I will wake up to pump at night at least every 3 hours. I don’t have much stock to keep, every bottle of expressed milk will be used up at the end of each day.

I don’t have anyone that I know of that I can ask for advice on exclusive breastfeeding. None of my side and my husband’s side family members or relatives breastfeed exclusively. And most of my friends who become parents mix with formula since the beginning. My parents seeing me being so tired did suggest mixing with formula. And relatives coming also gave some comment when they heard baby crying non-stop. The usual comment was milk seems not enough, need to mix. During baby full moon day, I was so busy bringing baby in and out of the room to feed, don’t know why she cried so much that day.

During the second month, I went to stay at my in laws’ house. With the help of my in law, I took care of my baby fully. Unlike the first month, I had the confinement lady to take care of baby most of the time, so second month was also challenging to me. There are relatives as well came and asked when am I going to mix with formula milk, most kept questioned me had I fed the baby, because my baby cried a lot. When I said, fed already a moment ago, then the “not enough milk” look appeared on their face, I think they must have thought I was torturing my baby.  Even though I didn’t really get very negative comments on breastfeeding, but the responses that came out from them can easily deter my will to breastfeed 100%. Maybe they had good intention seeing me being tired, but I just want to carry on breastfeeding exclusively. I got breast infection during 2^nd month due to blocked milk duct. At this time, the breast was painful and I felt feverish. I thought it’s time to stop, I can’t take it anymore. Dr gave me medicine and advised me to pump out milk to feed baby until I recovered from the infection. Because feeding baby direct on breast can be very painful during the infection, so I pumped out the milk instead. Within 3 days, I recovered and I continued to breastfeed.

To me, first 2 months was the hardest. Baby cried a lot, I don’t have much confident, lack of advice and information, a lot of questions on breastfeeding popped up and I was desperate to know the hows and whys. It wasn’t easy for me, and I refused to formula feed baby too soon. I really wanted to know how other mothers do it, and why it seemed so hard for me as I thought it was only me having all the problems. A few words to describe the 2 months—exhausted, painful, emotional, sleepy, desperate, stressed, down.

Will share on how I cope with all these problems and why I persist… in my next post.