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.

My parents and in laws do not have negative comments on breastfeeding, but they do sometimes wonder whether baby gets enough milk or not during early months. When I told them of my baby weight, they are not worried anymore. My baby is taken care by my mom in law, and she never questioned on when I wish to stop breastfeeding. So overall, I feel that getting people support is very important, and if they don’t, just don’t listen to them but get connect to the people that can help. We need to learn to breastfeed, it’s not like we will know how to do it naturally. It’s good to prepare ourselves with breastfeeding information during pregnancy, so that we won’t get frustrated when face with problems later on, like what I faced earlier.

One of the main issues that many moms give up breastfeeding is milk not enough. Every mom is able to produce enough milk for her baby. Breastfeeding is based on demand, especially during early months, there’s no fixed timing in between feedings. Feed as per baby cues. How much milk a mom can produce depends on how often she clears her breasts. Once the breasts are cleared, the body will refill the milk again, and that’s how it works. Therefore, I learnt to feed baby as per her demand, and also pump as often as I could. That’s why there’s not much rest involved as I will wake up in the middle of the night to pump as well. I was advised to pump every 2 hours if not direct feeding baby, even if not much output, still need to pump often to trick the body to produce more milk. Instead of every 2 hours, I actually pumped every 3 hours (lazy me). I found many tips or recipes to increase milk supply, but somehow they don’t work for me. But when I changed from single manual pump to double electric pump, the milk output increases 1 oz every session which helps a lot in increasing my ebm stock. During confinement, as we need to eat a lot of heaty food, we need to also drink more liquids like soup. For me, I think first few months are the crucial time for the body to know how much milk it needs to produce. And direct feed baby is the best way to clear the breasts faster, because baby suckling is the best, better than any other pumps in the market. Breasts must be cleared often or else engorgement can happen and cause infection. Another point to make is when feeding baby with ebm, at first I thought need to follow about the same as the guidelines on formula milk can. Luckily is we do not follow that guidelines, it scared me that the guideline stated that at about a few months old, baby is fed with 7-8oz of milk which is way too much than the amount I feed my baby. Baby stomach is very small and I don’t think we need to stretch the tummy too much just to fulfill the 3-4 hours gap that most formula fed baby follows. I find this website is very informative on ebm feeding.

Another thing that I think is important is do not compare with other breastfeeding moms on your milk output. Each baby is unique and has different demands. So it’s not good to be pressurized by other moms. Even when listen to the consultant, talking to other moms or reading other moms experience, I just take in whatever that suits me, and not everything I think must really follow. I do believe in mother’s instinct and we will know what suits our baby and what’s not.

I won’t list down all the breastfeeding benefits here as those can be searched easily from the internet. I persisted to breastfeed my baby exclusively because of only one reason – breast milk is the best. I want to give her the antibody that no other milk can provide to boost her immune system. Breast milk is designed for human babies and no other milk can come close to it. I once read an article and I like the statement that mention it is not because of the benefits that we should breastfeed our baby, but we breastfeed because our baby needs breast milk, and what are the risks we are trying to take if we don’t breastfeed? To me, breastfeeding is tiring and needs a lot of hard work and yeah it is troublesome to need to pump at work, but I just need to sacrifice for a few months, and my baby gets the life long benefits that no money can buy. So it’s worth it! Actually, I only suffer for the first 2 months, and after that it gets easier, and pumping has become my daily routine. I don’t feel tired because of breastfeeding anymore, but I do get tired taking care of my baby who likes to walk here and there non stop, hehe. I’m not writing this to make moms that don’t breastfeed feel bad or guilty. I respect all moms that care for their children because becoming a parent is definitely not easy. I hope by writing this experience can help friends who wish to breastfeed exclusively know what to expect. Just don’t give up, be positive and yes it will get easier! Do it for at least 6 months, time really flies. That’s how I continue until now