It's kinda long to be writing about it down now. But heck, here goes. Before that, credit goes to a good friend, Jenny, and the great group The Breastfeeding Advocates Network (TBAN) for support !
As some of you probably noted, I'm a new mother of a wonderfully adorable daughter, Elanor Wong !
I know, she looks like a boy and she's bald. She looks exactly like her father, thus, the boyish looks... By the way, this is her at 4 months old.
While I was pregnant with her at my first trimester, Jenny recommended me to join this group at Facebook. She shared quite a number of great details before I joined them. Surfing the web on how to take care of myself while pregnant is one thing, getting into labor is another thing... the hardest part, the most wonderful part, breastfeeding her.
The moment she was born, I regretted not telling the nurse and the doctor that I wanted to breastfeed her immediately, skin-to-skin contact to get the bonding started. I know a lot of mothers complained that they do not have a lot of milk or it doesn't kick in immediately. Rest assured that by latching the baby on, the colostrum (the first phase of the yellowish milk that is darned good for the baby for them to build the antibody) will come in and not much. Why? Bear in mind that newborns do not have a big stomach.
So, please don't worry about supply not being enough until after 2nd month. After finding out about how much newborns feed, I proceed to think bout am I latching her on correctly or not. This is where the government clinics nurse comes in to the picture. They came to visit, checking on my dear daughter see if she is healthy or not and teaches me how to latch correctly, how to hold her, how to pump the milk using the hand (this technique is called marmet) and so on.
Apart from that, in the first few days after I'm discharged from the hospital, I got badly blocked milk ducts. This could lead to a situation called mastitis. One could get fever and probably discouraged from keep breastfeeding the baby. Thankfully, my mother was being supportive of me and went checking with other experienced moms on how to handle it. She made fish head soup with raw papaya (green ones), rice paper pith and red dates for me to drink. The night itself, the milk came leaking out and the relief comes as getting engorged with no release really hurts and I can barely sleep. Besides helping with the relief, it apparently boosted my milk supply and I have to pump my milk out as my daughter can barely keep up with the supply.
Here she is as a newborn !
Of course, she was not spared of the jaundice. Her readings was over 200 and she had to be admitted to the hospital for phototherapy for one night. My heart broke and I can't stop myself to tearing when I heard that she had to be admitted for that. Thankfully, with breastfeeding, although it took almost a month, her jaundice reading decreases and she's fully healed. All I need to avoid during her jaundice was to eat lesser or totally avoid ginger and wine. Oh, I forgot to mention that there's a confinement session for Asians (not sure bout how other race does it) and being a Chinese, there's a lot of rules of what to do/eat and what's not to do/eat.
She gradually healed and as a normal healthy baby, she gained good weights throughout the journey. She was born at 2.7kg and now at 4 months old, she's weighing a good 6.5kg. Tripled the weight and I feel the pain in my arm whenever I feed her. Not that I'm complaining. Happy but exhausting but in the end, it's all totally worth it.
At this age, the cheeky-ness becomes her trademark already... Speechless but hilarious!
She really had me laughing all the time and nothing else matters when she is around me. She is all that I can see now, well, of course hubs is jealous at that but he also does the same, so all is fair ! I already foresee myself spoiling her badly and despite what people says, I always wished that she is stuck at this age, never growing up so I can keep her like this forever. But of course it's impossible.
On my next post on breastfeeding, I will share out foods to eat/avoid to boost/that decreases milk supply and other details ! It's definitely a good learning moment as she grows and despite being exhausted, it's terribly fun and the bonding is the most precious moment ever.
