Breastfeeding is the most difficult part of motherhood for me so far. The nurses in the hospital taught me how to position the baby and to let her suckle for 15 mins on each breast and burp her. It seemed rather ok at that time. A nurse would push her in for me to breastfeed - more to suckle and get the colostrum and when she continued crying, they would feed her with glucose water.
The real problems started on the day we brought Kaelyn home. She was screaming herself hoarse all of the journey back. As my milk had only started to trickle in, it's not sufficient to appease her. And I had no glucose water! Resorted to feeding her formula as a desperate attempt to silence her. For the first few weeks, I would let her suckle and if she's still not satisfied, we would give her some formula. I think my milk wasnt coming in fast enough and to make things worse, there was an excruciating pain on my right nipple each time Kaelyn suckled on it and it even bled. I had to stop her from feeding on this breast for almost a week.
I subsequently read that to increase milk supply, you have to let your baby feed from you as often as possible and try not to resort to supplement to match up the shortfall as this will lead to decrease in supply. Hence I tried to reduce the number of supplements and breast feed her as often as possible. It was a big struggle as I could be feeding as often as every 1.5 to 2 hours. It's really very tiring.
But I guess the effort really paid off, as now Kaelyn is on total breast milk. My supply is just enough to meet her demands. I still have a few issues to tackle right now:
(a) Increasing my supply to meet her growing demands
- I've been eating fish every lunch and dinner, drinking lots of fluids and taking Fenugreek and Longan & red dates tea.
(b) Re-stimulate my right breast as it has become close to defunct after I stopped for a week
- In every direct feed session, I would start feeding from this breast first and would pump out excess if any. Havent seen any improvements yet so far.
(c) Kaelyn is a really slow drinker. She can take up to half an hour to empty the first breast, and another 10 - 15 mins to fill her stomach on another breast. It's so tiring that at certain times of day, I just express and bottle feed her - it's much faster. Hope she can improve on this in time to come!
Breastfeeding is very tough and tiring for me, but I keep telling myself I should persevere, since breast milk is supposed to be good for the baby, and also I have 5 months of maternity leave to get it right!
Lastly, I would have to thank Sandy, Theresa and Huiyan for their encouragement and sharing their experiences with me. At least I know that I am not the only one facing all these problems with breastfeeding, and motivated me to perservere till now (Week 9).
The breastfed cherubic at full month
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