Breastfeeding

This is no exactly my favourite topic but I really have to write about it. Mainly because I am still struggling with it, after 8 weeks... But I have to say I have improved tremendously since day 1.

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

Memories of the First Month

How time flies! Kaelyn is already 1 month old. I have so many things I want to say about the first month but guess I should just keep them relatively short for now. Will expand on them in subsequent posts as we go along..

(1) Bringing Kaelyn home
I can never forget that day. Kaelyn wailed in the car from the hospital all the way back home. I thought babies are supposed to be lulled in cars.... Back home, tried to breastfeed her but she couldnt seem to be appeased. So I made my very first mistake - I tried to feed her the bottle of Similac milk the hospital gave me.... From then on, I just supplement her with formula when I think she does not have enough of my milk. Also learnt that newborns feel more secure when they are swaddled - my confinement lady did just that and she stopped crying immediately!

A family picture at TMC upon discharge

(2) Breastfeeding
Whoever says that breastfeeding was easy probably hasnt attempted it before. The idea may sound simple - just latch the baby on when she's hungry... but there are so many problems that come with it. My 3 biggest problems are improper latch on, bleeding nipple and insufficient milk supply. It's really tough!

(3) Baby blues
All that I heard about hormonal changes post pregnancy are true! After giving birth, I felt that I have lost control of my emotions. I get agitated and impatient easily, and I cant seem to stop my tears from flowing under certain circumstances. I cried when I have trouble breastfeeding Kaelyn, cried when I sing "Top of the world" to her, cried when I think of how miserable I was having to endure the episiotomy pain and feeding Kaelyn every 1.5 to 2 hours, cried when Sandy called to encourage me not to give up breastfeeding however tough it may be etc...

(4) Confinement
I've heard friends commenting on how the confinement month was the hardest to bear. I would agree with that - having to endure washing my hair only once every few days, bathing with some funny looking water, perspiring endlessly, eating the same boring food everyday. But the good thing about confinement is that you have someone looking after you and the baby. I felt really lost when the confinement nanny left.

(5) Motherhood
Overall, I would say that motherhood is tough. At the pregnancy stage, you have to put up with nauseousness, fatigue, giving up your favourite sports etc. During delivery, you have to endure the excruciating labour pains and the episiotomy pain thereafter. Then you have to struggle with breastfeeding, cope with baby blues / post natal depression, learn to care for a newborn, decipher her cries, worry when she has blocked nose, phlegm, cant poo etc. And lastly you'll look really tired and 'aunty', and ugly...

Ugly me during confinement

The Big Day

I have not been writing for more than 2 weeks. Yes, Kaelyn was born on 30 July 2007, at 8.03am. She weighed 3.53kg via natural birth with length of 50cm and head circumference of 33cm. I did not expect her to be 1 week early, though I know there is such a possibility. Here is an account of what happened on that day:

On the early morning of 30 July 2007 (Monday) at 1am, I felt a gush of warm liquid down my legs. I knew my water bag had burst and immediately woke David up. For a moment, both of us didnt know what to do. I quickly went to the bathroom to check and shower (i remembered Mrs Wong BB had said when water bag burst, we still have time for a quick shower but no time for shopping!). Meanwhile David called the labour ward to check what we had to do. After asking several questions, they told us to go down. While showering, I felt myself trembling the whole time, I think I was panicking...

Half an hour later at 1.30am, we were ready to leave for the hospital. I began to feel stomach pains which resembled the type of pain we get when we need to go to the loo. Believe it or not, I didnt know those were contractions (after all, it's my first time!). The pains went on and off throughout our journey to the hospital. When we reached the hospital the pain became more intense and unbearable that I had to be wheeled into the delivery observation room in a wheelchair.

In the observation ward, the nurses took my weight, blood sample and gave me enema. The pain was now so unbearable that I had to hug the sides of the bed to give me some slight comfort. They then wheeled me into the labour ward. The contraction was by now every 2 minutes and dilation at 3cm. While waiting for the doctor to administer my epidural, they gave me a gas mask to breathe in. That didnt help in easing the pain at all - just left me very giddy. I kept demanding for the epidural. It seemed like an eternity when Dr Lee finally arrived to administer the epidural. The pain of the injection entering my spine was nothing compared to the contractions.

After administering a full dosage of epidural, I felt an instant relief. No more pain, but I started to shiver uncontrollably - a side effect of the epidural. I prefer the constant shaking rather then the excruciating contraction pains! My lower half of my body was also totally numb.

So there I laid, with David by my side from 3am plus to 7 am plus, I think. During this time, the nurses kept coming in and out to monitor the contractions but no one updated us on the situation. We kept drifting in and out of sleep. Finally at 7am plus, my gynae Dr WK Tan came in and checked on the dilation. She said i was fully dilated and ready to deliver anytime. I was caught by surprise.

She soon started to prepare the instruments required for the labour. With David to help support my neck and thigh, I listened to Dr Tan's instructions to push. When the machine indicated there was a contraction, she asked me to breathe in deeply and push with all my might even though i could feel nothing down there. Within 3 pushes, the baby was out!
Dr Tan then proceeded to stitch up my wound (episiotomy) while the baby kept crying in the background. I was relief that the ordeal and experience of a lifetime is over! But there are many challenges ahead of us.

Getting a maid

There were 2 things which we took the longest time to decide on - 1 is the little one's name, and 2nd is whether to get a maid. Well, the first issue as I have mentioned earlier, was partially resolved (now left with Chinese name). The second one was resolved last week as well.

The second decision was not an easy one too. I am quite against the idea of getting a maid, as I dont want to have a stranger staying in my house. You lose a lot of privacy, and there is added cost of paying her salary of $350, and her food and maintenance as well. Most importantly, I have heard so many stories about maids, none of which is pleasant.

However, after our discussions with our parents, it dawned on us that getting a maid is unavoidable as our mums are not able to help take care of the baby full time without a helper, after I go back to work. So the maid shall help out with the housework and help wash baby bottles and clothes etc. She will not, at least for the first year, be fully in charge of taking care of my baby.

After asking around and going to different maid agencies in Hougang Green Mall, we finally selected a Filipino maid to come in on 1 Sept, after my confinement. Well, at least this is one item down from our to do list..

Week 37+

By now, you must have realised that i have a new entry each time I visit the gynae. So this is no different. I have to see Dr Tan every week now. Today, I weigh 68.5kg and our little Kaelyn is at 3.2kg! At the rate she is growing, we estimate she will weigh about 3.7kg if borne near estimated due date. That's actually quite heavy! Hope she wont grow too big for a natural delivery....

The baby is not engaged yet and I show no signs of labour i.e. no contractions, no backache, cervix still not soft etc.. Looks like it's not going to be early, which is in a way good. There are still a couple of things we need to prepare for her arrival, like preparing her room. Have put up some disney posters and washed her clothes and bedsheets. I am thinking of buying a small drawer set to put all her clothes. Right now, they are in plastic bags, which is not an ideal storage place at all.

I had decided to stop working in office 2 weeks before my due date. Which means that yesterday was my last day in office. Going to work from home for 2 days next week, take annual leave of 3 days and start my maternity leave on 30 July 07.

If Kaelyn doesnt come out early, I would still have close to 2 weeks to exercise, make preparations and relax.....

Here's how I look now..

Week 36+

Went to Dr Tan again on Friday (13 July). Weighed in at 67.9kg compared to my 66.6kg 2 weeks ago. I thought Dr Tan would surely comment on it but surprisingly she didnt! That's usually the first thing that she would comment each time we see her. Did Group B strep test today and results would be out following week. Think it's some type of test to see if my birth canal was infected. Dr Tan also told me to make sure the baby moves at least 10 times a day, and to do some breast preparation exercises. Also will have to see her once a week from now on. It means I am getting really very close to delivery!! Quite scared.... Oh, forgot to mention that our Kaelyn is growing v well. She's estimated to be 2.95kg! No wonder I am finding it more and more difficult to sleep and move around...

Talk about sleeping - really find it difficult now. I will wake up at least once every night to go to the toilet and a few times just to adjust my sleeping position. Think it's because the recommended sleeping position is to sleep on my left side, I will wake up if I were to turn to my back or right side, and also when I turn back to my left again. So all in all, I will wake up about 4 - 5times a night.... guess I will just have to endure this for another 3 more weeks.

Names...

David and I have been cracking our brains, searching through internet and poring over dictionaries to come up with a name for our angel. Actually 2 names - 1 in English and 1 in Chinese. WE started off with the Chinese name - I practically flipped from the first to last page of the Chinese dict "Ci Hai" to get some inspiration of words I can use and their meanings. This proved to be very tedious and difficult. I didnt like any of those which I thought up of...

We then moved on to the English name, thinking it would be a breeze. But how wrong I was! Looked through 1800 names from web pages and only shortlisted a few. Amongst them were Kaelyn, Tricia, Deanna, Rina... The one I liked best was Kaelyn. Took me a while to convince David that it's really a nice name. Got some comments from colleagues and friends that they like it too! But my sis and Kae Shin it sounded more like a chinese name. But who cares, as long as it sounds nice.

So finally after months, we finally decided our little angel shall be named - KAELYN!!

Now, we have the Chinese name to tackle.... Any ideas??