It’s World Breastfeeding Week (these are the things you’ll know when u join 1 too many breastfeeding groups on Facebook :P)!

So I’ll take this chance to do a little summary of how my breastfeeding journey has been going so far…

Looking back at the preganancy, the delivery and everything that came after that, breastfeeding is probably the most challenging of it all.

My colostrum took some time to kick in and only came in one side of my breasts by the morning of the 3rd day postpartum. But Laurent has been great with latching since he was brought to me the very first time the night he was born. That first moment was so precious 🙂

As Laurent was rather light at birth (2.5kg) and shrank to 2.3kg when we were ready to go home, both my gynae and the PD advised that we supplement with formula milk (FM) for the time being as his weight cannot go down lower than 2.2kg.

Hence we bought a tin of NAN HA on our way home.

I haven’t read up too much about breastfeeding (BF), just the basics, which was obviously not enough. Thank God for extremely caring and helpful experienced mummies who took the time, effort and initiative to message me and even visit me to check on how I’m settling down and how my BF has been going so far. 

The first night we’re home, I started to feel engorged and managed to pump out a small amount of breast milk (BM).

They say this is liquid gold, and that was exactly how precious I felt it was!

This is his milk-coma face when he was having his first BM feed from the bottle.

Laurent is extremely anxious when it comes to feeding so he doesn’t always have the patience to settle on a good latch before he gets all cranky. Hence, I don’t latch him for every feed. I mostly latch him in the morning and at night, I just stick to my pumping schedule and let my confinement nanny, Aunty Helen, feed him off the bottle when he is hungry. 

The supply took some time to build up and thankfully, within the first week, the supply was enough to meet his demand. 

I’m also very thankful for Aunty Helen who is very pro-BF. When I told her we need to supplement baby’s feed with FM for the initial part, she told me not to worry, she will slowly transit him to full BM when my supply comes in and shared with me tips on handling BM when it comes to storing and warming up the milk. And we rejoice together when we see the level of BM slowly rising up the bottle after every pump 🙂

And just when I thought we’re doing fine, on the 2nd week postpartum, I was down with my first bout of mastitis. All was well on that Friday morning, but in the afternoon, I started to feel really tired and feverish. 1 of my boobs were also extremely painful and had a crazy hard lump that wouldn’t go away.

My massage lady was scheduled to come over for my jamu massage so I got her to help clear the blocked ducts but it only got slightly better after that and the fever persisted, fluctuating between 38 to 39 degrees. 

Took a panadol at night and the temperature dropped slightly but came back up again in the morning. And the worse thing about the experience, was that even when I felt so terrible, I know I had to keep pumping if not the blocked ducts will get worse. It was terrible when you’re down with fever and still can’t get a decent, undisrupted sleep 😐

Pops brought me back to see my gynae the next day and was given paracetamol and antibiotics. Was told that the fever and swelling should go down within 3 days if not I’ll have to send my milk for culture test in case of some infection 🙁

That weekend, I just pumped and pumped and it’s almost as if the little one knows, he was fussing a lot and I had to nurse him a lot more times in the day. I guess the little human pump still works better than anything else in clearing those annoying blocked ducts 🙂

My fever went away that day and the swelling took a couple more days of disciplined pumping and latching before subsiding.

And that is only the first 3 weeks of my BF journey… I’m still figuring out the best setting for my pump, trying to be more disciplined with the sessions, getting Laurent to latch faster, chasing his accelerating demand and there are still a whole lot of other things to learn. 

I salute all BF mummies who went through the sleepless nights, mid-night sessions, never-ending growth spurts and all the strain on the boobs to give the best gift of life to their little ones 🙂

I pray for strength, determination and tons of discipline to make it through my BF journey. Happy World Breastfeeding Week!

(sorry for a little PDA hahaha)