Since I have heard that breast milk is the best, I wanted to try to breastfeed my baby too and wondered what was the hype all about.
I had very little milk the first few weeks, so my baby was always crying because he was hungry. So I had supplemented his feed with some formula milk. But because he was drinking from the bottle as well as breastfeeding, soon he had this thing called nipple confusion. And then I decided to just pump and feed my milk using the bottle as I thought he would be using bottles in the end, so why not just start from now.
Pumping milk is actually quite inconvenient. I have so many bottles to wash, I have to find a proper time to pump, I have to make sure there is milk ready before he gets hungry etc. It would be way easier to just let him suck from the source and it would be like how I always tell my husband, 'FRESH FROM THE FARM.'
BUT I think my frequent pumping actually increased my milk supply tremendously! In fact, by the third month, the supply was more than the demand and it is still is (5th month now).
Even though I have a lot of milk now, I think would enjoy breastfeeding my baby more than pumping. The act of it itself is nice to watch, to see my breast being stuffed into his small little mouth is indeed very cute. Then his cheeks would puff up like a gold fish. The act of pumping makes me feel like my breast is a milk dispenser rather than a milk producing breast. But maybe there is pros and cons for both. He starts to chew on everything now and I'm quite glad that my nipple is not one of his 'chewables.'
My breast look different now compared to before I had him. I don't know if it changed because of the pregnancy or because of the breast feeding. But what I can say is, do take as many photos of your boobies if you really like how it looks now before you get pregnant (and keep it in a safe place of course). Before this, my boobies were supple, like it is soft but there is volume to it. Like there is a viscous liquid in it.
But now, when it is filled with milk, it is so hard that I think my baby would cry if he accidentally bang his head on my boobies. When my boobies are empty, it does not feel like pre-pregnancy boobies. It feels like really empty almost like a sagging boob but its not sagging. When you press it, you don't feel any resistance as though the viscous liquid is gone.
Before this, I used to feel that my boobs are very private. I won't exposed it to anyone because I treat it like a private part. But now, the aesthetic value of it has gone down in my opinion and also I look at it more as a functional body part now just like how you would think of your hand. But of course, I would not simply expose it to the public but I won't feel as embarrassed if another women (not men) accidentally caught a glimpse of my assets.
Talking about breastfeeding, I met many mothers who are way older than me like in their 40's and older, told me that during their time, breastfeeding was not as encouraged as now. They tried but gave up very quick when their milk was too little or it hurts etc. But now it is quite different. Many people would tell you to breastfeed and persevere through the challenges so much so that there is this pressure or idea that if you don't breastfeed your baby, you are a bad mother.
To me, this is not healthy. To place such pressure on mothers to breast feed. I agree that breastfeeding is very good for your baby, but if you are not able to breastfeed for whatever reason, you are not a bad mother as long as your baby is healthy and well.
To be honest, I don't really enjoy breastfeeding because it gets really uncomfortable when it is full. And because I don't feed my baby directly (he doesn't know how to latch on anymore), pumping my milk takes up a lot of my time and I can't go out from my house for long before my breast gets full again. But I hope to stay in this for as long as I can and not give up.
Fingers crossed.
No comments:
Post a Comment