My Backwards Journey
From formula to fully breastfeeding (an excerpt from my e-book)
Baby’s Ordeal During and After Delivery
Contrary to traditional beliefs, babies do NOT require to undergo urgent cleaning and washing after delivery. Your baby came out from your womb, which is technically sterile.
Imagine going through a tedious process of trying to come out from his mother’s body. After months and months of warmth, muted noises, and comfort, babies are delivered into harsh bright lights, louder sounds, and a totally alien environment.
As if that isn’t enough, your baby is put on a cold metal scale to measure his weight. Then he is hardly given to the mother to cuddle for a few minutes before he is whisked off to be washed, again in a brightly lit room, with unfamiliar voices surrounding him. There is no wonder he starts yelling and gets really upset with all the sudden changes. After such an ordeal, he is so exhausted from the crying and the adapting that he falls flat asleep, and is hard to wake up.
Your two-hour window of opportunity to kickstart your breastfeeding journey well then closes.
What you can do:
- After your baby is delivered and weighed, ask to hold him. There is no hurry to bathe him. When he is passed to you, hold him, do skin to skin if you want to, and then latch him on. He will be wide awake then, and will latch on easily. Your milk may not have come in at that time, but baby’s suckling will be the best thing to stimulate your glands. Let him feed on both sides, roughly around fifteen to twenty minutes or more if you want to, and when he finally grows more tired and starts to fall asleep, you can pass him for a quick bathe, after which he will sleep.
- Remember to request for baby to be roomed in with you. That is the basis of a strong breastfeeding foundation. If your baby were to be put in the baby room with all other babies, and given to you only when they think necessary, your milk glands will not be stimulated enough to produce breastmilk the way you want them to.
- When baby is roomed in with you, try to wake him up gently every 2–2.5 hours to feed. This is to prevent him from getting too hungry and impatient when he finally does wake up. You can opt to wipe his face with a damp towel, or give him a light tickle at the soles of his feet. When he stirs, latch him on, again, fifteen to twenty minutes per side. Do this every 2–3 hours, even throughout the night.
- The hormone that induces more breastmilk production, also known as oxytocin, is at its highest every day from 12 midnight until roughly around five in the morning. This explains why night time feeding is extremely important. Many Asian mothers prefer to pass their babies to their confinement ladies to feed at night, all for a good night’s sleep. If breastfeeding and your milk supply levels are truly important to you, then night feeding has to be part of the plan.
I gave birth to Brooklyn without knowing anything about breastfeeding. The confinement lady took over, and she started him on formula immediately.
You do NOT have to get up and empty your breasts if they’re still full in the middle of the night (unless you want to, of course). That was what I did with Brooklyn.
I suffered postpartum depression, and was sunk in a funk. I was listless, quiet, and though I loved Brooklyn, I let the confinement lady take over.
I breastfed him when she passed him to me — it was at her timing, not mine and not Brooklyn’s. The rest of the time he was formula fed. Two weeks into the delivery, I realized something was not right, and that he was supposed to be breastfeeding more, and not the other way around. I started pumping my milk and storing it in bottles in the fridge. I used the formula feeding as a leverage to build up a breastmilk supply. By his first month, I had a good supply of breastmilk in the fridge.
When the confinement lady left after the first month, it took me a few days to get over my fear of being left alone with him when my partner was working. A lot of meditation and positive thinking saved the day. I continued to feed Brooklyn formula, but at reduced amounts.
It would be 3 ounces initially (following what she’d been feeding him), and then after a few days, I took courage in my hands and gave him 2 ounces instead of one, and then breastfed him after. After another few days, I gave him 1 ounce of formula, and then breastfed him after. After 2 weeks, I was breastfeeding him fully.
This journey took a lot of courage and a lot of positive mindset, trying to convince myself that I had the milk in me to replace the formula. At this junction, with nothing more but what I’d read off the Internet, it required a huge leap of faith to totally switch him back into fully breastfeeding. In retrospect, I felt grateful to the confinement lady because she was not the typical type where she’d just pump baby with lots of milk according to the recommendations on the formula tin. Most confinement ladies I knew were feeding 5oz or more when babies hit the 30 day mark. If she had been doing so, I might have had more difficulty replacing the supply that my son was used to.
I started going out with him in the evenings for walks. I’d babywear him and walk about, even though my mind was totally against it. Depression made it hard for me to make rational decisions. I literally had to force my body out the door, because somewhere deep inside I knew I had to get some exercise and get out of the house to feel better.
Soon I was breastfeeding him on demand. I started going through a lot of journals, websites and joined Facebook communities on breastfeeding. In a bid to increase my breastmilk (now I had lesser pumped supply because he was fully feeding), I woke up at a two-hourly basis at night to pump and log into Facebook at the same time, so I had company. There would always be other mothers pumping and scrolling through Facebook as well.
I’d feed him, then go pump. He’d wake up another two hours later to feed, and then I’d pump again after that — a quick ten to fifteen minutes double pump just to empty my breasts.
The more you empty your breasts, the faster your milk refills.
The more you empty your breasts regularly, the more your brain is inclined to think that you have not enough milk, because your breasts are being emptied every two to three hours. Hence it kicks in more oxytocin and your supply starts to increase. This is a process that takes over a few days, and it is also, in other words, a form of power pump.
Fallacy to know –
The breasts are never fully empty. Even when they don’t feel full, there is milk inside. Your breastmilk is being refilled consistently. It is only the lack of confidence that makes mothers go oh no.. my breasts feel so empty. There is no milk inside.
Believe me, there is. Just latch your baby on, give him twenty minutes, and watch him burp.
Mindset is truly important in breastfeeding.
Trust in your baby and your body. By some miracle, I turned things around and by the end of the second month, Brooklyn had been switched from a fully fed formula baby to a fully breastfeeding baby.
I ended up pumping for one year after that, and latching him on until he was three. It started out rough, but it was somewhere along the way it became a fun and memorable journey.
I aim to help working mothers leave their 9–5, be able to spend more time with their families and bring their skills online to start an online business. For mothers who are in the 9–5, looking to go online and start a business of your own — even if you’re aren’t ready to leave the workforce yet, but you want to start a side hustle — you can always download my free checklist that allows you to get a head start on how you can do this without going through the trials that I did. I’ll be sharing more about my journey as I transitioned from a full time professional to a near-jobless mother, to an online entrepreneur.
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