Breastfeeding & me (part 1)

I have a pair of breasts and babies love to suck. How hard can breastfeeding be?

I read quite a few baby books, including a couple on breastfeeding while I was pregnant. Even though I agreed that being a Mum did not necessarily come naturally, but in some aspects a learned skill, I never thought breastfeeding would be very difficult despite the bad stories I've heard. After all, breasts are built to feed, aren't they?

Like most people in this 'modern' society, I have not actually seen much breastfeeding taken place. The rare occasions of seeing a mother breastfed in public usually resulted in me turning away so I wasn't seen as if I was staring at the naked breasts. I have heard limited stories on breasfeeding, most of them to do with 'not enough' milk or the pain/hardship of breastfeeding. Despite all these, I decided early on that I would give breastfeeding a go. My original goal was to breastfeed for 6-12 months.

The hospital I stayed in was pro-breastfeeding so one of the very first things my midwife did was putting Lara onto my breasts after she was born. During the early days, there were the usual pain/blood assoicated with cracked nipples while I learned latching. I gussed I wasn't doing too badly in hospital as the midwives seeing my cracked nipples all commenting on how it was not as bad as the lady in the next room. Getting up in the middle of the night to feed or performing other motherly functions was also hard while one was recovering from the birth. Luckily there was the nursery where babies could go at night so mothers could get some sleep.

I stayed in hospital for 3 nights (4 days) which I found extremely short (this is another story). The first night back home was difficult not only becaue there was no midwives around to tell us what to do (and no nursery where you can leave baby at night!) but my milk also took awhile to come in and that created some initial fluttering.

I followed the advise to feed frequently during the early days to ensure supply. Sometimes I would feed for 30 minutes each side so feeding would take around 1 hour. Lara had a little rest and the whole process was repeated again. If you counted the hours I fed during the early days, it was a full time job!

And Lara had excellent weight gain in the first 10 weeks or so.

Milk supply seemed to be a common problem with a lot of the Chinese I know (my sister did not have enough milk neither did my mum). I seemed to have the other problem - too much milk? My breasts would be engored and felt very uncomfortable during the times Lara fed less. I don't know if this led to my problems of constant blocked milk ducts and mastitis later on or not , but this is what I had from 10 weeks on. (some midwives suggested that feeding too frequently might contribute to the problem...)

To be continued...