Breastfeeding and I

About more than a year ago (that was when I decided to get pregnant again), I said to myself to get a breast pump. I have high determination to breastfeed exclusively my second child. And then I got pregnant; the first I bought was a Korean made electric breast pump, Spectra 3. I once read a post on the Internet saying that the decision to breastfeed a child is not made after the pregnancy has been confirmed. It should have been made even before a woman got married.

Ameer Zikri - 20042009

I only got chance to breastfeed my first son only the first 5 month of his life. It wasn't exclusive either. Days after we brought him home from the hospital, the midwife asked us to give our son formula milk to supplement his needs. He was diagnosed with jaundice (it wasn’t severe). My body produces enough milk from him but I have difficulties to breastfeed him. He was hungry most of the time and with very little milk he consumed, his body couldn’t eliminate birubilin from his system. I was really frustrated that I felt like wanting run away from the house. I felt like a loser. Trying to be realistic, I had to allow my baby taking formula milk to supplement his need. After a week, he is free from jaundice and I stopped giving him formula milk.

Another challenge came to me when after a month giving birth to our son; my husband was called for duty for 6 months which mean we have to live without him for 6 months. I had to handle everything on by my own without my beloved husband by my side. I had wake early every morning, cleaning and feeding baby before sending him to the nursery, fetching him later in the evening, feeding and cleaning him before going to bed. Quite a few times I missed my dinner. It was tiring and I didn't care much to stock up my milk supply.

I had to admit that I had very little knowledge and inspirations to fully breastfeed my first son. There are two categories of women in my office, a group of married with big kids’ women and the other group was single ladies. I have no support and very lack of awareness on the importance of breastfeeding or maybe it just me who didn't care enough. As the time passed, more friends got married, had babies and breastfeed.

Ahmad Zharif - 18092011

For my second son, I managed to breastfeed him exclusively for the pass 6 month of his life. He started taking solid food when turns 6 month. Despite solid food has been part of his diet, he still drinks mother’s milk and surprisingly the demand rose ever since. Coincidentally, my milk production starts deteriorating. This frustrates me.

Frozen Expressed Breastmilk - few months ago

Before this, my body produces abundant of milk. In 10 minutes, I could express at least 10 ounce of milk with bare hand using Marmet technique. Nowadays, even 4 ounces in 10 minutes is hard. Therefore, I had to buy a second breast pump gadget. I bought Unimum Mezzo manual breast pump. So far, it helps me moderately.

Marmet technique manual expressed milk