RE: BF-ing
I wasn't able to directly feed my #1 coz i have short nipples and my girl was suspected to have tongue tie. i think i had post natal blues as well and this made things quite bad for me during my confinement period then. It got worse as i didn't get a confinement lady then and i was more or less the only one to deal with her at night. As i recounted back, it was not an easy period to go through and i remembered agonising about why my girl didn't latch on and my own stupidity at not learning more abt bf-ing beforehand. I think things only got better when i gave up the notion of latching and determined to still feed her my BM through the bottle. I was successful and managed to do so for almost 10 months before i stopped.
This time, i am happy that the 10 months worth of pumping paid off and my nipple are at least graspable by #2 now. She is also a good latcher so that helps as well. I like to latch her on directly as I didn't have to wash and sterilise bottles and the pump, plus I also didn't have to worry whether there's enough milk to feed her or not. I must say that it's not been easy either esp when she is clusterfeeding, i.e. latch on every hour or less for a period of 5-6 hours, but I'd still prefer latching on directly.
I think this bf-ing thing has become a sign on how much we love our kids and how good mothers we are. As i read in an article yesterday, bf-ing used to be just an activity that you do after giving birth. Some mothers do, some mothers don't, period. I guess we all have to make our own decisions as to how we want to love our kids and bf-ing is not the ONLY way to do so. With our hormones trying to get back to normal, it's difficult to keep our cool esp when people make thoughtless remarks in front of us. But i hope that all mummies here will remember that we love our kids, no matter what we do. As long as we are happy or reasonably ok, we can take care of them much better than if we are cranky and sleepy. Jiayou to all mummies!
