Most hospitals encourage mothers to breastfeed their babies. No matter what breastfeeding policies your hospital adheres to, inform hospital staff, nurse or doctor beforehand if you have decided to, or intend to breast feed your baby. They can then make necessary arrangements like having your newborn sharing the same room (rooming-in) or notify nurses to avoid bottle-feeding your newborn in the nursery ward if you choose to breastfeed exclusively and on demand. Although nursing whenever your baby is hungry, feeding on demand, is best for your baby, some hospitals may be understaffed to provide such attentive round-the-clock service. In that case, you can request and may be allowed to have your baby share your room.
During my breast feeding days to baby Clarisse, I don’t have much knowledge on what type of food that cannot be consumed and would affect the quality of breast milk. For instance, I was told by a TCM that I should avoid fried food because it could diminish the nutritional content of breast milk. If only I should’ve known about it earlier. But then again, I’m a sucker for delicious fried stuff and I wonder if I have the will power to stay completely away from them. Nevertheless, I should have done more reading to gather more knowledge on breast feeding. As a note to self, here are some tips and advices I’ve gathered from various source both online and offline.
For the past one over month, I’ve used this blog as a ranting ground to write about my struggle with baby Clarisse’s weaning. She used to wake up at around 3 to 4am in the morning hungry demanding to be fed. But the frustration is not that I have to drag my tired self out of bed. It’s feeding her milk and cereals that drives me and my husband bonkers. She would refuse, struggle and put up a fight whenever being fed milk and cereals despite her hunger. The situation is slowly improving and she seems to give in to her milk and cereals lately though not without some toys or distraction.
I noticed she’s sleeping longer during the past two weeks. Most of the time, she would sleep right through the night, from 8-9pm to 6-7am without feeding. Whenever she does cry during the night, I just give her some water and she would doze off again. She is bound to wake up before 8am in the morning due to hunger.
It’s been a dreadful past one week. A little bit better than the first few days I started to wean baby Clarisse from breastfeeding, but still I’m having a tough time making her sleep.
It’s 9pm now. Baby Clarisse hit the sack at 8pm sharp. She started to cry incessantly after 5 minutes, roll all over the bed and just refused to sleep. It took more than 45 minutes of crying and struggling until she’s too exhausted to do anything but to close her eyes and sleep. If I were to give nurse her, it would probably take no more than 15 minutes for her to doze off completely.
The past 2 weeks has been very exhausting. Why? Weaning my baby Clarisse from breast-feeding. She would get up once or twice nightly crying to be fed but will not consume anything else except breast milk. Forcing her to drink formula has been fruitless. It made her resent the very sight of a bottle even more. In fact, the moment baby Clarisse sees me with a tin of milk powder, she’d start to pout and make noises.
Pregnant women demand adequate amount of the right vitamins and minerals before, during and after pregnancy. Consuming enough vitamins and following a nutritional diet is also very important to enable your body to keep up with the demands of breastfeeding. Below are some common types of vitamins likely to be prescribed to you by your doctor.
FOLIC ACID
Also referred to as folate, folic acid is one of the very first and widely prescribed supplement to pregnant woman. It is also given to women who intend to conceive and should be taken one month before conception until the end of first trimester of pregnancy. In fact, I was adviced to start taking folic acid when I wanted to start conceiving. A whole six months before I managed to conceive baby Clarisse.
Baby Clarisse had problems with constipation last week. Her stool was very hard and dry she cried when passing motion. There are two things which led to this I suspect. First of all, since I’m breastfeeding her, it could be that I’ve been avoiding fruits and vegetables when I had a cough last week. That could’ve caused my breastmilk to contain less fibre. Secondly, two days before baby Clarisse’s had constipation, I switched from Bellamy’s Oats Cereal to another brand. For several months, I’ve fed her Bellamy’s Oats Cereal every morning. So I quickly bought a box of Bellamy’s Oats Cereal and fed her in the evening. The next morning, her stool was back to normal.
Having seen the immediate effect of lack of fibre, I’ve got to make sure she gets her daily dose of fibre to promote healthy bowel movements.
Three weeks ago, some rashes started to show on my baby Clarisse’s cheeks and around the mouth. I took her to see her paediatrician. She told me it is milk rash and prescribed a mild steroid cream hydrocortisone for baby Clarisse. However, I declined the prescription as I do not wish to apply anything that has steroids on her skin especially near her mouth. Wouldn’t want her accidently swallow some steroids, no matter how miniscule the amount. Therefore, we went home without any prescription medicine.
A few days earlier, my neighbour suggested Hazeline snow (the original one). She applied it to her baby’s face milk rash and found it to be an effective remedy. I don’t know how effective is it because I haven’t try it out.
What I did try is this. It’s an advice from a good friend of mine. I regularly wiped my baby’s face with chinese tea and within days, my baby’s milk rash/salive rash subsided. Much better than using steroids if you ask me.
I’d brew a cup of chinese tea every moring and use it to wipe her face after feeding session or when there’s saliva around her mouth. It might take several days for the rashes to fade away.
For new mothers who breastfeed their babies, here is a video clip giving out some tips on breastfeeding by 2 expects. I found it quite useful for beginner mothers who wish to give their babies a healthy start in life through breastfeeding.
When my baby Clarisse was 3 months old, her breastfeeding antics started to annoy me. Baby Clarisse would latch on, suck for a moment, turn around and look the other way. She would repeat this annoying action – nurse for a few seconds, pull away and either smile at me or check out whoever is talking in the room. Or get distracted by the slightest hint of sound or stray of lights from the TV. I warned my husband or whoever is in the room not to talk whenever I nurse baby Clarisse.
It is most frustrating when she fool arounds when my breast milk starts to let-down. My breast milk would drop onto her shirt and face. Her shirt would end up drenched in milk and I’d have to wipe her face afterwards.
