Breastfeeding and Pumping
By: Kristy Ting
Tags: Mothers, Breastfeeding, Work, Entrepreneurship, Work From Home

Making Your Breastfeeding Journey A Beautiful One

Pumping in the first few weeks of delivery is generally not recommended, unless this isn’t your first baby and you know exactly what you’re doing (as I did with my second and third sons). The last thing you want is to end up being stressed and unhappy over the miniscule amount of milk you get in your pumping bottle — and it will be miniscule, trust me.

This in NO WAY means that you do not have milk. It simply means that your body is unused to the pump, hence your breasts are not responding the way they should. Pumping half an ounce DOES NOT mean that there was only half an ounce of milk in your breasts.

The pumping amount in the beginning, generally is a fraction of what baby drinks. If your pumping yields half an ounce, it means baby is probably getting over one ounce or more of milk.

Go by the way your baby is burping after every feed.

Go by the amount of poop he is producing.

Go by how fast his poop turns from dark to yellow or custard coloured. If his poop turns custard and seedy in three to five days after delivery, you definitely have enough milk.

Don’t ever go by the amount of milk that is recommended on a formula tin. When you overfeed your baby, he will tend to vomit more regularly, and his tummy size will expand to take in the vast amount of milk. Eventually, if you are pumping to meet his needs, you will find out that his appetite has increased and you can no longer keep up with the amount of milk that he needs.

Source: Forbes.com

Refer to the chart, and know how much (or how little, actually) your baby needs.

Source: letmommysleep.com

In the first few days of birth, baby passes meconium, which is tar-like in consistency and is dark in colour. This is the food reserve that he took in while in your tummy. The faster meconium turns into yellow and seedy looking poop, the better the milk intake is.

If you’re not pumping, go by what you see in his poop and what you hear from his burpings. Do not go by how full your breasts feel, or how often he suckles. A baby can go on for hours suckling, but it does not mean he’s really drinking. If he’s drinking, you will be able to see him swallowing.

If he is done with drinking and is technically just using you as a pacifier, his suckles will be more shallow, faster and lighter, with no obvious signs of swallowing. Suckles of any type are good for stimulating our milk glands, so usually I just go along with it and read a book or watch a movie until he unlatches on his own — unless I have something else urgent to see to.

Your Mindset

Trust in yourself, and in your body’s ability to make milk. Learn about the goodness of breastfeeding, so you know whatever trials and tribulations you’re going through to make it work, it will be totally worth it.

It is easy to want to give up halfway and just get enough sleep at night, and fully depend on formula. Nothing wrong with that of course, if you made a conscious decision to do it and was not pressured into it by anybody, because the last thing you want to live with is regret as you look back and decided you gave up too fast.

If you’ve made a decision to breastfeed your baby, let your partner know. Let your family members (if they’re staying under the same roof) know.

Keep your energy up by eating well. Drink more than 8 glasses of water a day, because breastfeeding requires a lot of hydration. I’m sure you know that it also burns calories, so eat well, and don’t rush to lose weight. You’re a new mother providing the best for her baby, so focus on that and focus on recovering.

Go for walks, do mild stretching, read books that you enjoy, and binge on Netflix.

When you’re too tired to pump in the middle of the night sometimes, just go back to sleep.

When you’re too tired to breastfeed sometimes, just get your partner to feed with the bottle.

When you’re too tired to pump in the day time sometimes, just let it go. Pump when you feel better.

Don’t be so hard on yourself. Your feelings and emotional health matter. A few skips and cheat days here and there are totally cool! Get your partner to support you unreservedly, without judgment. Get your family members to do the same.

Your confinement months after delivery are supposed to be the most amazing months of your life. They’re not supposed to be filled with stress, anxiety, and frustration.

Your emotions translate themselves to your baby. When you feel angry, harassed and upset, your baby becomes more cranky. He can feel what you feel, though at a much lower level. When you’re calm and confident, he is calm and happy too. He can understand the undertones of anger and stress when you speak, and he feels soothed when your voice is soft, gentle and relaxed.

You’ll realize that the more relaxed you are, the more naturally your milk will come, and the lesser you worry about the supply, the lesser you will find it necessary to worry about supply.

The consistency of breastmilk changes to suit your growing baby.

The nutrition inside your breastmilk at 3 days is different from the nutrition inside at 3 weeks, and then again at 3 months. Even if the amount of milk ingested by your baby stays the same, he will still feel full, because breastmilk is adapting to what he needs. And that is why breastmilk is so amazing.

Brooklyn ended up drinking 5oz of breastmilk at around 6 weeks old, and he maintained that amount until he was 5 months old. He then went on to 6 ounces when he was half a year old, but I could keep up with his needs in terms of pumping because he was also starting to take in solids and depending lesser on breastmilk.

As he reached one and a half years old, I stopped pumping and latched him twice a day, with him on solids the rest of the day. He continued to latch until he was three and a half. I became pregnant when he was 2, and because he was latching throughout my pregnancy, I managed to immediately produce a lot of colostrum for my second born, Kingston.

Brooklyn weaned off on his own when Kingston was around two months old, and Kingston continued to breastfeed until he was slightly over a year old. A blotched beginning can end happily.

Six months after giving birth to Brooklyn, I signed up to attend courses and get myself certified as a registered breastfeeding counsellor, to ensure other mothers can kickstart their breastfeeding journey well…and to ensure that my breastfeeding experience with him could continue to thrive.

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.

Get your free download of my cheat sheet on Leaving The 9–5 and Going Online — here.