How I manage my expressed breast milk for my caretaker to feed my baby

As a new mom before going back to workforce, I have progressively trained my body to pump during working hours and breastfeed during the hours where I expect myself to be at home with baby.

Since my baby is the first grandchild ever in my father-in-law's family tree, you can imagine that they could not bear to hear the slightest cry from my baby. Certainly, they would like to ensure that my baby can be fed right away once she is awake.

In order to demonstrate to my family that feeding breast milk is easier, faster and more convenient, I have put some thoughts into how my mother-in-law can prepare the breast milk and feed my baby as soon as possible. Here is the practice I am currently adopting:

Items required

1. Storage bottles (Bumblebee standard size)
2. Teats (Hito silicone slow flow standard teat - breastlike)
3. Electric hot water dispenser
4. Timer

Preparation the night before

• My storage bottles are my baby's feeding bottles. 
• I will ensure that each storage bottle is filled with 3 - 4 oz of breast milk. This is my baby's intake per feed. 
• Since I will be away from home for 12 hours, I will prepare 5 storage bottles (4 feeds + 1 stand by feed) in the fridge. 
• I bought extra teats and prepared the teats in advance. Since I have quite a number of storage bottles, I took out some of the bottle caps and fixed the teats into the ring. I will leave the teats with ring in the sterilizer. 

When my baby is up for feeding time, what my mother-in-law will do is:

1. Take out the readily available breast milk in the storage bottle.
2. Fill some hot water into a cup using the electric hot water dispenser.
3. Warm the milk by placing the storage bottle into the cup filled with hot water.
4. Set timer for 5 minutes [We have timed earlier that milk is warmed in 5 minutes using 98 degrees hot water].
5. Once time is up, take out the bottle cap and replace with teat. 
6. Feed baby.

How do I find this method?

• When my mother-in-law set the timer for 5 minutes, she can still hold and play with my baby while waiting for times up. At least she doesn't need to rush to mix milk powder into warm water at the right quantity and test the milk temperature, while my baby gets cranky and cry out loud. :-)
• Since the storage bottles are the feeding bottles, it means my mother-in-law doesn't need to transfer the milk into special feeding bottles. This will save time in milk preparation, avoid unwanted spills, and save the time spent in washing feeding bottles. :-)
• Of course, I will need to invest a little more time every night to make sure that all the items are well prepared. 

How do you prepare your breast milk for your caretaker to feed your child?


- underweight mom

Confession of an underweight mom

So my baby has finally turned 6 months old. I've waited so long to blog about this.

How do I feel like being a mom?
I feel like I'm running on a threadmill non stop, racing against the time. I feel so exhausted all the time. I feel like I'm being tortured by baby for not allowing me to sleep from 2am to 5am during midnight recently for 1 week since she doesn't want to sleep after milk.

What challenges do I face as a new mom?
Just like any other new mom, breastfeeding is a challenge to me. To be more precise, it is a different set of challenges to an underweight mom like me since people tend to have the perception that I will not have sufficient breast milk for my baby.

It is a challenge to me because my confinement lady was not exactly pro breastfeeding. She kept commenting that I am so skinny (my pre pregnancy weight was 38kg) and I don't have enough supply for my baby. I am pretty sure anyone who looked at me would have doubts that I can actually breastfeed.

The whole confinement month really drove me nuts because I just couldn't understand:

1. Why is it that I feel so engorged and people tell me its not enough. 
2. Why is it that I keep feeling the milk let down reflects but people tell me that is not enough.
3. Why is it that my milk keep leaking but I only get to feed her 3 times a day. 
4. Why is it that my milk is leaking and I'm staring at my baby being fed formula. 
5. Why is it that the course I attended strongly encouraged us to feed our baby during midnight to help continuously sending signals to our body to produce more but the old folks disagreed and strongly believe that I need to rest and sleep through the night. 
6. Why can't they understand that I want to feed my baby during midnight hence I want to sleep with my baby but my baby slept with my confinement lady and it gave me and baby a hard time to adjust when the confinement lady left. 
7. Why can't they understand that I just want to give the best to my baby and I didn't even mind about hard work and sacrifices of a breastfeeding mom? 
8. Why can't they just trust that I can breastfeed like any other mom? Just because I'm skinny and I used to work late even during pregnancy it doesn't mean that I can't fully breastfeed like other mom! 
9. Why do they have to compare me to another new mom who has abundant of milk (who can pump 7oz from 1 side and another 7oz one and half hour later?) 
10. Why do they have to say to me that I can get breast milk from her if I don't have enough supply? 
11. Why is it that I can't try my way in breastfeeding, based on all the research I have done and courses I have attended, but instead should listen to you that its not enough and its useless to see doctor? 

I feel so challenged when I have to go against all odds. And I felt like my brain is tearing apart as I just don't understand why is it that those that I learned on my own contradicts what the experienced old folks told me. Until a point of time I don't know who to believe and trust.

In the end, when I brought my baby for 1 month old check up, she referred me to another paed who is also a certified lactation consultant to help me in breastfeeding. The lactation consultant checked on me and told me that there's nothing wrong with me and I can just go ahead with exclusive breastfeeding and pump twice a day for storage. So I decided to trust the lactation consultant and did exactly what she advised. And true enough, things worked out well and now I'm still fully breastfeeding my 6 months old baby :-)

To be honest, I never felt not being trusted so much in my life and the prejudice that was being thrown straight to my face. Just because I'm skinny. That's the biggest challenge I face in breastfeeding as a new underweight mom.

How about you?

- the underweight mom

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