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:
- Why is it that I feel so engorged and people tell me its not enough.
- Why is it that I keep feeling the milk let down reflects but people tell me that is not enough.
- Why is it that my milk keep leaking but I only get to feed her 3 times a day.
- Why is it that my milk is leaking and I'm staring at my baby being fed formula.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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?
- 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!
- 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?)
- Why do they have to say to me that I can get breast milk from her if I don't have enough supply?
- 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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