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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Confinement Story Ep1 My BF friendly CL

MY BF Friendly Confinement LADY

Soon as I know I am pregnant, I have started looking for “MY” confinement lady. Phobia of tradition confinement that I faced last round, I decided to hunt for a confinement lady that fit “MY Style”. She have to be a breastfeeding friendly and knowledgeable person and DO NOT start nagging me on all the pantang-ish things to do and not to do.

Finally I found “HER” :)

During my first confinement, I am not allowed to shower (Chinese believe that if you come in touch with water during the this period, you will have Rheumatism in future), stand or sit up for long (saying that it will weaken our bone or “expand” it causing a bigger hips) and only certain foods are allowed.

With my confinement lady help, she help me to overcome all the totally absolutely rubbish hardship.

Food.

She allowed me to take balanced diet. Which means, vegetables and fruits allowed on my plate (Yes, it is awesome!). I ate vegetables and fruits – which all these are the forbidden food as what mentioned by my first confinement lady. Well, in fact, my confinement lady admit that it is true that some of the vegetables are not good as they are too “cooling” for postpartum. However, there are certain type of vegetable and fruits that I can eat.

1. Broccoli (White and Green)
2. Spinach (Green and Red)
3. Carrot
4. Capsicum
5. Long bean
6. Mushroom (All types)

Also there is only one type of fruit allowed.

1. Apple

My confinement aunty also make some delicious milk boosting dessert for me.

1. Red bea (Only red!)
2. Pumpkin soup
3. Fungus lotus soup
4. Papaya fungus soup

 Baby Routine & Breast feeding.

A good well knowledge confinement lady does an awesome job not only on food but also help me a lot on my breastfeeding journey. Get it right on the first time, I would say you have conquer a successful breastfeeding journey – at least half of it.

How she do it?

She help me make a good routine for my baby. From my first and third week only direct latch – no pumping. As I am still weak due to postpartum, she encourage co sleep and dream feed baby so that I can rest while feeding. Fourth week is the week that I pump and feed via bottle at night. From then on, my baby will sleep with her. She advise this routine because my baby will sleep in a separate room when I goes back to work. Therefore, she help me train my baby in this way.

At first, my baby will scream out of her lung when bottle feed but things get better as days goes by. Trust me :)

She taught me how to bottle feed.

• Ask your partner / baby caretaker feed for you so that you can have some rest time, also to train your baby to accept soothing from others
• Change teat and bottles that your baby prefer – I used Avent and my baby is fine with it
• Feed small portion but more frequently
• When feeding via bottle make sure the flow is not too fast – can try medela calma teat for start

Postpartum daily routine.

Shower is allowed but with condition.

1. Washing hair only allowed on 10th day. Then after every 3 days.
2. Shower can be done every alternate day.
3. Only shower with herbs.
4. Hair must be dry up immediately.

Her rationing with shower is this. Olden day people do not shower because the weather is cold in China. They do not sweat. Since we are staying in Malaysia, despite we are Chinese shouldn’t we look at how the Malay do their confinement? I actually learned a lot from her.

Technically, for the first 6 weeks, I have been direct latching and pumping non stop. So other than makan, minum, tidur urut and feeding, I does nothing else.

You can read more about my post natal care – urut review here.

My Verdict?

Pro: as mentioned above.

Con: She do not help out with house work nor take care of my elder (she said so when I interview her).

I personally like her. For sure, I will engage her for my #3 child, if I have one.



Love, Hot MaMa

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