I’m one of those who only nurse on one side at each feeding. Because I was not certain that breastfeeding was going to work out, I initially only bought a manual pump, which turned out to be really important because my baby was admitted for photo therapy for her jaundice a few days after birth. […]
Breastfeeding
Rethinking my pumping schedule
I’ve been back at work part-time for 6 weeks now. So far, things have been going okay. I get a bit of me time while at work, try to catch up with the happenings, and it makes me feel like I’ve done something. While I would love to be a stay-at-home mom, the fragmented day […]
I just can’t win: breastfeeding edition
My mother didn’t breastfeed, so breastfeeding is as new to her as to me (although I have definitely read up more than she has). In the early days when my daughter was a newborn, we had troubles feeding her in the afternoons when she was sleepy. Finally under the advice of the pediatrician, we pumped […]
Going back to work
I thought I had the logistics down: at 10 weeks, I decided to go back to work part-time. I have 16 weeks of maternity leave, and I’m planning on taking the last 6 weeks part-time. That means working about 4 hours each day, which translates to pumping once at work. It seemed doable. It seemed […]
Supplemental nursing system
While preparing for my baby’s arrival, I spent a lot of time on internet forums (I still do!) trying to get a sense of what kinds of problems people have and how to solve them. Something that came up a few times, often accompanied by an exclamation of how few people know about it (including […]
You should not be freezing breastmilk
If you are freezing fresh breastmilk and feeding your baby previously frozen milk everyday, you may want to reconsider why you’re doing this. Because this is what everyone else is doing? There are too many articles out there teaching you how to generate a freezer stash of breastmilk, and too few articles explaining why frozen […]
Cluster feeding, comfort feeding?
In preparing to breastfeed, I read many books that talked about cluster feeding – which is when the baby wants to feed very often for a few hours over a stretch of days prior to a growth spurt. It’s a challenging time since the baby wants to latch so often, but important because she needs […]
Buying equipment for breastfeeding
I’ve been breastfeeding for 7 weeks now, and I’ve been purchasing my breastfeeding equipment along the way. I thought I should share the list of what I have purchased, when I purchased it, and how long I’ve used it for. The reason I didn’t buy everything at once is because I wasn’t sure I was […]
Supplementing feeds for newborns – Fed is Best
This story about a newborn dying of clusterfeeding is making its way around the internet recently, and it is garnering a lot of attention. And it should. (The CBS article is inaccurate has been corrected. Still, read the mom’s blog post for the most correct information.) I didn’t realize that there is a foundation warning […]
Underappreciated breastfeeding problems: Breastfeeding jaundice, sleepy newborn
The most daunting part of raising a newborn as a first-time mom is probably breastfeeding. Diapering, bathing and all the other tasks can be performed by another caretaker but not breastfeeding. And given how pro-breastfeeding almost everyone is these days, there is a lot of pressure to try very hard at it. I did my […]