Beauty and the Breast (sic!) - Part 2

I congratulate all the new moms who decided to breast feed (BF) their babies! It would be a tough learning process for both mom and the baby.. Believe me, I know.. There would be tremendous amount of pressure as in our Chinese Asian society there are weird misconceptions:
1) BF is to save money and hence, for the poorer people.
2) Formula is more superior in nutritional value than breast milk (could not be more wrong! Read the labels on yr pack of formula - even the manufacturers say that breast milk is the best source of food for your little one).
3) Chinese Asian ladies have small boobs - so they produce less milk, unable to fully supply their babies needs. (Err, my boobs are small, but milk still comes in and satisfy my Little Tyke)
4) BF is troublesome. (BF is difficult to start, but after yr milk supply is regular, you do not need to carry bottles, warmer, formula, sterilizers, warm water and bib each time you go out. Just lift your shirt and pop a boob in yr hungry baby's mouth [pardon the crudeness])
5) Breast milk can go bad in your breasts! (This is a whole load of baloney! My confinement lady said that my baby had an allergic reaction due to bad breast milk in my boobs.. Err, for everyone's info - breast milk is more sterile than yr hands after you wash it with soap!)

I had to battle with one or more of these comments above during my early weeks of BF. No doubt breast milk comes in a little slow, you could supplement with formula for the first 2 weeks (some books totally ban the bottle until baby is around 8-9 weeks old to avoid nipple confusion), but lets not be too harsh on the new mom. I suffered from cracked, peeling and bleeding nipples from the first week onwards. Heck, I'm still having sore nipples as my Little Tyke is a ferocious eater after his 3 hour nap.

Oh, treatment for sore nipples would be to put Cocoa Butter or Papaw Ointment on the affected nipple. My mom-in-law was so sweet to buy me a tube of Palmer's cocoa nursing butter. I was using the papaw ointment at first, but it didn't heal as fast as the cocoa butter.

For bleeding nipples, I rested that breast for a day, but did not miss out on pumping it as baby feeds on the other breast. If I don't pump it, my milk supply would go low, and the breast would shrink in size. =( And after missing 2 feeds, my boob would be so hard, it's painful.

The expressed breast milk (EBM) could be fed to baby by bottle after he/she has finished with the good boob or if baby is satisfied with one boob, it can be stored in the freezer for emergency use. Depending on how good yr freezer is, it can stay fresh up to 1 week for a single door fridge. If it is a 2 door fridge, 3 months (but I usually use them in a months' time cos we open and close the freezer door a few times a day). If you have a separate freezer (temperature kept at a constant below 0 degrees C) that you don't keep other foodstuff other than yr EBM, it can stay fresh up to 6 months! Oh, precaution when pumping, we always sterilize our hands, the pump and the bottle to store our EBM. EBM must not be stored in the same compartment as raw meat to avoid cross contamination (this my hubby strongly agrees).

When I went back to work, I had to purchase a few bottles for milk storage. I made sure I pumped and stored at least 4 bottles of 3 oz of EBM before I start work. This is to make sure Little Tyke has enough to last him at least past the first day at work. It gave me added stress as I know I have to pump 3 hourly at work all the time cos Little Tyke would use up the supply in the freezer in a day. After that added stress, I purchased more bottles and used them to build up a supply of EBM. Hehe, I now have 12 bottles of stored EBM, but I don't use them anymore, cos I'm always around my baby now! Hmm, better start using them soon.. I read that the longer you store the EBM, the less antibodies it contains (The Nursing Mother's Companion - Kathleen Huggins).
Another book I find helpful is What to Expect First Year by Heidi Murkoff.