I’m a strong advocate of breastfeeding. Breastmilk is the best milk of all times. It benefits both the mother and baby. For baby, it gives her the total nutrition for the 1st 6 months of her life. According to survey, breastfed babies tend to have higher IQ’s compared to formula fed babies. They tend to be stronger and healthier. The longer you breastfeed, the better. For mothers, it can reduce postpartum bleeeding, reduce the risk of ovarian and breast cancer and can actually help in going back to prepegnancy weight fast.

I breastfed my first child, Schenker, for 16 months. I am glad I did. I’m happy that I gave him the best start of his life. He might be a picky eater now, but he’s healthy and smart. Although it took me a while to regain my prepegnancy weight because I gained more than I was supposed to gain. It was my fault. But with my second, a few months of breastfeeding and I was back to my prepregnancy weight.

Here’s my BF journey with my little girl, Samantha:

When Samantha was just born, I asked my Ob/Gynae if I could breastfeed Samantha first before taking her to the nursery. She said yes. So I did. She gave Samantha to me and I started taking her mouth to latch on. She finally did after a few tries. It was wonderful… It was like an instinct for her to latch on and suck. I didn’t have milk coming in (or out?)yet but she did suck.
3rd day – the milk finally came in. we were at home then. it was so difficult to get up and take her to feed coz my stitches were really painful everytime I moved. and how painful it was for my milk “machine” too! it was really tempting to give formula coz it was really very painful and I didn’t have enough rest. but i tried resisting the urge coz I knew if i started giving formula, the milk production will decrease.

5th day – i almost wanna give up. after all the pain… tiredness… and sleepness nights… i just wanna abort the idea of breastfeeding samantha (exclusively)… But peter was very supportive (or pushy?) of breastfeeding. i told him actually that i wanna give up already… but he asked me to wait for at least one more week. and i said okay… why not… one more week wasn’t too long.

after a week- i felt comfortable feeding her already… no more pain… the milk was flowing to the max… sometimes Samantha would cry in frustration because she couldn’t keep up with the flow. she would unlatch and the milk would just spray like someone from inside was spraying the milk out! and i thought, i had breastfed my boy for 16 long months… why not for samantha? so i decided to keep going.

now – still happily breastfeeding (plus solids now). and planning to do as long as we both can do it!

way to go samantha! way to go… me! hehehe.

I am a strong advocate of breastfeeding. Everytime I know somebody’s getting pregnant or somebody’s gonna give birth, I talk to them about breastfeeding. It would be good to know that through breastfeeding, we let our children get the best start in life.

Tips for a Successful Breastfeeding

by: janet