My Breastfeeding Journey/ Woes and how we survived it

Uncategorized Oct 12, 2020

Breastfeeding Journey with the twins

I did not mange to breastfeed the twins fully 10 years ago.

Maybe it was stress from an early birth. They were 31 weekers.

Maybe it was so early, my body had trouble reconciling with that fact that it needs to start production. The oxytocin wasn’t flowing because I got stressed up and triggered each time the nurse asked me “Did you bring any food mummy?”, when I visited them daily at the NICU.

And I only had small bottles each time.

Maybe it was stress from the daily commute and the babies were not with me to trigger any stimulation.

Maybe it was too much of domperidone, papaya fish soup, fenugreek etc ….

You name it, I tried it.

But non helped much.

Too many maybes, and we will never be able to pinpoint what exactly. 

 

Initially it was ok, because the twins only needed 1ml per feed. They were that tiny.

Then they needed 5ml, then 10ml, then 30ml…….. each feed. Multiply it by two.

But my body didn’t seem to get the memo and the supply just wasn't increasing along with their appetites.

Those days, KKH did not have a milk bank yet. So the moment they graduated from NICU. The nurses supplemented them with Similac Neosure (formula for small babies) to make sure they had enough to grow well.

After 5 months of hand-expressing what seemed like less than ONE feed (after a whole day), I decided to give up on the stress and the twins went on full-fed formula after that.

 

Breastmilk is the best

The posters, commercials, infographics everywhere and professional advise from breastfeeding advocates have made it very loud and clear.

And I got it.

Loud and clear.

With baby number 3, I was determined to give him the best. Something I wasn’t able to give the twins back then. We are blessed that the twins had grown strong, heathy and active, and fell sick much lesser than many kids we know (breastfed or not), so we knew breastmilk wasn’t indicative of a child’s health and immunity down the road.

But I also read and studied a lot about giving a baby a good head start with good microbiomes and nutrients from mama. And with one baby this time, I had no excuse not to provide him with that.

Except, this guy also pulled a fast one on us.

And decided to break his waterbag at 33 weeks.

Which led to a cascade of events where he popped into the world early at 34 weeks, making him the 3rd preemie in the house.

Talk about #fomo

(You can read the full recount of my Birth Story here)

And you can imagine the first worry that came to my mind.

Yes ….. it’s dejavu again!

My biggest fear - all the challenges and the ‘maybes' that I went through 9 years ago, would surface again.

But I tried to keep a positive mind.

I just focused on doing what I was supposed to do, before making any judgement/ assumptions.

When do you decide enough is enough?

And so the journey started all over again.

The LCs prescribed Domperidone, my friend introduced me to power pumping. Another taught me about scheduled pumps. The body needs to be taught when it needs to kick in the supply.

My milk didn’t quite flow even after 2 weeks of working hard on the pump and going to NICU daily for skin-on-skin time with baby. There was not enough for him and he was fortunate that KKH has a milk bank to supplement his appetite.

The ultimate break down came when I was sitting with him one day at NICU and I saw his 'ward-mate' getting ready to be discharged. The nurse brought out a huge bag of frozen breastmilk for his mum to bring home with her, because there was too much excess.

I remembered looking at the huge bag and couldn’t help feeling out of the sorts the whole day! I had been consoling myself that it was because of the early birth that the milk was taking some time to flow. But seeing that huge bag felt like a smack in the face to me because that mum had a preemie situation too!

 So what was wrong with me?

And I remembered that day became a day of easy triggers. Because on the same day, I broke down too when the lady at Mr Bean packed a blueberry pancake for me, even though I asked for a hazelnut pancake.

Was that depression?

After baby Darshn was home for 4 weeks, my milk still didn’t quite flow. We were blessed that a fellow mama who had attended one of our classes donated her excess BM to supplement his needs. I attempted power pumping, full day latching, took domperidone, saw the lactation consultant, ate and drink loads (including lactation cookies and oats) etc … but the milk flow was still pathetic.

 Emotionally it was hard.

I couldn't recount the number of times tears just rolled at the smallest triggers or a simply just someone asking me how I was doing. 

Reading about breastfeeding advocates talking about how breastfeeding is all in the mind and connection with the baby, and how it's nature's law that ‘all mums can feed their babies’ etc … was hard.

And then I had my postnatal masseur sharing stories about mums she knew who were small-breasted but had over supply, and mums who were big breasted but had no supply. It was bizarre how your milk ducts do not correlate to the size of your breasts.

I also personally know of a case study where a new mum had absolutely no milk flow, no matter how the LC massaged, squeezed and coaxed. Then I would come across another article from a midwife somewhere, citing “let the oxytocin flow and the milk will come”.

Oh gosh, the amount of stories and articles could make me go insane.  

So after persisting for another 3 weeks of ‘full day latching’ till he was about 10 weeks old, and seeing that the milk supply was just not even remotely sufficient for him, we decided to simply supplement with formula.

I have two other kids to give my time and attention to. Instead of fighting what seemed like a losing battle and I might end up making everyone around me go crazy, we decided that this would help with sanity.

 

Which formula milk?

Then came the question of which formula milk to give him?

In fact, when we left the hospital with him, we had picked up a tin of Similac Neosure. But the tin had expired long ago, because I was adamant about latching-on-demand, supplementing only with donor BM when needed.

So we picked up another new tin of Smilac Neosure to supplement.

Similac Neosure was what we were familiar with as the twins were on it for pretty much throughout the whole of their infancy till 1+ years old. They grew up well on it and after 9 years, that was our first option, since we are looking at another preemie again. We needed a formula which had higher triglyceride content. We went with what we knew and didn’t check other brands and options.

But it seems that Baby D was not taking to Similac so well.

Each time he had a bad reflux after taking the formula, he would smell really horrible. As adults, we found the smell bad.

Bad enough for us to question - why?

It was just milk he’s throwing out. How can the smell be so bad?

That prompted me to check for other options online.

I just went ahead to search for “Organic Formula”.

Because if we were to move away from what we were familiar with, we might as well go for the best ‘cleanest’ option. And I wanted to know how much more expensive a tin of organic infant formula would cost.

And boy were we surprised!

A tin of organic infant formula (any brand) was actually cheaper a tin of Similac Neosure!

Once we saw that, it was very easy to make a decision. A switch to organic formula milk was definitely the next step.

Why Organic?

Simply because, organic anything typically involves lesser ingredients in the making of this product. And because it's certified organic ( be it USDA or UK Standards or Aussie standards), the ingredients list has to go through a stringent check list to make sure that everything inside is natural and well …. organic.

That means…. No synthetic substances. No added hormonal substances. No ingredients with odd looking numbers and alphabet codes, which we likely won’t know what they are till we scrutinise and google search every single one of them.

Just look at the list in Similac Neosure here.

 

In any case, because he had been having bad reflux, we made a simple deduction that he was not digesting the Similac formula well. There’s stuff inside that his guts did not like.

So the alternative formula has got to be cleaner and easier on his guts. And organic formulas are definitely the way to go. What more after realising that they are not going to stress our pockets further than Similac. It’s a no-brainer.

 

Thank you Kendamil

In fact, we found a few options for organic infant formula.

But we really just shortlisted two to compare and made our decision.

1. The commonly seen Bellamy from Australia, where one tin of 990g costs $54.90

2. And Kendamil from the UK, where one tin of 800g costs $49.95

(FYI: A tin of Smililac Neosure (850g) costs $62.90 - you can see the stark difference)

 

And we decided to give Kendamil a try simply because ‘palm oil’ was still present in Bellamy’s formula. And because we wanted ingredients as friendly to his guts as much as possible, we chose Kendamil instead.

When the first tin of Kendamil arrived, we were very excited to let him try and have a go at it.

I just have to share that the the first time I prepared a Kendamil feed, has got to be the BEST experience I ever did of ALL the formula feeds I ever made as a mum.

It smelt soooooo good!!

It smelt like fresh milk!

The moment I stirred the formula into warm water for him, I knew this was the right formula any infant should take (if breast milk was not available). Because it just smelt like the real deal - FRESH MILK!

Plain, clean, fresh milk, as it should be.

All this time, we were smelling crappy, synthetic smells from Similac! And we gave that to our kids …. gosh, we didn’t know better.

As expected, Baby D took to Kendamil really well!

His refluxes reduced drastically. Even on occasions when he did regurgitate milk, it didn’t smell bad at all like previously.

When Baby D was 4 months (corrected age)

As of this writing, he is still on Kendamil Organic Infant Formula, even though he has just passed one year old.

Yes yes, we know that Stage 2 Formula is cheaper and we could save money by switching him.

But we did this for the twins when they were preemies. They were on neonatal formula till 1+ year old.

Infant formulas have slightly higher percentage of triglyceride content, as compared to formulas put together for the later stages. There was no harm in giving them more triglycerides, since they needed to put on weight, and my babies have always been on the lower percentile (even after a year on formula).

We decided to do the same for Baby D as well. He has put on weight steadily ever since. And now at one year old, he is eating oats and other solids like a champ, on top of 2-3 milk feeds a day.

When Baby D was 5 months (corrected age)

We are on the last two tins of infant formula milk. And we will be graduating him to Stage 2 Organic Formula after he finishes the last two tins of infant formula! Exposing him to all sorts of foods and textures had been our priority since he started to take an interest in food at 5 months old. We are glad that he has adventurous tastebuds and open to all sorts of foods and textures at the moment, on top of his morning and night milk feeds.

 

I hope my sharing of this story can help to encourage any mum who is suffering from a stressful breast-feeding experience. I believe many women experience the same but don’t talk about it because (just my  personal thoughts) these days it can feel like we are being judged for not being able to ‘provide’ for our babies when it’s supposed to be “nature’s bidding”.

I absolutely understand how hard and emotional it can be when experiencing these pains and challenges right at that point in time. And we WILL have to experience it, to be able to make informed choices after. Yet on hindsight, take heart to know that this is but a speck of our child’s life journey. He/ She can continue to thrive even without breastmilk (if that is something that’s hard to provide for)

If you know any mum who needs a word of encouragement, feel free to share my story and it might help lift a fellow mama out of her depressive state.

The Twins and their baby brother

 

>> Full recount of my Birth Story here

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