Best for baby? Breastfeeding??

It's coming to the end of October 2009. Today, I took out a calander and began to mark down the weeks till my little girl is 1 years old... And it's less than the number of fingers on both my hands! 7 more weeks to go and it's going to be her first birthday!

Breastfeeding has became part and parcel of my life as I begin to live with expression of breastmilk and learning how to adjust my schedules around it (so that I still have a social life). I always remember the frustrations of a first time breastfeeding mother. From worrying about the painful engorged breast, blocked milk ducts and supply, quality of breastmilk, to battling with the washing and sterlising of pump bottles. All these "driving me up the wall" issues seem to go away one by one as I got myself into a routine of when to do what. When I look back at the breastfeeding days, it would not have been so tedious if I could feed via direct latching.   

From the crazy 3 hrly pumps during the initial 1.5 months ( i.e. i wake up at 3am to pump), to dropping my wee hours morning pump (so I could get un-interrupted sleep), to 4hrly pumps when I return to work (so that I only need to pump twice during working hours), to 6hrly pumps, to 12 hrly pumps (i only need to pump once during working hours).  

As I begin to drop the pumps, the economics theory of demand = supply kicked in really quickly. A lot of new mothers might not know but the dropping of pumps can seriously impact the supply of breastmilk. So if you intend to continue breastfeeding for long, do not drop the pumps so quickly! The largest and sharpest drop in my breast milk supply happened when I streched it to 12hrly. From a yield of 300ml per pump, I now only get about 6oz (which is 180-200ml). It's not too bad because it's just right/enough for one feed! :) Yeap, so now I do not need to stock up milk bags to store extra breast milk in the freezer.

I can attribute the success of my breastfeeding journey (so far) to 3 main factors: CONFIDENCE, DETERMINATION and SUPPORT ( what i term as CDs). 

CONFIDENCE: As I mentioned in my earlier post, I believe that breastfeeding is a confidence trick. Do not self doubt because nature made women the best nurturers of the little ones... (Then again, I also believe that not breastfeeding does not make you any less a nurturer/wonderful mother. Because if you think so, you'll be so stressed up/obsessed that it will negatively impact your breastmilk supply!) 

DETERMINATION: I was very decided on breastfeeding and aim to give my girl breast milk for a year. Of course there were people who will say "Aiyah, more than 6 months, enough already lar. Can stop liao lor". But my answer to them is always the same "Haha... it's almost 1 year, so I give my girl breast milk until 1 year lor.". 

SUPPORT: The all important factor which comes to play when I just feel like giving up. My husband's support, my mother in law (who shared with me on the other uses of breastmilk - like curing sore eyes, etc). And not to mention, my work place (i.e. my bosses/superior were OK with me pumping during office hours and the office enviornment - i.e. meeting rooms without windows and doors where I could lock to express milk).

Seriously, if my little girl can feed directly, I would not have been marking the weeks to stop pumping. (Yes! To all those who told me to stop after 6 months, I would continue to breastfeed beyond a year!)