Breastfeeding..

As you know I am a mother to a beautiful 6 months old baby girl. And just like any other mothers, I want to give the best to my baby, including.. breastfeeding. And I know, to all mothers-to-be out there, you too would want to give the best to your newborn. When my daughter was born, I became very anxious and not to mention, excited too, because this is it! I have finally become a mommy! Considered sudah naik pangkat lah!

But so much of thoughts keep running on my mind, such as; will I be a good mommy?.. How am I going to protect her from any harm or from a broken heart when she grows up?...How am I going to cope up between work, husband and my baby?...and oh yes, I even have this question running on my mind all the time: Will I have enough milk supply to nurse her? Seriously, I really did. But to my dismay, I could only nurse her till about 2 months ++ when I realized that my milk supply was slowly decreasing. It did not make any sense to me at all, as my gynae told me that so long I continuously nurse my baby, the flow will increase! I became angry at myself because every time when I nurse my baby, she gets cranky and starts to whimper.

Eventually, I realized that it is because my supply is not up to her demands. Gradually, day by day.. I began to slowly gave up. Until..it came to one point that I asked myself.. how can I give up too soon! So I started doing a bit of research here and there in the net and to my surprise, I found out a few tips that is pretty interesting. I tried following this particular tip and yes, the good news is, my milk supply did improve, not much but it did. The bad news is when the supply slowly improved, I had to return to working life and because there is no proper room in my office that allows me to pump my supply privately..it eventually slowed down again, not to mention as well that because I had to start all over again to build up the supply while coping up with work, I had no choice but to slowly decrease nursing my baby.

However, I wished so much that I found out about this tip from the beginning so that I could nurse my baby for a good 3 months and in fact, if the supply was so overwhelming, heck! I would even take a drive back home just to pump out the milk! Okay, I do want to stress out something here, and that is to the fathers. Breastfeeding can become really stressful especially in my case where the supply is low. If you were to keep pressuring your wife to nurse her baby, she is going to get very stressed up and trust me, it won't help. So, please try not to do that. Instead, gently talk to her and support her emotionally because she is vulnerable. A big thanks to the hormones! So, to all mothers who are facing this problem, please remember this.. you are not alone.

So anyway, it is interesting that I found out in the net that there is such a herb called Fenugreek that can actually stimulate milk production. This herb is normally used in one of the ingredients to cook curry. However, in the pharmacies, it is sold in pill form. There are even some sold in tea bag form. I searched high and low for this supplement and eventually found it in GNC Live Well Malaysia. Here is a snapshot of how the bottle looks like.



If you read it on the net you may find that there are mixed reports on the effectiveness of fenugreek on increasing milk production, but I have to say that it worked pretty well for me. I do have to warn you though, that after taking this..your sweat might begin to smell like maple syrup. Basically it's smelly! But who cares! We just want to give the best to our baby, right? I hope you are still with me on this. lol.

I also found out that a possible danger associated with fenugreek is that the herb is related to peanuts, the food most likely to cause an allergy and the allergic reaction in a baby is quite high. Many cases of colic, stomach upset, and diarrhea have been reported among babies whose mothers take fenugreek. But since I have tried and neither I nor my baby experience any of these, I feel that I should share this information out and really, I do recommend this to any mothers who are desperately finding ways and methods to increase their milk production. But my advise is, please make sure you consult your gynae first before consuming this. I am no doctor. I am only recommending this based from my experience. :) And oh yes, this is to be taken only after child birth and not during pregnancy!

Of course, you will find more tips in the net if you were to do more research but I have not tried those and hence, I will not recommend on something that I have not tried myself. Last but not least, I read somewhere before in an article that a woman should nurse even when her breasts do not feel full or heavy because she will still have milk that can be drained. Good Luck and if you have more tips to share, please do post it on the comments box. Cheers!