After 4 days and 3 nights stay at the hospital, we are all ready to go home. I was feeling kind of frustrated and depressed all at once. I only managed to try breast feeding on the 3rd day of my stay in hospital. The 1st day of my stay I was still on drip and the wounds hurts tremenduously without pethidine and for my 2nd day, I was trying to move myself around with the drip off. When I think I am ready for breastfeeding on the 2nd night of my stay, the nurse has already given Matt his night feed and he is well-asleep already. Period!
Breastfeeding has proven itself to be a challenge indeed for the new parent. I felt really lousy as I couldn’t feed my baby well due to lack of sufficient breastmilk and I also do not know whether he is sucking in any colostrum at all which is his most nutritious headstart of all times. Nevertheless, my breasts are engorged by the 3rd day of my hospital stay. I do not know that the pain can be that bad and the worst is I do not know how to treat it.
The nurses at Thomson Hospital are too busy to attend to me, leaving me to feel even lousier by the hours. Baby cannot latch on properly as I am too engorged already. My mother-in-law was starting to get impatient while waiting for my discharge at the hospital and also of the anxiety to carry baby in her arms. This is not helping matters at all. I felt even more frustrated as the clock start ticking away. Gosh, Is this the so called post natal blues that I am feeling?
Everything is not in place by the time we are home. Both the milk bottle steriliser and pump are brand new and we had never really go through the instructions to figure out how to use them. Baby is crying again for milk, my breasts are still engorged, mother-in-law took things in her hands are turning our place into a bigger mess without consulting us. Panic stricken and with the anxiety to solve my own engorgement problem, I finally burst out in tears. This act has shocked the whole house!!!
Things start to ease off slighty after the breakdown though I still wasn’t in top form. I kept telling myself that I cannot sink into a depression as I still have quite a number of days to go and alot to learn. Shiqi came to my help at 11pm though I already told her I would be fine. She helped me set up a breastfeeding routine and taught me how to solve my engorgement problem when it comes again. The best was that she had fixed up my Avent pump. It is so easy! I was too anxious earlier on to have figured it out!
Ivy Junior 