While most mothers try their best to breastfeed their baby up to a certain age, it may not always be easy. Many mothers, whether after delivering their first child or second or more, struggle with some challenges that come with breastfeeding. This is especially true for working mothers. There are many challenges of breastfeeding for working mothers and it can be daunting if any problems are not worked out early on.
Photo by Studio 7042/Pexels
In conjunction with World Breastfeeding Week that falls on 1-7 August this year, baby care and mother care product specialists Tollyjoy organised a chat with midwife and lactation expert Jennifer Hor along with two working mothers, Sheryl Ho, a part-time dance instructor, and lecturer Hani Hazirah.
Among the topics discussed were milk production including undersupply as well as oversupply, getting the right balance and weaning. Just like any other mother, the two moms here faced many challenges of breastfeeding for working mothers but managed to overcome them and share their tips here. The mothers also received valuable feedback and tips from Hor as the expert.
Grace Ng, Manager of Tollyjoy Malaysia with Sheryl Ho, Hani Hazirah and lactation expert, Jennifer Hor
Challenges of Breastfeeding For Working Mothers
“The challenges I faced between the second week up till today would have to be the exhaustion and tiredness from pumping and feeding my son, Adam. He is a mix of bottle-feeding and direct latch (but 100% breastmilk), and he prefers direct feeding rather than the bottle so I try to breastfeed him every time I am around him.”
Sheryl Ho, 32-year-old Part Time Dance Instructor
“The oversupply of my breastmilk and strong letdown are a couple of challenges I am facing currently. I need to pump every two hours and sometimes right after every feeding. My baby sputters due to overactive letdown.”
Hani Hazirah, 29-year-old lecturer
These are just two of the challenges of breastfeeding for working mothers. Sitting down with Sheryl, Hani and Jennifer Hor, HerInspirasi.com gained insight on the problems these mothers went through on their breastfeeding journey, while Hor shared insights and tips that would be useful to all breastfeeding mothers, whether working or not.
Hani: With my first child, I really struggled with the milk supply. Like I would stock up for tomorrow today, and tomorrow for the next day. I didn’t even have extra milk to use in emergency. With the second child, I managed to establish my pumping routine from my first day of confinement, so I kept pumping every day until I was able to get 70 ounces (about 2 litres) per day.
Sheryl: When I went for my check up with my gynae, she told me that I had to breastfeed my baby for at least a year. So I had this mindset that “I must breastfeed for one year.” So when my baby came and I had no milk, I was crying every day. I kept telling myself that something is wrong with me and I became very depressed and emotional. So that didn’t help with my supply. And my son would feed for a long time so that made me more emotional from the fatigue. It finally started getting better for me when I started to accept that I might have to mix formula milk. This was when my baby was at 6 weeks. And then for some reason, I managed to breastfeed him until he was full, and now he’s 100 percent breastfed until today.
What The Expert Says
Jennifer: Going back to both of your experiences, if we go back to breastfeeding, it’s actually from the breast directly to the baby. And if you understand the physiology of how milk is made, it’s actually a process where the supply and the demand has to eventually balance out the equation. And it all has to do with the hormones in your body. So it’s the breast being stimulated by the baby, the brain releasing the hormones and milk comes out.
The good thing about the baby is that the baby’s demand is not the same. There will be a time when your baby will have a growth spurt and at that time your milk production will not be enough at first but after that will meet the baby’s demand. After the growth spurt, your supply will suddenly boost up. So technically, you don’t need to start expressing so early after baby is born. This is for a few reasons. Firstly , when you first start expressing, your baby feeds very frequently. So when your baby feeds frequently, and you express after feeding, you don’t have enough time for the breast to fill up for the next feed.
Also, the baby in the first few weeks is a very slow drinker so the feeding session is longer. So the intervals between the feedings are almost back to back, and if you also express back to back, one of two things happen: One – you get very stressed out because your supply or your stockpile doesn’t seem as much, then you find yourself very tired. Then you find that after expressing the baby is hungry again, and you get very tired. Then you express again but it’s too little, and you’re stressed out. It’s a Catch-22.
When we talk about optimal production and breastfeeding cycles, it will usually be established only around the 6th to 8th week. By that time, you will see that suddenly everything falls into place.
Sheryl: Prior to the 6th week mark I actually told my husband, who asked many times if we should get formula milk just in case and I kept saying, “It’s okay, I’ll feed him.” I kept having my baby latched on 24/7 basically, as it seemed that he was always hungry. I said that we’ll give it one more week and if I really couldn’t breastfeed enough then we’ll start introducing the formula.
Jennifer: That also helped you in another way because you basically took the stress away from yourself.
Sheryl: And after that, I started pumping as I was getting engorged. And just recently, I was able to donate 50 bags of breast milk.
The post Overcoming The Challenges of Breastfeeding For Working Mothers appeared first on Her Inspirasi.
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