Learn to love your baby and yourself. As they say,a happy mamma leads to a happier baby!
Happy Mama for Happy Baby, indeed!
Handyland Design
Thinking about it now, the delivery and labour pains were the easy part. The hard part was‘feeding my baby, my ‘Baby Zee’. First time pregnant, I realised that feeding a baby is not as simple as it seems. They just don't automatically latch on to your breasts and start sucking milk out .. they need to be directed.
It takes a while for these li’l ones, to be able to drink milk. Considering, breast milk is their only food for a few months, without it they may not grow, may not be healthy and in fact, may not even stop crying out of hunger pangs. Is that something you or any mother would want? or did I ever in my dreams, imagine that for my first born? The answer is a clear, NO!
I’d go through a whole collection of products, so the milk supply for my baby could improve, and I could feed until he was full.Lactation tea, lactation powder, almonds, fennel and fenugreek seeds, oreven cumin seeds for that matter! You name any ‘seed’ and I consumed it, just so I could produce more milk for babyzee! But tell you what? It didn't help. None of it helped, in fact.
As music saves us all, someone recommended soft, soothing music to me . .so I decided to give that a try.
But guess what? Even music didn't come to my rescue!
Thanks to my husband, I decided to supplement the milk with a formula for our first born. Not breastfeeding a baby,is unfortunately considered ‘wrong’in our society and we get asked a lot, we get looked down upon.
It was however more irksome, to have someone ask you about it. Breastfeeding and my baby’s diet is something too personal, after all! In fact, this started getting me more and more stressed, and believe me, that is not the time to add on more tension or guilt on yourself! I would keep wondering about what I ate during my pregnancy, or what I could've avoided! Or maybe if I just had a healthier lifestyle before pregnancy, I could have been able to pump out more milk for my baby.
But as time passed, weeks turned into months and my stress and guilt started fading away. My baby's tummy was full, he was happy and growing very fine, maybe too damn fine! Seeing him happy made me realise, that we need to stop judging moms who ‘cannot’ or ‘do not’ breastfeed. It was my husband’s unconditional support, that helped me turn stress-free. He would do his research on what formula to buy, and come up with ideas for the ‘closest alternative’ to breast milk. We didn't have to live our life by the clock, as he could just pick up the bottle and feed Zee. And finally, the BRESSURE (pressure to breastfeed) was not there anymore!
So, to all the lovely mothers I’d like to say,
Snuggle with your baby, kiss em’, hug em’, don't get harrowed about not being able to
produce enough milk. The hugs and the kisses shall be remembered, more than the formula or breast milk.
Respect to the mommas who canand only breastfeed! You guys are ROCKSTARS, but it's not the world’s BIGGEST catastrophe if a momma can't.
