Written by | Tang Xiaofu
Editors| Gong Yufan, Wu Xun
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For new mothers, if childbirth is physical pain, breastfeeding brings them physical and emotional pain. For a long time, the publicity about breastfeeding only popularizes the benefits of breast milk, but ignores the troubles, helplessness and frustration that mothers face in this process.
Choosing to breastfeed is never an easy decision.
Here's what a new mom said:
The middle-aged woman was the caregiver I hired. She took the newborn baby over and with one free hand she neatly pulled open my clothes, tugged at my nipples, and shoved them into his mouth. Without bothering to greet me, she explained her actions to the female relatives who were watching: "Usually half an hour after giving birth, I will start to assist my mother in breastfeeding. "It is said that this is the so-called best time for newborns to suck and stimulate lactation. After that, he used me as a mannequin to explain the correct feeding position to the onlookers.
I lay in bed, the anesthetic hadn't completely dissipated, and the whole person was confused. The caregiver and relatives circled around my bedside while I lay in the middle with my breasts bare. Those few minutes passed, and I felt like a caged animal being watched by humans, like a thorn in the back, losing my sense of dignity. Despite the anger, under the action of the anesthetic, I was powerless to stop it.
The nurse taught everyone how to breastfeed the baby, and then when it came to the baby's meal, the relatives took turns to take the baby to me, and then pulled my nipple to the baby's mouth. The movement of them pulling on my nipples was as rude and natural as stuffing cotton into a pillowcase. After plugging, I will stand next to me to continue to observe, reminding me from time to time to hold my breasts up so as not to block the baby's nose, or to put the ear pestle to the edge of my breast and listen carefully to the sound of the baby swallowing.
My breasts were thus exposed to them, without any privacy. The wound in my abdomen and the oxytocin hanging needle made me have no strength to resist at all, and I could only beg my mother to hand me a blanket to cover me and the baby while feeding.
Unexpectedly, it attracted my mother's accusations, and she protested with great dissatisfaction: "Everyone is a woman, look at what's wrong, who do you think rarely sees you naked, and I don't think it's cute for babies to suckle." "My mother felt that I was pretentious, and I suppressed my anger and did not dare to get angry, worried that if I returned to milk, the baby would not be able to eat breast milk."
Greater pain is yet to come.
On the 4th day after giving birth, my milking situation was still not very good. There is no feeling of breast swelling, and the baby is often hungry and cries "wow" and has to take milk powder to make up for it. I was so anxious that I quickly sought out the prolactinator Xiao Wang to prolactin. The process of prolactin lasted for 40 minutes, first using an instrument to "excite" the breasts and stimulate lactation, and then manually unclogging the mammary glands and kneading them according to the acupuncture points, like noodles.
With unbearable pain, the milk gradually increased. In order to maintain my posture, I grasped the sheet with both hands and involuntarily tightened my toes, encouraging myself to survive this long ordeal by fantasizing about how smart and cute my baby would become after eating breast milk.
My expression must have been hard to see, and Xiao Wang began to chat with me trying to divert my attention. She told me that the breast is equivalent to a milk machine, the more the lactator helps the mother empty the milk, the next time you can produce more, usually the most important way to chase milk, is to let the baby suck more, the more breast milk is sucked.
After the finish of the milk, I was sweating profusely, and my already stiff body seemed to have difficulty even turning over. My mother brought me a hot towel, wet my breasts, and encouraged me that all the hard work was worth it.
For the sake of the children, of course, it is worth it, and the "authority" of breast milk is unquestionable. I booked a prolactin package 10 times in Xiao Wang's place in one go, the first three days she came to my door every day to help me prolactin, then every 1 day, and then the next time every 2 days, and so on, until the package ran out.
On the night of prolactin, my breasts had a faint feeling of swelling, and I remembered the experience of "the baby sucked more and more", and when the baby woke up, I quickly fed her. However, she ate for 20 minutes on the left and another 20 minutes on the right, and my arms were numb, and it seemed that I had not eaten enough, and she was humming in her mouth and refusing to sleep.
I didn't want my milk chasing plan to be broken, and insisted on not giving her milk powder, so the baby made a fuss from 2 a.m. to more than 3 o'clock, and finally closed his eyes in confusion. But I didn't sleep for 10 minutes and cried with hunger, I picked her up again and fed her, she sucked intermittently for a long time before going to sleep, and when she put it on the cot, she cried and woke up, so she had to pick her up again and feed her. And so on.
I was extremely tired, my ears were buzzing like a honeycomb, and my head was like a kangaroo jumping and jumping, and my whole body hurt. I lay in bed, trying to cry without the strength to even die.
I live in a third-tier city in Sichuan, and like some struggling young people in the north, Shanghai and Guangzhou, I have been rooted in the media industry for many years. After passing thirty years, the work and marriage tended to be stable, and I also saved a certain amount of savings with my husband, so I began to prepare for pregnancy. Before that, I had been studying parenting and was physically and mentally well prepared. When two bars appeared on the pregnancy test stick, I felt that life was going exactly according to my own plan, and everything was so beautiful. After I was pregnant in October, I gave birth to a baby girl by caesarean section.
It is said that the highest level of pain is the pain of childbirth, and women who have experienced giving birth have the courage to face everything. I luckily escaped the pain of normal birth, and after giving birth to the baby safely, I thought that I could easily become a mother. As everyone knows, I just crossed the threshold of childbirth, and the real suffering begins with breastfeeding.
When I first gave birth, my relatives used their own experience to explain to me the benefits of breast milk, and the overwhelming leaflets in the hospital and the parenting knowledge I learned mostly encouraged breastfeeding. Because compared to milk powder, breast milk is safer, richer in ingredients and easier to digest and absorb, which can help babies get stronger immune protection.
In everyone's perception, breast milk has an absolute "authority" that I cannot question. So, I began to breastfeed my mother in a hurry, and because of my insufficient milk, the baby still did not have enough to eat and could not sleep soundly during the day. I couldn't bear it, had to feed her a little powdered milk, and after eating, she slept from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., and woke up in a vicious circle of crying again.
After the lactation package, I began to use another "PP milk chasing method" (full name power pumping, that is, power pump milk chasing method). This milk chasing method relies on the breast pump, according to the principle of milk discharge, each time with the breast pump first pump for 20 minutes to ensure that the first milk discharge is successful, and then rest for 10 minutes, and then pump for 10 minutes. This cycle lasts for a total of one hour.
I referred to the usual work mode, recorded the number of milk chasing, the number of milliliters, and set a milk chasing schedule for myself, and strived to complete the KPI in a short period of time.
Picture | my hour-long milk chase
In those days, every day when I woke up, I "sucked milk", and my mentality often collapsed. I set the alarm, the alarm went off at night, sleep was interrupted, and the moment was like a slap in the face, and I had to sit up forcibly. Looking at the sleeping husband next to him, his heart was full of hatred. I deliberately turned on the lights to the brightest, and the pump to the maximum, the sound of the machine motor was particularly harsh at night. My breasts hurt, my heart hurt even more, the lights were turned off, and the endless night made it difficult for me to sleep.
My husband's concern for me is only to admit that breastfeeding is indeed very hard, but he seems to be blind to my hard work. I complained to my family, they all felt that it was not as serious as I said, and other mothers also came this way, why can't I do it.
After all this effort, my milk did increase a little, but within two days I was over-pumping and my nipples were cracked. The blood-red wounds stretched over my body like the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, and every subsequent sucking was like torture. I gritted my teeth and insisted on chasing milk, the amount of milk has been improved, and I must not give up halfway. Once, after using the breast pump in severe pain, I found that there was a string of fine blood spots on the cover, and I had to rest for a day.
A day later I went to take the baby to feed, the wound that did not heal was cracked again, and the baby sucked out the blood bubbles, so I couldn't hold on and had to interrupt the feeding. When I recovered from my injury, the amount of milk that had been hard to accumulate plummeted again. The purgatory-like milk chasing process finally won my husband's sympathy, and we decided to feed the baby formula, but my mother firmly opposed it.
She swore to me that breast milk is definitely more nutritious, healthier and better for your baby's growth and development. She described breastfeeding babies as like laying a foundation, the foundation is laid, the high-rise buildings built in the future are relatively strong, if the foundation is not laid, no matter how to repair it in the future will not help.
I was shaken. Every mom wants to give her baby the best thing possible, and I don't want to lose my baby's immunity to other babies for my own reasons. Even if the formula of milk powder is getting closer and closer to breast milk, I am not completely sure that I dare not easily put my child in the possible hidden dangers. I decided to go the other way, to find a way to buy my baby other mother's breast milk while maintaining the current amount of milk.
The first thing that comes to mind is an app that sells unused items, and I have had previous experience buying and selling items on it, and I plan to try my luck. But "breast milk" is an item that cannot be sold, and I entered multiple keywords to find a baoma seller in the same city. On the product page is a photo of the baby's bottle, and everyone tacitly agrees. Her list price is 100 ml of breast milk 12 yuan, if the baby eats 800 ml a day, it is 96 yuan, which is more expensive than the price of milk powder on the market.
I first took a picture of the amount of the day on the Internet, and offered to go to her house to get the goods, but I was directly refused, and she said that she could only accept home delivery, not face-to-face delivery. I had to explain that after all, it was something that the baby had entered, so I needed to be cautious, and I offered to carry the breast pump and the milk storage bag myself. As a result, she directly blocked me, and the last sentence sent before blacking was: Things are forced, you don't buy some people buy.
Buying breast milk ended in failure, and my mother decided to find breast milk for her baby herself. After the confinement, my mother pushed the baby out of the door every day, hanging around in the community and the nearby square with many people, waiting for the opportunity to observe other small babies who were almost the same size, and actively nagged with the mother.
Within a week, my mom had a grasp of the family situation of my mother who often went to walk her baby. She first distinguished between the milk powder baby and the breast milk baby, and then compared whether the different breast milk babies were strong, in order to judge the nutritional level of breast milk. In the end, she stared at the white and tall Chao Chao, she and the Chao Chao mother nagged for a week, after feeling familiar, finally asked the question, can you ask some Super Super leftover frozen milk. I didn't expect Chao Chao's mother to agree.
Unlike me, the supermother was prone to swollen milk and leaks, and excessive breast milk was a burden for her. Her chest was often swollen like a stone, and when she touched it lightly, it hurt like a thousand needles, and it was difficult to straighten her back. Forced to pump at any time.
Figure | the pumping volume of the ultra-super mother for 5 minutes
Chao's mother said that once at night, Chao Chao made a lot of noise before going to sleep, she was too sleepy and did not milk the cow in time. When she was swollen, she found that her chest had swollen out of the green tendons, and her clothes were gently brushed, like pressing a thousand jun boulders. She got up, milked the cows and found that the milk was blocked, she hunched downstairs, to the parking lot, where her husband drove her to the hospital.
Waiting in line at the hospital to shoot b-timeouts, she found that she was not the only mother who suffered late at night. In front of her, there are several mothers, mastitis caused by milk blockage, one of them has a high fever of nearly 39 degrees due to milk blockage, the breast has been suppurated, and it is necessary to open the operation to drain the flow, and the mother is scared to cry on the spot.
Fortunately, the super mother was only slightly inflamed, took some anti-inflammatory drugs prescribed by the doctor, and hurried to the nearby confinement center to find a sister-in-law to help milk.
Since then, The super mother still often leaks milk, sometimes soaking the down jacket and wetting the quilt when sleeping. Her breast milk refrigerator has long been filled, and when the refrigerator can't fit, she has to take breast milk to wash her face and feet, or just dump it.
Probably as a human mother, empathy is very strong, taking out the extra breast milk to feed another baby, so that the super mother feels very meaningful. So I began the long journey of carrying my baby to super mom's house every day.
Chao Chao home is in the neighborhood next door to us, only one road in between. In infancy, babies have to eat milk every 3 hours or so, 7 or 8 times a day. 3 times in the night, we gave the baby the hot milk of the super mother and my frozen milk, and every day we had to go to the super mother 4 times.
Pictured | my baby and Chao Chao lying together
At that time, the baby was anxious as soon as she was hungry, and we had to calculate the time to go out early, otherwise she would tear her heart and lungs all the way. I always go out two hours after the baby has finished feeding, go downstairs early, and push the baby around until the baby shows signs of feeding.
We are preoccupied with getting our babies to breastfeed, even if the winter wind is biting, we will not be absent. In January this year, the cold wave hit, it was sleeting outside, and my mother still insisted on going out in order to let the baby eat a mouthful of hot milk.
Worried about the baby freezing, we carefully designed the route. First take the elevator down to the underground parking lot of the community, shuttle several times, put a rain cover and a windproof quilt on the stroller at the exit, and then run through the road in two small sections at a speed of 100 meters. After rushing to the underground parking lot of the Chao Ma community, take off the cover and quilt on the car, and then follow the signs to explore the building where Chao Ma lives.
Three or four times a day, I felt like I was falling apart, lying on the bed weakly, and decided not to toss my baby and myself like this anymore. However, the next day was a sunny day, looking out the window at the blue sky, we took the baby to the super mother's house.
Super Mom and I encourage each other, and the baby is gradually growing up. This year's Spring Festival super mother went back to her hometown for half a month, and when she came back, my baby suddenly cried and refused to eat super mother's breast again. We weaned her and started feeding her.
Last month, we took her to the "Baby Crawling Competition", and she always liked to look around when she crawled, climbing one step to play for half a day, and finally took a penultimate place. The first baby is a tiger boy, strong and cute. My mother turned to my nunu and said, "Our baby's breast milk eats less, and the motor nerves are not as good as those babies who have eaten enough breast milk." ”
When the mother heard this, she turned around and smiled and told us: "I don't have enough milk, my son grew up eating milk powder." My mother opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something, and didn't say a word at all.
For various reasons, I did not go to the first postpartum review until 100 days after the baby. My pelvic floor muscles and rectus abdominis muscles are not recovering very well, and the doctor said that if I let it go, there will be sequelae such as urinary leakage and abdominal bulge in the future, and I must do repair treatment.
I looked at myself in the mirror, my hair bald, my belly sagging, my back rickety, my eyes blank. I don't know if this is due to breastfeeding and not resting enough. Chao Mom once told me that in order to insist on breastfeeding, she felt that she was being put in an unattainable position, so she quit her job. She also hopes to be a "100% mother", but finds it difficult to achieve it with all her strength.
All along, the relatives, doctors and all kinds of parenting knowledge around them will only popularize the benefits of breast milk, but in the process of breastfeeding, mothers will also have their own pressure. As a mother, the efforts to the baby are all deserved, and I only hope that these efforts can really play a role.