I got an 8 hours stretch of sleep finally last night. In the past 7 months the longest stretch of night sleep I had was 6 hours.
People usually think I lack sleep because of Shanna waking me up in the night. Well, the truth is Shanna has been sleeping through the night since she was 2 months old. Initially I did get her up for a feed around midnight-1am, but I dropped that when she was 5 months old. Since then, Shanna sleeps from 9pm-7am.
When everyone else was sleeping nicely in the night, I would wake up to express milk. I stuck to a 4 times a day, every 6 hours+ expressing schedule.
In fact, most breastfeeding moms can train their bodies to go through the night without having to do anything.
But in my case, for the reasons below I did not do so:
1. I do not feed baby direct. Lacking that stimulation, I worried about my supply decreasing by going too long without expressing.
2. Experts recommend minimum of expressing/feeding 4 times a day to maintain supply.
3. Some people pull-in the last round of expressing to before they sleep. This means the time lapse from the previous round of expressing was maybe 3-4 hours. It was too short a lapse for me- pumping too frequently caused sores for me.
Nowadays, I have reduced my frequency of expressing to 3 times a day, every 8 hours.
Well, what made me change my schedule?
1. I decided I could make do with less milk. The fridges were full to the brim and Shanna had started solids, so her milk intake will not increase.
2. I was tired. I had hung on for 7 months after all. And I wanted to have 'steam' to continue on.
It has been a long but rewarding breastfeeding journey for me so far. I learnt that what works for me may not work for others and vice versa. The challenges every mummy face are different, some find direct feeding hard, some find expressing impossible. I'm very grateful that God gave me the grace to sustain so far, and satisfaction from seeing my baby grow well :)
Because of my exclusive time with the pump every morning and evening, Tim has also had the chance to be a very hands on daddy. He can take care of Shanna very well and I had no worries when I had to be away for business trip.
Dear Tim, thank you for your support. Couldn't have done without it. :)
~ Audrey
2 comments:
Have good discipline to sleep when Shanna sleep ya. Don't be like me after a while, when Esrene sleeps for 12 hours, I still sleep for 5 hours coz staying up at night online or doing other stuffs. Really bad!
Ida
Ya, I treasure my sleep nowadays. Sometimes take cat nap in the car at lunch :O Without air con on...
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