A WORKING MOM'S BREASTFEEDING STORY (PART 1)

B at 9 months

I'm a breastfeeding mom who has not bought a can of formula since the birth of my now 9-month old baby.

I also happen to be a full-time working mom. I usually leave the house at 6 am to bring my older daughters to school and I normally arrive back home at 8 pm, what with the traffic and all. 

There are a number of  sites that offer useful tips on breastfeeding and expressing milk. Three that I found really helpful are kellymom, breastfeeding.com and workandpump.com. I'm not going to repeat what has been exhaustively discussed in these sites. Instead, I'll share the things that I did (and am still doing) to make exclusive breastfeeding while working full-time possible.

1) I bought a hospital-grade dual, electric breastpump that is really effective in expressing milk. I know that I'll be away from my baby most of the time. Thus, a manual or a single breastpump will not do. You may read my previous post on Unimom Forte dual, electric breastpump here.

Of course, there's the option of hand expressing, which works well for some women. I tried it several times but this one is not for me.

2) I started pumping and building my stash when my baby was 4 weeks old. The first 4 weeks were spent on establishing my breastfeeding relationship with my baby. By the time he was 4 weeks old, we had already perfected his latch and had nailed down our "routine" (although it's not exactly a routine because I breastfed him on demand).

So I moved on to pumping.

Just like most things in life, practice makes perfect. To make expressing milk more time-efficient and effective (meaning more milk), I did the "pump and feed" routine. While my baby was feeding from one breast, the pump was attached to the other breast. With the "pump and feed", which I usually did early in the morning, I was able to familiarize myself with my pump and got to build my stash of breastmilk. By the time I got back to work, I wasn't worried at all that my baby back home didn't have enough milk.

3) I started introducing the bottle to my baby when he was around 1 1/2 months. My office is about a 2-hour drive from my home. Can you imagine what will happen if my baby refuse to drink breastmilk from the bottle? Even if I were to take the supposedly faster MRT, it would still take me almost an hour to reach my place. That's assuming that none of the MRT trains breaks down.

By the time my baby was 1 1/2 months,  the yaya started giving him a bottle of milk a day. Basti would refuse to take the bottle if it was me feeding him. I used Avent nipples for newborn until he was 6 months old and so far, I haven't had any problem with nipple confusion. But just in case you'd have problems with the bottle, here's a useful article on cupfeeding written by Mi'Ann of Babymama.

4) A week before going back to work, I was ready with my pumping kit and storage bottles. My pumping kit consists of:

• Unimom Forte dual electric breastpump
• 1 White plastic box where I put my pump
• 1 Coleman soft-sided cooler
• 1 plastic container where I put my 2 assembled breastshields 
• 4 storage bottles
• 7 anti-bacterial icepacks   

With all these stuff, my laptop, my bag and my lunchbox, I haven't been wearing any of my 3-inch heels for my own safety! But seriously, since my husband's office is very near mine, he's the one in charge of carrying my pumping kit.

For storing the expressed milk, I have 13 Avent bottles, 10 Avent cups and 10 Unimom storage bottles. I use the disposable breastmilk bags only as a back-up (if you've read my previous posts, I try to stay away from disposables).

(You may read Part 2 here.)

*I paid for all the products mentioned here. I do not know any of the sellers personally.