Breast­feed­ing and Parenting

“Nobody told me that it was going to be this dif­fi­cult”, blurted Anita* as she burst into tears.
It was 9.30pm when I arrived at her apart­ment. Anita, a first-​time mother, was all alone with a cry­ing baby who refused to set­tle down. The last meal she had was break­fast, her hus­band was away on a busi­ness trip and she had no fam­ily around to help her out.
Within min­utes of arriv­ing and reliev­ing Anita of her wail­ing baby, I used some sooth­ing tech­niques to calm the baby and asked Anita to have din­ner imme­di­ately. In just a few min­utes, baby was quiet and gur­gling con­tent­edly in my arms. Feel­ing relieved yet frus­trated, Anita implored, “What did I do wrong? Am I a lousy mother?”

From deal­ing with sore nip­ples and get­ting a baby to latch on prop­erly to sooth­ing an incon­solable baby while deal­ing with feel­ings of inad­e­qua­cies – Anita is not alone in fac­ing these chal­lenges.
This is a com­mon sce­nario that I often walk into. And this is the rea­son why I empha­size so much on pre­na­tal edu­ca­tion for breast­feed­ing and par­ent­ing. Most of the time, we think breast­feed­ing is nat­ural and so it should be easy. Unfor­tu­nately, unlike in the past, we no longer have the sup­port of fam­ily and friends who have suc­ceeded in breast­feed­ing, sim­ply because we all have been – and still are – brought up in a formula-​feeding era.
The objec­tive of the Breast­feed­ing and Par­ent­ing Classes is to ease the tran­si­tion into par­ent­ing and help you to cope in the first 6 weeks after your baby is born … and there­after. You will receive prac­ti­cal advice, tips and strate­gies to make the first few days to the next few weeks much eas­ier than what most peo­ple expe­ri­ence. You will learn:
– Easy strate­gies to make breast­feed­ing work for you
– To under­stand what babies need at this par­tic­u­lar stage of devel­op­ment
– To rec­og­nize which state baby is in, to know how to respond appro­pri­ately
– To under­stand baby’s sleep cycles and how to help him/​her sleep bet­ter
– How to soothe and set­tle a cry­ing baby
– Post­par­tum changes in the body
– Basic baby care

* not her real name.
 Breast­feed­ing & Par­ent­ing Classes — Sin­ga­pore
Venue: 33 Taman Warna, Chip Bee Gar­dens, oppo­site Hol­land Vil­lage Shop­ping Cen­ter
Cost: SG$195
Dates:
Sun­days, 2-​6pm: 17 & 24 Jan 2009
Sun­days, 9-​1pm: 21 & 28 Feb 2010
Sun­days, 2-​6pm: 23 & 30 May 2010

 Breast­feed­ing & Par­ent­ing Classes — Over­seas
Time: 9am – 2pm
Cost: SG$195

VIETNAM
Venue: Ho Chi Min, Viet­nam
Dates: 8 March 2010

BANGKOK
Venue: Bangkok
Dates: 15 March 2010

JAKARTA
Venue: Rumah Yoga, Jakarta
Dates: 19 March 2010

Early Bird Dis­count for classes held in Jakarta, Bangkok & Viet­nam: Sign up for both Hyp­no­Birthing and Breast­feed­ing & Par­ent­ing classes by 31 Jan 2010 for ONLY $650!!!

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“I had a rel­a­tively smooth preg­nancy and had many rea­sons to think that breast­feed­ing would be nat­ural and easy for me. I’d chat­ted with many friends who had “been there, done that” and was given tons of tips on par­ent­ing, but no one talked much about breast­feed­ing.
I deliv­ered through C-​section in early Jan­u­ary and soon after­wards it turned out that breast­feed­ing wasn’t as easy as I antic­i­pated. The sec­ond day after birth, milk (or colostrum as it should be) had not flowed in, and I com­fort­ably left most of the feed­ing to the hos­pi­tal nurs­ing staff, who used to feed my baby with for­mula, using a bot­tle. Next day, still not much sign of milk so I stuck to the same solu­tion (although less com­fort­ably). No one told me that bottle-​feeding would jeop­ar­dize my breast­feed­ing efforts later.
By the end of the fourth day, the prob­lem was rather obvi­ous: my baby wasn’t very enthu­si­as­tic with the breast at all. Not using the bot­tle would leave him hun­gry, but using it meant sac­ri­fic­ing breast­feed­ing. I felt stuck. It was an awful feel­ing think­ing that I couldn’t breast­feed and was not able to give my baby all I could.
For­tu­nately a friend told me about Ginny and she talked me through the essen­tials of breast­feed­ing and patiently mas­saged my breasts to bring about the milk flow. She adamantly pulled me away from using the bot­tle and gave me lit­tle tips for feed­ing for­mula with­out using the bot­tle. She uplifted my mood by telling me her expe­ri­ences with other moth­ers who were in the same sit­u­a­tion as me. Things started improv­ing after our sec­ond ses­sion. Ginny was with me at each step of the way – every­day, with tips, advice, com­fort­ing sup­port, and together we saw improve­ments day by day.

By the time my baby was 15 days old, I was breast­feed­ing most of the time with just a lit­tle help using for­mula. I am sin­cerely grate­ful to Ginny for assist­ing me through those most dif­fi­cult days, help­ing me get back my con­fi­dence about breast­feed­ing and part of the con­fi­dence of being a good mother and giv­ing my baby all I can.” – Ho Huong Tra, Vietnam