One of the most amazing moments of Ashley's birth that often strikes out in my mind is that soon after Ashley was born, the nurse brought Ashley to my recovery room and the minute Ashley and Mommy had skin-to-skin contact, she latched right away to be breast fed. It's one of those most intimate feelings that is hard to describe with words.
During the next 3 days in the hospital, little Ashley and the new mom worked together trying to figure out how to do breast feeding. At those 3 days, milk didn't come in and all we got was colostrum and the latching wasn't working correctly for the most of the time. The first night, the nurse started hand expressed the milk after Ashley finished sucking and then gave her the rest of expressed milk. Often little Ashley would fall asleep after sucking so hard for while and Mommy ended with bruised and crapped nipples. By the 3rd day in the hospital, Ashley's weight dropped from 7 lb 3 oz to 6 lbs and 12 oz. Worrying about her weight, the doctor suggested Mommy to start pumping after each feeding and gave Ashley the pumped milk using a syringe. Those initial pumping was very painful. By the time we checked out of the hospital, the milk still hadn't come in fully and Ashley's weight dropped to 6 lbs and 8 oz.
I still vividly remembered the first day we got home from the hospital both Mommy and Daddy were so worried about Ashley not getting enough food. Daddy went and bought a can of formula and gave Ashley 1 oz of formula. Mommy continued to pump after each feeding. Miracle happened right away, Mommy's milk came in and Ashley had plenty of milk supply and never needed the formula again. Since then Mommy became a highly productive milk cow. Not only did Mommy have enough milk for Ashley, Mommy also had plenty of leftover milk after each feeding to save up. We never had to worry about not having enough milk.
For her first month of life, Mommy breastfed Ashley for the most of times and only a couple of times we fed her the breast milk with a bottle. By the 2nd month of her life, we started to try using bottle to feed Ashley. But Ashley was so used to be breastfed, she refused the bottle every single time (Really, who wouldn't? Human nipple is so much better than a rubber nipple and besides, it felt so warm to be cuddling next to Mommy!) During her meal time in the afternoon and evening, Mommy would go out so that Ashley wouldn't smell Mommy and PoPo or Daddy would try to feed her with a bottle. An hour or so after, Mommy would receive a phone call from PoPo and Daddy with Ashley crying on the background. The milk cow was asked to return to work. By the time I got home, I could hear Ashley's crying from parking lot, the minute I got home, Ashley saw her dearest milk cow and stopped crying immediately. She knew her milk cow was home and she had food again!
The bottle training went on for more than 2 months and Ashley still wouldn't drink from the bottle. By the end of 3 months, Mommy had to go back to work, and somehow, Ashley would need to and have to drink from the bottle. So we decided to do cold turkey on her and only offered her the bottle. The first day, the last time Ashley was breastfed was at 3AM, and every time we gave her the bottle, she would cry and fuzz, and then stopped and played, but still refused the bottle. For 18 hours, she refused to drink from the bottle. By 8 PM at night, she started to drink from the bottle. Thank God! What a relief! The 2nd day, she would fuzz and cry at each feeding session, but by the end, she would drink from the bottle each time. The 3rd day, she drunk from the bottle without any problem. YEAAAHHH!!!!
Although Mommy enjoyed and missed the closeness and the bonding from breastfeeding, and the most rewarding satisfied smile Ashley gave to Mommy at each feeding, we were concerned that if we alternated between breastfeeding and bottle feeding, Ashley might get confused or she might just refuse the bottle again. It was very difficult to get her to drink from the bottle finally, so we didn't really want to risk it despite how much Mommy enjoyed the breastfeeding. We decided to feed Ashley breast milk in a bottle and Mommy would continue to pump.
So the milk cow started her pumping journey since November 2008 and continued to provide plentiful of milk and save up lots of frozen milk in the freezer. The milk cow would pump out 29 oz to 27 oz of milk each day. Ashley was exclusively on breast milk the whole time. By 9 months, we decided to introduce formula. And of course stubborn Ashley refused to drink any formula. She could even taste the 2 oz of formula mixed with 2 oz of breast milk, and completely refused it. So we persistently offered her the formula at her first feed thinking that she might hungry enough to accept the formula. Slowly, Ashley accepted the formula. Since then, the highly productive milk cow got to slow down the milk production. The milk cow started to pump 6 times a day and slowly cut down to 2 pumps each month and milk production started from 29 oz, to 25 oz, to 21 oz and so on to 11 oz for 2 pumps. Meanwhile, we slowly increased the number of formula bottles from 1, to 2 and then to 3. Finally Ashley accepted the formula without any hesitation and she drunk both formula and breast milk alternatively.
At the end of last month, we planned to visit my parents in East Coast for a week, and Mommy and Daddy would go for a cruise for 5 days without Ashley. Since Ashley was turning 14 month old, it was time to for the milk cow to retire. No one had ever told me that weaning off the breast milk is as hard as getting breast milk. Mommy started to just pump once, and then every other day. Mommy was so engorged and painful for 4 days and finally thanks to the Chinese herbs, the milk production finally went away. After 11 months of pumping, the milk cow is officially retired!
Ashley now drinks formula and frozen breast milk alternatively (Yes, the milk cow actually had enough leftover milk to last Ashley maybe for another 2 months!) and probably completely forgot the taste of fresh breast milk. Mommy can no longer eat big meal, shovel spoons of ice cream directly from the box, have excuse for eating so much, and not worry about gaining weight. Instead, Mommy starts the calories counting days and mesmerizes those good old days.
Really, at the end, it's the milk cow who truly misses breastfeeding instead of little Ashley.
