Formula to Breast: Breastfeeding Journey
Sanyukta Bardhan completed her graduation in Commerce from Calcutta University. Although she always wanted to pursue a career in fashion designing and creative art, she moved on to learn digital designing for Arena Animation Academy. She also completed a course in Montessori and taught for 2 years. Sanyukta has hosted a couple of television shows before her marriage. Post-marriage she joined advertising and had her heart set on it. When her elder daughter was born, Sanyukta chose to quit her job of 5 years and has been a Stay At Home Mum (SAHM) ever since. She is now slowly beginning to learn and work on handmade objects and is looking forward to develop it into a business someday. Read on to know her journey from formula to breast. 1. Your breastfeeding journey with your older daughter was far from what you had expected. What went wrong? I had an unnecessary C-section when my older daughter was born. It seemed quite normal back then because I was pretty young and whatever the doctor said seemed just right. He asked me if I preferred a certain date to deliver my baby. I nodded, and out came my first bundle of joy. With almost zero knowledge about breastfeeding and the lack of guidance, I didn’t even know how to establish a breastfeeding relation with her. They dint give me my child after birth but brought her for feeds at an interval of 4 to 5 hours. Obviously I wasn’t lactating and the baby was taken away from me only to be brought back during visiting hours. The hospital had most definitely started delivering formula and I had little or no say in it. The guilt of not being able to breastfeed was killing me. I was made to believe that I wasn’t capable of nursing. I wasn’t bothered and kept trying to hand express but milk had still not come in. The baby we brought home would be so calm and rarely demand feeds. Dehydration led to jaundice and a couple of tests revealed that she was lactose intolerant, was in danger zone and had to be hospitalised as soon as possible. By then I had started lactating and was pumping and feeding her at the hospital. The doctor informed us that my milk won’t suit the little one as she was lactose intolerant. That was far from the truth, impossible to say the least, which I learnt later. With a heavy heart, we moved her to formula. The doctor sent her blood samples to Australia because he feared that she maybe Galactosemic which meant that sugar would wreak havoc and the mother’s milk was not even an option. I still had my doubts. So when she was 6 months old we took her to a renowned doctor in Mumbai to check her vitals. She was perfectly fine; no galactosemia and not lactose intolerant under any circumstances. I can’t tell you how happy and devastated I was at the same time. While I was extremely happy that she was perfectly fine, I was heartbroken to have missed out on offering breastmilk to my first child. Now research shows that you can feed your child through any sickness. One can also feed their child even if she’s lactose intolerant by completely eliminating dairy from the mother’s diet. 2. I can’t even begin to imagine what you must have gone through. I am sorry you had a very hard start. So, when it came to your younger daughter were you well armed with information? I did not read up much during pregnancy as I was expecting it to be natural and easy. Although reading helps to quite an extent, living it up in reality is far different from the knowledge that you gain from reading. I knew I had to breastfeed my child but I wasn’t ready for what lay ahead. With my younger child, again I had a C-section because the doctor didn’t want to take any risk. But this hospital did everything possible to ensure that the child gets breastmilk immediately after delivery. I tried to latch my baby on as much as possible but she wouldn’t. So I requested the nurse to offer formula (she did hesitate) as I needed my baby to have something. The Lactation Counsellor (LC) at the hospital helped to latch baby onto me as much but we were failing. So I frantically started hand expressing and offering breastmilk in bottles. She had jaundice too but recovered within 2 days. After we came home, I started expressing day and night to offer my milk but when I got exhausted I would offer a bottle or two of formula. A great friend added me to the Facebook group, Breastfeeding Support for Indian Mothers (BSIM) and that opened a world of knowledge and information galore on breastfeeding and milk production. I silently read through the posts (on the group) in the first one or two days and then posted on how to go about feeds because hand expressing was wearing me out. The admins took up my case and showered me with the best solutions to go about direct feeds. On a post, Adhunika Prakash (the founder) mentioned that breastmilk works on a supply and demand system; and that got hammered into my brain. Thus, I set out on the journey of weaning my baby off her bottles. As there was a whole lot of work involved in extracting milk, she hated the breast; and loved the bottle due to its fast pace and less work. But hours of dream feeding and constant effort to latch paid off and magic happened one fine day. They gave her the bottle but she kept refusing it and demanded feeds from me. Ta daa, there was no looking back ever since. It involved a lot of cluster feeding and sleepless hours but why complain when you know that your baby is getting the best. 🙂 3. Tell us a little more about how you
