Available again

Just came back from seeing Dr. Koe. Abbie’s condition isn’t as bad as we thought, and we were wrong on the cracked and sore nipples too.

According to Dr. Koe, Abbie felt painful on her nipples because of the growing skin around the nipples, has covered the nozzles or outlets causing a blockage and blistering. The healing is simple as piercing through the blisters and end of story. It is quite common and nothing to worry about.

Finally, Abbie is fine and available again.

Out of order

Areole – A ring of color, as around the human nipple.
Engorgement – A swelling of the breasts caused by expanding veins and the pressure of new milk.

There are two problems Abbie is facing now, firstly the engorgement of her left breast. Secondly, cracked and sore nipple on the same breast. When these two come together, it has no difference from getting a nightmare.

The affected side is the one Hayden loves the most, where he usually gets to latch-on. The other one, which is a ‘still’ available or healthy one, is mainly on pump only.

Abbie has to thank to her dearly son for the nightmare she is experiencing now. Hayden did not latch-on properly, as a result the nipple head got hurt so badly. The correct latch-on is that Hayden has to grab the areola into his mouth, but not the nipple only. There are so many sites on breast-feeding where you can read on, terms like latch-on, engorgement are regularily seen. Sore and cracked nipples are usually happened to inexperienced mothers like Abbie.

Due to the soring nipple, Abbie is not able to pump milk nor feed Hayden directly from the affected side. In another word, the milk production has been cut into half, which is about 50 ml in each pumping. The volume is sufficient enough to feed Hayden to full, but we have no extra to be kept in the fridge. If she doesn’t pump the milk out from the affected breast, engorgement will cause pain to her breast, end up with both the nipple and breast are killing the mother. Also, we worry the healthy nipple will come to this state before the soring one recovers. Ehh… Not really low in production, but the milk is not able to be pumped out, instead, Abbie has to press around of it in order to release the milk, quite a tedious thing to do.

In my opinion, when we find Hayden isn’t latch-on properly, we should part him from the nipple instead of leaving him there. I know, it is not easy to do the latch-on, so the mother will get impatient after a few tries. But isn’t it better to be patient a bit instead of getting hurt after that?

I do the bottle feeding most of the time. Sometimes, this little monster just doesn’t want to open his mouth for milk. I think, he could be not ready for milk, or he is ‘guk si’ there. Therefore I don’t open his mouth forcefully, I wait patiently like a safari hunter until I see Hayden opens his little mouth for milk, I stuff the teat into his mouth and the feeding can be done quite easily after that. If I miss it, I mean sometimes Hayden shuts his mouth before I can stuff the teat in, I will have to wait for the next round for the ‘door’ to open up again, like a hunter waiting patiently for his target. I think the same thing applies to direct feeding too.

Abbie just told me that the other nipple isn’t looking too good now. I think, besides the incorrect latch-on, perhaps over-pumping is another reason of the sores too. Anyway, we will see Dr. Koe on this. Another video of Hayden ‘guk si’ after this:-
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“Guk Si”

Hayden is improving in his input, but not in his output. Everytime he wants to poo, he seems as if pushing the faeces very hard through the anus, be it in liquid or solid form, and his facial expression is kinda funny. I can’t help but to video record it in order to show him when he gets elder.

By the way, Abbie is experiencing some breast-feeding problems. I will tell more about it later.
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