Bringing Home Baby

My breastfeeding journey only started on the 2nd day at the hospital. After breakfast lil Sofea was wheeled into my room and a nurse taught me how to latch using the football hold. Since I was still groogy and in too much pain, the nurses helped proped her up on top of 2 pillows and everytime i needed to switch breast, I paged them to carry her over. I felt downright useless. And I was terrified of holding her. Sofea was afterall the very 1st newborn I've ever held in my entire life.

Sofea 2nd day after a feed

The most memorable part of my 'staycation' was that on the 2nd day, a nurse brought sofea for feed around midnight. The moment I latched her, she gave me a wide smile as if to say THANK U MOMMY! Until now i can't get that picture out of my head Awww.. *melts* :)

Sofea with Abah

We were discharged on the 3rd day. I was not 100% recovered but I was determined to go home. An hour before discharged, I was given a 20mins crash course on how to handle a baby.. yea no kidding. I sat in the nursery nervously watching a senior nurse doing a fast demo on how to change diaper, clean bellybutton, burp, swaddle and bathe Sofea. OMG, besides me there's only Wan and both of us had ZERO knowledge or experience of handling a newborn. In short I WAS VERY AFRAID. But my gung-ho husband remained calmed. I remembered the nurse left Sofea in my arms while I was sitting on the bench at the Thomson carpark waiting for Wan. (THAT was the very 1st time i cradled her!) When Wan's car approached near I tried to get up, but i couldn't! Luckily Wan was smart enuf not to just wait in the car and calmly got out to fetch us.

It felt sooo good to be home. Being a newborn, Sofea was still sleeping since we left the hospital so we got her cot ready and transferred her from the car seat. Being 1st time nervous parents, we were clueless and uneasy. What the hell do we do with this baby now? We laid down for a while and rest, then got up and watched her sleep and then Wan went into the kitchen and cooked for me dinner while I continued watching Sofea again. By then, it was 5 hrs later and I began to wonder... hmm when will this baby wake up for milk?

I reckoned maybe it's because the nurse fed her 45ml of formula milk just before we left the hospital.. FYI 45ml is a lot for a newborn and formula milk is very filling as compared to breastmilk. But i felt uneasy and went online to ask my forum frens.. why of course! Newborns need to be woken up for feeds! LaillahaillAllah! Because they dun haf to while in the tummy as they're fed thru the placenta. *Smacks forehead*

A special gift from Allah


The 1st night went ok, i set my alarm every 3 hrs to feed her but ard 6am we realised her body was warm. Of course, we stupid parents swaddled her with a warm blanket instead of a cotton one. So we air her a bit and by 8am her temperature went down. I continued to feed her every 3 hours and soon she was getting the hang of it and woke up on her own.

Unfortunately as the days passed, she started to look more yellow and by the 5th day she looked so tiny like she had lost considerable amt of weight. She was painfully tiny that her newborn clothes were huge on her and most days she was just covered with a top and a diaper. It broke my heart to see her so little and fragile. I supposed she was around 2.5-2.6kg only.

On the 6th day it was my 1st night alone with Sofea as Wan had to go back to work. Aargh.. it was a total disaster! Sofea pooped black warm molten poo on me at around 4am-5am.. no thanks to drypers! I switched on the heater and bathed her under the shower right away. oh, did I mention that this kid can't stop fidgeting and that she could already swing her head when we brought her home? Anyway she swung her head and hit the shower glass door :S Not v hard but enough to make me startled!

After shower I laid her down on our bed, patted her dry and applied minyak telon on her tummy, completely forgotten that I had just fed her prior to the mega poop! So out came a fountain of milk. I had to bathe her all over again :( That morning I was a wreck. Hardly any sleep and we had to rush her to PD for her 1 week review.

Sofea in her carseat that fateful morning..

Unfortunately what i dreaded most came true. We had to admit Sofea for her abnormally high jaundice that day, Up till then i never knew my motherly instints existed. I cried buckets and couldn't stop crying for days! That night we went home without Sofea, without hearing her cries, it suddenly felt so lonely just the 2 of us. I even caught Wan cradling the pillow and shushing to it in his sleep.. Aww, he must have missed her terribly. We shuttled to the hospital twice a day to see Sofea and send breastmilk. It broke my heart to see her lying in dat plastic cot only dressed in her diaper and sunned under 3 phototheraphy lights. Her skin was flaking due to e intense heat. And since we hadn't registered her birth, she was named as D/O of Liana Bte Muhammad. Oh gawd it felt like my body was with me but my heart was left behind in the hospital :( But thankfully her jaundice level eventually subsided and she was back home within the next 2 days.

In short the 1st week, I felt like the most horrible mother in the world! I didn't feed my baby well, she lost more weight and then had to be admitted.. OMG worst feeling ever.

OK Sofea's crying now.. to be continued..