Yiu Yiu's birth story – Part 2

The days after
On the second and third day, my blood pressure was still elevated so I couldn't be discharged. On the fourth day when I was fit to go home, Yiu Yiu developed jaundice and had to undergo phototherapy. I decided to stay on at the hospital as I was breastfeeding, and we only finally went home on the sixth day.

The few days at the hospital were really tough. I was a naïve new mother who didn't quite know how to handle a baby, especially such a tiny and fragile-looking baby. She couldn't latch on for the longest time, and I was truly struggling to breastfeed her. It didn't help that she kept on crying out in hunger and frustration at each breastfeeding attempt. And when she developed jaundice, I was repeatedly told by the nurses to keep on feeding her, that fluid intake would help to flush out the bilirubin, but she just couldn't latch on properly. Many a times, when she cried out in hunger, I broke down too.

One night, I succumbed to one of the nurses' suggestion to feed her some formula. I insisted though that they used a feeding cup and not bottle, as I didn't want her latching problem to be compounded by nipple confusion. The very next morning, I was reprimanded by my obstetrician. He said babies can survive with minimal breastmilk for the first few days, as they have enough body fat stores to sustain them. He further added that her blood glucose level is monitored daily and if there's any indication that she needed supplemental feeding, they would not starve her. So that was Yiu Yiu's one and only formula feed, until she reached 15 months, when we started to introduce formula to her.