Breastfeeding in the Qur'an

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Today marks the day when I can finally pray again. That's almost two months of not doing the salah.

As I was about to pray Asr, Laika cried for milk. I have already performed my wudhu (ablution) so I turned to the internet to find out if breastfeeding will nullify it. The answer is no, wudhu is not nullified by breastfeeding. Not even changing of diapers (as long as you wash your hands that has touched urine).

Anyway, I was surprised to find out that breastfeeding has also been mentioned in the Qur'an. You know the saying "breast milk is best for babies up to two years and beyond"? It is clearly stated in the Holy Book.

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In the second surah (Suratul Baqarah), 233rd ayat of the Qur'an, it was recommended that a child be breastfed up to two years. You may wean as long as both the parents are consenting. You may also have another person breastfeed your child.

Contrary to popular belief, Islam regards women highly. In fact, I have never felt more special as when I got pregnant. Do you know that if you died while giving birth, it's as if you died as a martyr? Just now, I found out it's the same thing as when you are breastfeeding your child.

 I do not claim to be so knowledgeable about my religion. In fact, I am far from knowing a lot but I am trying. If you know something about this topic, I'll be glad to listen to you.

Allah knows best.

How to Live Frugally

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Before my husband and I got married, I never had an experience on living independently. Sure, I lived in a boarding house when I was in college, but my parents gave me more than enough allowance then. I was also with my older sister that time so I had no responsibility except myself.

Imagine my shock when I had to, suddenly, live on a budget. Luckily, my husband is not new to this as he is self-sufficient (unlike me, who, up to the last minute, was living in my parents' house). Together, we had to do steps to adjust to our life together.

1. We are a one-car household. Sure, we own a gas guzzler, but we live in front of my husband's workplace and I commute to work, so the car is not used that often.

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2. We "eat in". As tempted as we are to always dine out (our rented apartment is located in the middle of a restaurant strip), we cook our own meals.

3. Until recently, we never had a house help. A two-man household is fairly easy to maintain. Our electric bill never reached P1000 before as we seldom use the air conditioner. But when Laika arrived, that's a whole different story. (Our electric bill shot up!)

4. We took having a household help to our advantage. Whereas before, we buy our groceries in the supermarket, now, we ask her to buy from the local palengke. Much, much cheaper. Plus, given that we are not with her while she is shopping, she sticks to the list. You don't know how much we've saved without ME doing the groceries. The last minute "maybe I need this" items really add up.

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5. We also have our laundry done in the house. 

6. As I have mentioned before, I cut my husband's hair. And my hair, being always up in ponytail, is pretty low maintenance.

7. We anticipated the added costs of having a baby, so we took measures to still spend as little as possible. My number one motivation in breastfeeding is the free milk. We refuse to buy formula because it's not cheap. YES! All the health benefits are just added advantage.

We also use cloth diapers and avoid disposable diapers as much as possible. Cloth diapers (CD's) may cost much but in the long run, you save much. Not to mention, we got CD's as gifts before (Thanks, Myke). Sure, on the first few weeks, we use disposies. But now, we are 100% cloth diapering. It doesn't hurt that they all look so cute, too.Our brands of choice are bumGenius, next9, Baby Leaf, and Alva.

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8. We live within our means. Good thing, my husband and I don't believe in having a credit card. If we can't afford something, we don't buy it. As simple as that. Although we may have to eventually give in and have a credit card for when we are traveling. But for now, we're good without it.

Breast Feeding Best Friends

Laika is almost 6 weeks old now. We are still breastfeeding. What made all of this possible? These are our tools:

1. We have already talked about our Philips Avent Isis iQ Uno. How is our relationship with it? Good and bad. Good, because it is still what I am using. Bad, because its motor got busted after two days of using it six times daily. I used to use it only as a supplement to my direct feeding. But when we shifted to pumping daily, the motor gave up. We have yet to bring it to the service center. Good thing it has an option for manual pumping. That's what I am using now. Let's just pray I don't get Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

Husband felt bad as he bought it for P13,000 in Market!Market! But lookie here. Yup, almost half off. Just our luck.

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2. I ordered the Mommy Treats Oatmeal and White Chocolate Chip Cookies. The cookies were delivered two days after I ordered online. And as a bonus, the seller gave me a sample of her Cupcake Bites. I must say, both variants are yummy.

So, how was it? I will let the pictures do the talking.

My expressed milk before eating Mommy Treats' Lactation Cookies

My expressed milk a day after eating Mommy Treats' Lactation Cookies

The cookies are so effective, I even had to stop eating after the third day (I ordered a week's supply) as I had an oversupply.

3. Before I got my lactation cookies, I bought Mother's Milk Tea from Healthy Options in Trinoma.

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My review: It does not taste good. And the lactation cookies arrived the day after so I only got to drink this tea once. I don't know if it's effective and I will gladly just eat my lactation cookies instead. But it's good to have this as a backup.

4. I got impatient having to pump just one breast at a time with my Avent Breast Pump so we bought a Spectra 3 breast pump from BabyMama. The site sells it as an electric, double breast pump. The only downside, it cannot be battery-operated. And personally, I prefer the mobility of my manual Avent pump.

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5. I also bought other accessories from BabyMama like their Cooler Pouch and some Ice Packs for when we are not in the house.

6. I never got the reason behind having a nursing pillow. But when carrying Laika became too painful for my wrist, I dreamt of having a Boppy pillow.

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My husband bought me a nursing pillow from Landmark. It costs less than P500 compared to the (I think) P2000-4000 price tag of the Boppy. For now, it serves its purpose.

My nursing pillow from Landmark Trinoma

It is shaped slightly different from the Boppy. So even if the Boppy comes with a warning that you can't have your baby sleep with the pillow, we get to have Laika sleep on our nursing pillow. Plus, if I had it after immediately after giving birth, I could have used it as a cushion for when I sit on hard surfaces (normal delivery hurts down there!).

For now, these are my tools. What else can you suggest?

On breastfeeding and bottlefeeding

Even before we had a baby, heck, even before we got pregnant, my husband talked me into breastfeeding exclusively. He is a strong believer in providing nourishment that has been given naturally to a mother. Being the good wife that I am (hahaha), I knew from the very start that I will be breastfeeding my soon-to-be-born child. But don't get me wrong. I don't judge people who decide to formula feed their babies. I believe in doing whatever works for you and the baby. I do judge, on the other hand, people who judge formula-feeding mothers. Does that even make sense?

Anyway, my baby is now 3 weeks old and I am proud to say that she has only taken in milk that came from me. That is, except for her first 2 days in the world when the nurses in St. Lukes Global City, where she was confined for the first 3 days of her life in the NICU (more on that on other blog posts), took it upon themselves to feed her glucose water. Upon finding out about this, my husband told the nurses to stop this and we started visiting her every 3 hours round the clock since then to stimulate my breasts to produce milk.

I regret not having read much about breastfeeding as much as I did about pregnancy. Husband told me I should stop regretting and instead look at this as an opportunity for me to share what I know now. I've listed some of them below:

• I didn't know I should have started having baby latch to me as early as possible to stimulate milk production. 
• I didn't know it is okay to not have milk the first few days as baby has food reserves from when she was in my belly (milk came in 3 days after baby was born). 
• I should have known having a supportive partner is essential in this (of which I am very lucky to have). 
• I should have known and read about engorgement and how much it hurts like hell!
• I should have purchased a breast pump before I gave birth. This has been a very worthy investment for us.

After reading much about breast pumps when I was pregnant, we decided on getting an Ameda Purely Yours Breast Pump because of the great reviews.  But because it is not readily available in malls here and to have one, I would have to purchase it online, we weren't able to buy this one.

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Because of engorgement and my postpartum condition, my husband had to buy one immediately after we were discharged from the hospital. He went to Market! Market! and I asked him to buy an Avent Isis iQ Uno Breast Pump. It also had great reviews but it is more expensive and it only has one pump. The good thing is it can also be used manually and can be battery-operated. At present, it is my best friend in the world!

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Just yesterday, for the first time ever, we gave in and bottled-fed Laika using my expressed milk. We believe breast milk is still good in whatever form it comes in. We use Philips Avent and Tommee Tippee bottles. Before then, we tried giving expressed milk through medicine dropper. We originally didn't want to introduce bottles yet to avoid nipple confusion but we had to as Laika and I had latching issues. It also hurts too much!

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Of the two, I prefer Tommee Tippee more as it is slow-flow. We also had zero problems on nipple confusion as I still feed her directly from time to time and she has more efficient latch as compared to before. I noticed that she also feeds more now that we introduced bottles to her. My problem now is my milk supply can't keep up. I ordered lactation cookies from Mommy Treats and it will be delivered tomorrow. I will be making a review once it gets here.