How I healed my bleeding nipple in 24 hours

After successfully breastfed my first child exclusively for 10 months, I thought I am going to have a smooth sailing when the second one came. But God has other plans for me. With my second I kept getting sore and bleeding nipples every other day, and she is 3 months old, not a newborn.

I know the first rule of breastfeeding is a good latch, and she seems to have it. I was dumbfounded at first as to why she kept giving me bleeding nipples when she has a good latch, until I noticed one day that she ‘bite’ me when she was falling asleep. Then I remembered that I always noticed my painful breasts during showers in the morning.

So how do I get her to stop biting at night when I myself was asleep while nursing? Ok, that calls for another post but for now I want to share how I (warning : I am not a doctor or a lactation consultant) a mother of a 3 month old cured my bleeding nipple in a day.

1. I DO NOT nurse the baby on the bleeding breast. I know it is completely safe to nurse on that side but how can you heal it fast enough when it is inside the baby’s mouth? It is like rubbing on an open wound every 4-6 hours (if you nurse only 1 side per feeding).

2. I DO NOT use the PUMP. Pumping milk on a bleeding nipple is, well, bloody. The pump not only suck your milk but also your open wound that produces blood, never a good sight and it will not help in healing.

3. Instead, I learn (on my own) how to HAND EXPRESS my milk on the affected side. I use the marmet technique I found on the internet. I was surprised that I can produce as much, although slightly less, amount as when using the pump. Plus it is free!

4. Put some milk on the wound after expressing milk. I guess every nursing mother knows this, so this is just a reminder.

There you are, the 4 things I did to heal my bleeding nipple, and best of all you don’t need to buy anything! 🙂 Basically I leave the nipples alone and it healed itself in 24 hours. The biggest change was I learned how to hand express, it takes practice but it is not hard either. Hope I help someone with this post. 🙂 Happy breastfeeding month to all!

His room is ready!

We are planning to slowly ‘phased’ my son to his own room during sleep time (day and night). I know this is not something popularly done in Malaysia at least, especially when the child is less than 2 years old. The reasons why we need to do this is because

1. We are expecting another child in 4 months.

2. Having 2 children in our ‘cosy’ bedroom will make it even ‘cosier’.

3. As a working couple we need as much uninterrupted sleep as possible. It would be harder with a ‘noisy’ sleeper (my son) and an infant in the same room.

I have about 4-5 books specifically written about child sleep (and yes, written by Westerners), so far, I successfully weaned off nursing at nights using strategies in the books when my son was 10 months and I must say it was not easy but it’s worth it! And yes, it can be done even when you are exclusively breastfeeding. Since then I have always this dream of having my 8 hours ‘uninterrupted sleep’ back, and umm.. and it has not happen yet. 😦 My favorite author on this topic is Tracy Hogg because she made a lot of sense to me although her techniques are nothing new.

Even though my son doesn’t require anything to get him back to sleep in the middle of the night, some nights he would cried out for a few seconds 2-3 times per night and get himself back to sleep. Needless to say since we are in the same room, I was awaken during those times too. Other nights he would stand in his cot and tried to get out once or twice during the night. When this happen I need to pat him back to sleep in his cot. If I just leave him, he would just let himself fall off the cot. He’s not that tall but boy can he climb! I still haven’t found out the reasons why he did this when I very well know that he can put himself back to sleep. So with this new ‘upcoming’ baby I’m planning to wean the baby from night time feeding as soon as possible.

Share your life goals? It depends.

I feel that life goals are very personal. They should be very close to the heart thus making them very emotional. A lot of people are thinking if you share your goals, you are more likely to achieve them. But as I said before if your life goals are very personal, it should be shared ONLY with people who will support you, who shared the same view of life. This is because most people are not naturally disciplined to not giving negative comments on other people’s intention in life. Comments like “Heck, everyone wants that, but not many can achieve it”, or “I had those goals when I was your age. Look at me now” are so common even from your own well meaning parents. So we should forgive them for being so human. But on the other hand, if your life goal is very general like “make the world a better place” – heck why not, share it away! 🙂

Separation anxiety at 20 months

For the past few days my son had been crying for his parents each time we dropped him at the nursery (daycare). It had never happened before. His teachers ‘theory’ was since he was going to be a big brother soon, he will acted up a bit. Although at times I felt sorry to see him crying, his nursery teacher told us when we were out of his sight, we were out of his mind too. So, I don’t feel too bad then.

Financial Independence vs Financial Freedom

I have to agree with personal finance author, Milan Doshi when he wrote:

Financial Independence = Passive Income > Expenses

Financial Freedom = Never have to worry about money – ever.

But of course, different folks, different strokes. I am aiming for financial independence first and I believe financial freedom will come naturally after that.

Inspiration from Exclusive Breastfeeding Journey

I have to say the reason why I’m persisting on this financial independence goal is because I was driven on my previous ‘success’. As the title of this post suggest, this other success of mine is I exclusively breastfeed my first born. Most mothers will agree with me that breastfeeding is not as ‘natural’ as it sounded to be. It takes a lot of knowledge, determination and tears from both side of the breast to finally make it ‘natural’.

Before this, I have never met anyone personally that have succeeded in exclusive breastfeeding and that includes my own mother and sister. As what my mother, who is 62 years old now, said during her time, breastfeeding were only for those who didn’t have enough money to buy formulas. So, if you were breastfeeding you were considered poor. How times have changed! Now if you are not breastfeeding you are considered ignorant! I’ve known several women in the office who felt pressured to breastfeed, which I think is not the right frame of mind to have when you are breastfeeding.

I’ve read about successful stories of breastfeeding on the internet but I had no personal friend who did it. It’s very weird that something so good has so little followers and I have to say at times I was doubtful if exclusive breastfeeding is really possible for working mothers. I know I was on my own then. So I spent countless hours reading books and reading posts and blogs about breastfeeding prior to my due date. And when the time came, I was ready, or so I thought. To make a long story short, with a lot of determination, persistence and support from the people closest to me, I successfully breastfeed my baby boy for 10 months and weaned him completely at 16 months while working full time. While this achievement is nothing new, I was proud of myself and if I learned anything from this, I should also be successful in my goal towards Financial Independence.

First post

I’ve read lots and lots of blogs, but never thought that I would start one. The push came when Mark Joyner (of Simpleology) sent an email about his blogging course. But in order to join, I need to paste a code from his website. So here it is Mark!:

I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.