Một trong những phần discussion về việc tại sao chọn học khóa Chuyên viên tư vấn sữa mẹ (Breastfeeding Counselling course) trong khóa học ABA của mình:
How much do you know about breastfeeding?
Think back to the time before you started to become interested in breastfeeding:
- What triggered your interest?
- Can you remember what you knew about how breastfeeding worked?
- Did you attend breastfeeding education classes?
- Did you learn information about breastfeeding that was of value to you at that time?
- When you had a baby to breastfeed, was there anything you wished you had known that might have helped you establish breastfeeding in the early weeks?
Did you contact an ABA counsellor for assistance at all?
Dưới đây là bài viết của mình
When I told my mum that I was pregnant, she told me to buy some maternal formula to drink. It was a shock to me when I couldn’t find any as such product in Australia.
“What? They don’t sell maternal formula milk? You must be kidding!”
Yes, that’s true.
I came from a country where formula companies are making tremendous profits from selling their products: infant formula, toddler formula, and of course, maternal formula. I think I also need to mention senior formula, yes, for older people.
My mum used to tell me that she couldn’t afford to feed me formula, and I was breastfed for 18 months. She wished that she would have been able to do so.
When my first child was born, I suffered a huge blood loss (700ml for a vaginal birth) during the delivery. Poor attachment, poor latch, inexperience and exhausted, despite the help of the nurse, brought me nipple blisters and pain. The baby was screaming, and in the middle of the night, my husband rushed into Woolworth, got a tin of formula. He was full, he was asleep, and I could sleep. It was not until the next checkup, when my supply was ok to feed him, with one or two bottles everyday to top up, the local nurse said to me: “Now you can discard the formula tin.” She was also the one who told me about ABA, and recommended that I should start training to be a breastfeeding counsellor.
I breastfed my first son until 24 months but didn’t actually understand how breastfeeding worked. I breastfed him simply because I loved him to be on my breasts as part of my mothering. When I had my second son ten months ago, I thought that I had some experience and the breastfeeding started perfectly well. However, I recognised that a majority of people in my community (Vietnamese) don’t know much about the benefits of breastfeeding. They say it’s good but don’t know how good it is. They think that formula is a wonderful breastmilk substitute. A lot of them never breastfeed their babies. Their brain has been washed by advertising from formula manufacturers, which make them underestimate the importance of breastmilk.
I think I should do something. I read a lot, I research a lot about breastfeeding. The more I do so, the more I’m interested in breastfeeding. I wish I should not have stopped breastfeeding my eldest son at 2 years of age when he still loved it.
Soon after that I have become one of the administrators of a Facebook Breastfeeding Support to provide information for Vietnamese mothers whose English is limited, because most of knowledge about breastfeeding is in English. Most of them didn’t know skin-to-skin contact of mother and infant after birth, because medical staff wasn’t trained properly to support women (in Vietnam). As a rule of thumb, a 30ml formula is given for nearly every infant. Doctors recommend formula, dieticians recommend formula.
We are losing our mother instinct because such of materialistic and tremendous benefits that baby formula manufacturers are advertising everyday in our country.
The founder of our group is a woman who has finished her family. She doesn’t come from a medical background, but she is so keen on breastfeeding that she has invested quite a big amount of money to study a breastfeeding course (online). The information we are providing has sources from WHO, UNICEF, WABA and other reliable sources including ABA. Our job is reading, translating and compiling what we learn to expectant mothers and nursing mothers.
We are volunteers.
I didn’t go to any breastfeeding classes. However, from what I have learnt and researched, I’m confident to provide support to women in need (I studied nursing).
When I had my baby to breastfeed, especially with my first son, I wish that I have researched more carefully. However, the past is past, and I’m enjoying what I’m doing.
I have told my mum that she had done the best thing for me: breastfeeding me. The only thing I didn’t get from breastfeeding was that I didn’t have any colostrum because no one knew it. They thought that colostrum was rubbish so they discarded it!
