BM vs Formula

Sheraz refuses formula. He doesn't want to take it at all. That worries us, the reason being, we anticipate the worst scenario like what would happen if I am to be away and there's not enough stock of BM?

If you can recall, the decision to buy formula came about one and a half month ago when my pump broke down that I wasn't able to provide him enough milk. Sheraz took the supplement until I got my pump fixed. That time at the nursery he took a bottle of formula everyday for two weeks.

Since then I've been experiencing low milk supply. Yes, even when I had my double pump back. It seems that my body already got used to how I had expressed the milk for those two weeks that even when I started to use the double pump, the supply seemed to be very slow to catch up.

After the so called catastrophe, I had to send extra at least two bottles of milk to the nursery during lunch hour because I wasn't able to express enough milk the day before. I'm so grateful for having the right decision to choose nearby nursery closer to the office, it gives me flexibility and convenience to visit Sheraz any time. The nursery still kept the formula even though I still provided him BM. We treated it as a back up food. Sometimes in the morning I gave Sheraz only two bottles of milk. So I had to pump at work and sent it to him. I didn't have to worry to put dates on the bottles. Because what I pumped was what to consume straightaway on the same day.

One day, I had a long meeting and a site visit that I didn't have the chance to pump. I didn't worry because Sheraz had the back up milk. I thought that he can have it any time. When DH picked the little guy up from the nursery, he called me to go home as soon as I could because Sheraz had been crying for he didn't get enough milk. To my surprise, he chose to starve rather than taking the formula. That happened two times, if I'm not mistaken. Now I've been pumping and supplying and making sure I produce enough or else the little one would get starved. Imagine how stressful I am being in this position. But seriously, I don't take it so hard, because the more stress I am the less milk I get.

On top of that, there are people who scolded me for not introducing formula earlier. They make me feel so awful for being such a negligent mother. But who would want to kill her own supply by introducing formula to the baby when she bloody indeed has the will to breastfeed the baby? That's the reason why formula wasn't introduced earlier. Is it such a sin to have the desire of feeding her baby with her own milk?

Anyway, things have passed. Nothing is neither right nor wrong. Sheraz's decision to prefer BM is nobody's fault (in other word, NOT my fault). After all, I'm the one who's taking the responsibility. May Allah help us in any way, that's it.




p.s. I've been eating oat twice a day. Milk supply has increased, alhamdulillah. I hope I can start building up stock of milk again so that I don't need to worry whether today's production will be enough for tomorrow or not. I believe the nursery noticed how the supply is slightly increasing because I didn't send extra milk during lunch hour for the last two days . Today I saw Sheraz's back-up food in his bag. They returned the formula. I hope I have the faith in myself to be able to produce enough food for the baby just like the nursery do. They have the faith in me for no more needing the formula as back up. Anyway, I still need to let Sheraz have formula, from time to time. We anticipate the worst scenario. But for the time being, I just don't know by what approach since Sheraz really enjoys what he has now.