While I was pregnant, I’ve read many books telling the importance of mother milk within first 12 months. In June 2005 I had my first baby. She was 4100 gram, a big and healthy new born. She was fine. 

It was an extremely hot summer June day. First two days she just slept and never breastfed though I tried many times. On the 2nd day not to decrease my milk supply and feed my baby with that very healthy beginning milk, I used a breast pump at the hospital cause she was not breast-feeding and she was hungry and crying all the time. 

At first, the nurses were very unwilling to give the pump to me not to make me and the baby get used to it but after my baby had a high temperature and her sker in blood fell down because of not being fed they gave the pump to me. I used a teaspoon to give the milk I pumped but did not give from the bottle directly in case she might get used to bottle. I remember that my first pumped milk was just 5 cc in total. Can you think of that my baby was trying to feed herself with that little milk? So I went on pumping but I never left tryouts for breastfeeding. 

My milk supply started to increase with the help of pump. Every time I pumped more milk than before. I was pumping in 3 or 2,5 hour intervals. In the first week I have to supplement pumped milk with formula for few days, 3 or 4 days, but that was all. My milk supply was enough to feed my baby after a week. As I said before, I had never stooped breastfeeding. The tryouts went on after leaving the hospital at home with the guidance of my mother and a nurse but my baby was always rejecting my breasts though my nipples are ok for her latching. This was very interesting for the mothers who came to visit us for the birth because to them “every baby should know how to breastfeed”. They tried to help me but it did never worked. I can’t tell you how I was feeling. I was in a depression because of getting used to this new life with the baby and my baby’s rejection of breastfeeding made it worse. 

Luckily, my mother in law took a very judicious decision and she rented a breast pump as a backup and she brought it to me on the 3rd day in order to prevent possible decrease in my milk supply. She had experienced this with my sister-in-law who had very little milk supply after the birth and who had been told with the doctors to go on breastfeeding even though she had so little milk. And at the end of the 1,5 month her baby was at the same weight. 

After days and months I tried to make her suck but on my each try she was crying. It went on 3 and half month then I decided that there is no way to go on trying because she wasn’t breast-feeding at all and I stopped. I bought my own breast pump a simpler electronic one with two pumps. Many people told me that my milk supply won’t be sufficient for my baby after a time. It never happened. She is a well grown-up. Even though I saved some milk incase one day it might decrease as the people told me it did never end, in contrast, it always increased. I used milk packages to freeze my milk. The frozen milk could be used later but this is related to how you keep it.