Babies should be exclusively feeding on breast milk until 6 months. There may be very little milk available immediately after delivery and the baby might not suckle. Don't be discouraged. This is when we dads can help. Dads can suckle on the breast. This stimulates the breast to produce milk and also helps it flow.
Even when the baby is already suckling, the baby may get discouraged and stops suckling if there's not enough milk flowing. To prevent this, you can also use a dropper or supplemental dripping system to drip milk onto the breast while the baby is suckling. My wife used an ordinary medicine dropper. It was a little messy but it worked. I wanted to buy a supplemental dripping system but was not able to find one in the city where we were staying. I eventually found one when I returned to Singapore. We lent it to my wife's friend when she gave birth to her first baby and she found it very helpful.
Another option is to buy a breast pump. The baby may stop suckling even when the breast is still engorged with milk and painful to the mom. A breast pump can then be used to express milk. It is a good idea to get a good breast pump ahead of time. We didn't do so because we were afraid my wife might not have breast milk or not able to breastfeed. Hello! Isn't that how mother nature intended us to feed our babies? :)
Someone gave us a glass bicycle horn pump. However, it was not effective. It was also slow and painfull. It is not advisable to use this type of pump. Cleaning the rubber bulb is difficult and breastmilk can get into the bulb while pumping. If the inside of the bulb is dirty, it can contaminate the breastmilk.
When tears started to flow down my wife's cheek, I had to rush down to the mall and get another one. The pain from her engorged breast was getting intolerable. I bought her an Avent Isis manual breast pump. It helped a lot. She was able to express the milk out. Breastfeeding and expressing milk was so much easier from then on even after she went back to work. She had lots of milk. My wife was able to give some of her expressed breast milk to the milk bank at the hospital where she worked. We froze the excess milk for storage. My wife stopped producing breast milk when our baby was 1 year and 4 months old. The froozen breast milk then allowed us to slowy switch our baby to milk formula over a period of 2 months.
Other baby foods can be introduced after 6 months but breast milk should be continued for as long as it is available. Breast milk is also good for your wallet. You may have to spend money on a good breast pump and milk storage bags but this is still cheaper than buying milk formula over 1-2 years.
I strongly advice expecting parents to get a good breast pump ahead of time. Read reviews and compare prices of different breast pumps from several retail shops. Breast pumps are expensive in Cebu, Philippines. You can buy it cheaper in Singapore. The Avent Isis manual breast pump in Cebu costs about the same as an an AVENT ISIS iQ UNO electronic pump in Singapore. However, it is so much more cheaper in the US.
The Avent Isis manual pump is a very good pump. However, manual pumping can be very tiresome. So, I later bought an AVENT ISIS iQ UNO electronic pump from the US. It is basically the same as the manual pump except that it has a motor and electronic controls inside the pump assembly. It is attached to the milk bottle through the pump body. The breast pump is thus a little heavier. Eventhough it is an electric pump, it took longer to express milk. My wife is able to express milk faster with the manual pump. The biggest dissappointment though was that it lasted only a few months. It's a good thing it also came with manual pump parts so it can still be used as a manual pump.
I think the AVENT ISIS iQ DUO electronic breast pump will probably last longer. The pump motor is a separate unit connected by tubing to the pump handle. This also makes the breast pumps lighter when holding these against the breasts. Expressing milk will also be much faster with two breast pumps. It is much more expensive though.
Medela also produces excellent breast pumps. My sister-in-law bought a Medela Pump In Style dual electric breast pump. My wife tried it and she loved it. I guess I'll have to get one for her for our 2nd baby. :)
