Not enough "tutu"

Tino's paternal great aunt arrived in Samoa from LA for the unveiling of both Cheeku's parents' graves. Yeah something like that. Her name is Aunty Lucy. Now Aunty Lucy is partially deaf and wear a hearing aid. I'm not sure if it works, because we talk to her and she turns the other way, and when she talks to us, the other side of Malie can hear her loud and clear.

Aunty Lucy loves holding her great niece. At this stage, Tino was 3 weeks old and had colic. Colic is characterized by incessant crying with no known cause. Tino didn't cry all the time, but she hated lying down and always wanted to be held, and sometimes no matter how much I fed her, she seemed unsatisfied. It was frustrating at times, and people had also sorts of diagnosis - it could be "la'ofie" (some Samoan infant sickness which required a fofo to have it removed), or gas, or the heat, or not enough milk.

Not enough milk. It annoyed me to have someone tell me I wasn't producing enough milk for my baby. I was, dammit! Total self denial huh. No really I believed that Tino was crying because her tummy hurt, and she automatically turned to my breast as a comfort zone, and she continued to cry even after feeding because...it still hurt! And that was one of the symptoms of colic. But no, Aunty Lucy kept saying "o lega e kagi le keige leaga ailoga o suasua lelei ou susu." I had the perfect retort to that, but felt like keeping the peace.

I always intended to feed my baby with breastmilk alone. The thought of formula never entered my head. Cheeku bought a breast pump so I could express milk if I had to go somewhere and leave Tino. When these people suggested that perhaps my milk production wasn't enough, I started thinking seriously about putting baby on both breastmilk and formula. And it would be convenient too. I even researched on the ingredients and whatnot of formula milk. The clincher: I was fed formula milk from birth because mother didn't have any milk at all. And see, I didn't turn out too bad.

I bought S-26 Infant Formula. At first Tino scrunched up her nose at the taste. Yep, at 3 weeks she could do that already. Gradually she got used to it. But of course her main source of comfort was my breast and I only gave her the bottle when I wasn't around.