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| Reporting for KSCI-TV in 2011. Photo credit to KSCI. |
My name is To-wen Tseng. I am a TV reporter turned freelance writer, and before KSCI—the Asian language station serving Los Angeles—cancelled its Mandarin newscast, I had my regular news spot there titled “To-wen’s World Report.” Every early morning, I stood in front of the green screen in the studio and shared with the Chinese speaking population in Los Angeles about how I looked at the world. Little did I know that soon my own world would turn upside down.
In 2012 KSCI filed bankruptcy. I moved to a Chinese-language newspaper and worked as a staff writer. Then I found myself pregnant. I was an investigative reporter on crime and disaster beat and valued little about birth and breastfeeding. I was at the Mexico border covering a migrant smuggling story when I was seven months pregnant. I met my then future pediatrician when I was eight months pregnant and told him I will “try to breastfeed if I actually have milk.”
I went through a very unpleasant delivery. I was in labor for more than 20 hours and ended up with an emergency C-section. I seriously thought I was going to die. When all was over and the nurse handed me the crying newborn, I barely had the strength to take him. And when I finally held him in my arms, I felt nothing, not the “love at first sight” that everybody talked about, but only exhaustion.
Everything changed when a nurse showed me how to latch the baby. As soon as I brought him onto my breast, he widely opened his mouth and latched on. It was just amazing. I truly felt like I belonged to my baby and he belonged to me.
That was the moment I became a mother.
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| Breastfeeding my first child in the hospital after giving birth. Photo credit to Mu-huan Chiang. |
At around 3 months postpartum, I returned to work. My company refused to provide lactation accommodations. I was forced to pump in a toilet stall, and some male colleague said “don't wash your dirty panties here” when I attempted to wash the pump accessories in the kitchen. A friend reminded me that I said I would “try to breastfeed if I actually had milk” and suggested I just pretend I didn’t have breast milk and formula feed.
I was furious. I couldn’t believe I said that prenatally.
Of course I was going to continue breastfeeding! This was how I connected to my baby!
I searched for resources and contacted BreastfeedLA, the staff put me in touch with Legal Aid at Work which later settled my case against my employer.
It surprised me, no, shocked me how motherhood changed the way I saw things.
Recently I proofread a book I wrote ten years ago and was freaked out when reading myself writing about how the medical volunteers gave infant formula to families in Haiti after the 2010 Earthquake. No wonder so many babies survived the cataclysmic earthquake but not its miserable aftermath—more babies actually died from diarrhea! How could I not be alarmed?
After the rude awakening of being turned down for nursing accommodations by my employer, I quit my job and became a freelance writer. I started to volunteer for BreatsfeedLA and then started the blog to write about birth and breastfeeding equity issues. In 2017 I co-founded the Asian Pacific Islander Breastfeeding Task Force of Greater Los Angeles.
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| Being recognized as the emerging leader of 2019 by USBC. Photo credit to Mu-huan Chiang. |
Thinking about who I was before motherhood, I am not proud. I am grateful that BreastfeedLA was there when I sought to make a change. You can make a change without becoming a mother and receive a rude awakening.
Donate to BreastfeedLA or API Breastfeeding Task Force today to support local families and invest in the future of human beings. Thank you!
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| Posting for APIBTF's photo project with my second child in 2019. Photo credit to Elisabeth Millay. |
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