Sibu Tales : Bottle or Breast?

The Foochows in the past lived in villages on the banks of the Rajang River of Sarawak. After the Communist Era from 1968 to 1988 many of them moved to the towns like Sibu, Bintangor and Sarikei and even further away like Bintulu, Miri and Limbang, Lawas.

Life in the villages was simple. Babies were fed mother's milk, ie.breast fed, rice porridge and condensed milk.

When mothers worked in the rubber garden and rice fields, the babies were left with a milk bottle like this one. It was a miracle that many of them did not get sick with their cold milk.




The rubber nipples were a matter of concern for the mothers . Often the babies choked because the hole in the nipple was too big. If the hole was too small the babies would cry because it was hard for them to suck.

Sibu shops carried many different types or brands of nipples. And they also sold many different kinds of milk bottles.



I was mainly a breastfed baby because we lived on an island and my mother was very frugal. She did not find breast feeding a burden as she did not have to tap rubber or plant padi.

In fact breastfeeding was a normal part of many Foochow women's life and was not big deal in those days. Women were comfortable breastfeeding their babies in public and no men would stare. It was so much part and parcel of life unlike today when everything seems to be offensive to everyone.

Though I was breastfed, in between, as a baby, I was given treats of glucose water, grape juice, honey in glass feeding bottles fitted with nipples. My mother even said that she fitted some good rubber nipples on the aerated water bottles for me drink carbonated orange! My bad dental health must have come from that in retrospect.

It was only later that when it became more convenient and more "fashionable" to feed babies with tinned powdered milk that my mother started to give my younger siblings milk in bottles, although she continue to breast feed. She had said,"Why waste good milk when I have plenty?"

The most popular brand in those days was KLIM (MILK in reverse). And very much later, it was Dumex.

It is quite a body of knowledge how we have reached the 21st century and how mothers in the past used different kinds of bottles and nipples to replace human breasts.