Feeding Problems

I’d intended to breastfeed my baby but I did buy a set of standard Tommee Tippee bottles as well, just in case. That way, I thought I wouldn’t get stressed out with breastfeeding as I had a back up. When I was finally allowed to hold Jack he did start moving to breastfeed. The midwife said, “He’s going to be a top breastfeeder this one, watch him latch on in a second”. So I waited a second or a thousand and he hadn’t latched on. I was reassured that he would and it wasn’t a problem that he hadn’t fed.

When you’ve had a Caesarean you get put on a post-natal ward with other mums who have also had a section. You have a buzzer so that you can call a healthcare assistant if your baby needs picking up etc as it’s impossible to do this after you’ve just had the operation. So in the night I buzzed for them to pick him up for me so I could try feeding again. They show you different positions and help the baby to get latched on. They also torture you when the baby won’t latch on by grabbing your boob and forcing it in the baby’s mouth. They then claimed he was latched on. But I couldn’t feel anything. People had told me breastfeeding hurts so I just assumed I was lucky and it wasn’t going to hurt me. But he didn’t seem to be sucking. I pressed that buzzer so many times I felt that they were getting annoyed with me so I started to get a bit stressed.

In the morning I had a visit from a breastfeeding specialist. I raised my concerns and she showed me how to hand express into syringes which could be stored and given to him later. I wasn’t very good at that either. By this point it became clear that my baby was the only one in the hospital screaming constantly. Add that to the fact I just couldn’t get the hang of feeding him easily and I was getting really stressed. I mentioned a few times that I might just formula feed instead and the midwives and healthcare assistants were horrified. I was under pressure to crack this breastfeeding.  By the last night I was in hospital, I was on the verge of a breakdown. My baby kept everyone awake with his screaming, I was being mauled with by people trying to ‘help’ me feed and I felt so useless. So I buzzed a healthcare assistant and burst into tears, begging for formula. She was a young girl, so probably not of the old-fashioned ‘breast is best’ mould and she told me to get some rest, she’d feed Jack and put him to bed. I was so grateful when my baby returned asleep and stayed that way until morning. I could have kissed her.

I decided to have another go at breastfeeding when I got home. That night was hell. Jack screamed constantly, I cried all night and me and my partner rowed like buggery through the stress. In the morning I got a phone call from the Infant Feeding Team at Whiston. I broke down in tears again and she invited me down straight away. This lady was a volunteer (or maybe she got paid, either way she was a Joe Bloggs civilian with breastfeeding experience, she wasn’t a healthcare professional). She took one look at Jack and told me my baby would never be able to breastfeed as he had a severe tongue tie. This is where there’s a flap of skin towards the front of the tongue, attaching it to the gum so the baby can’t lift it and therefore can’t latch on properly. Hours of stress and crying, feeling like a failure, numerous breastfeeding experts, healthcare assistants, midwives and even a paediatrician who was specifically checking for tongue tie, and nobody had realised.

I experienced a mixture of emotions. Relief that it wasn’t me that was useless, but mostly anger that all these people who were meant to help my baby, had let him starve for three days. He wouldn’t have been able to get any milk, so that formula feed on the third night was the first meal he’d had.

I’m so grateful to that lady, and also to one of my fiance’s family members who showed me how to express using a pump so I could still breastfeed. She’d text every day with encouragement too and I was so relieved I could still give my baby breast milk. I’ll never be able to thank Paula enough for that encouragement as expressing is quite tough, you have to do it regularly so the supply doesn’t dry up, and Paula’s texts kept me going.

Eventually I couldn’t keep up with the demands of expressing and I moved on to formula. Jack had his tongue tie snipped so he’s able to move it freely now and hopefully his speech won’t be affected. All was well in the feeding world, or so I thought…until the next blog post!

If you’re struggling to breastfeed and it’s getting you down, please try expressing. You’re no use to your baby when you’re stressed out and you’ve got a hundred other things to stress about, don’t let feeding be one of them.

A Bit Of Background

Hi and welcome to my blog!

First, a bit of background. I’m 31 and live in Merseyside with my partner and our 16 week old son.

We always knew we wanted kids, even though I’m not particularly maternal. To be honest, I probably wanted kids for quite selfish reasons – who else is going to know I’m dead?! We kept making excuses though so the time was never ‘right’ – “We aren’t married. We don’t own our own home. We’re going on holiday.” Etc.

I was on the pill when I started getting horrendous heartburn in bed at night. I’ve never had heartburn before. I Googled it. Google said I was pregnant. I knew I wasn’t. My period was late. Nothing new there. I’d changed from the combined pill to the mini pill about six months before and my periods were now up the wall.

The heartburn continued and I didn’t feel too clever. Not sick, but dizzy occasionally. I wasn’t pregnant though. In fact, I was so not pregnant that I decided to do a pregnancy test to show myself just how un-pregnant I was. I was that un-pregnant I didn’t bother telling my partner I was doing one. I peed on the stick and put it on the cistern and messed about on my phone while I waited for it to brew. I was that unconcerned that I forgot why I was just randomly sat on the loo refreshing Twitter.

Stood up and turned round to flush the toilet and noticed my little test sat there looking like this…

I hadn’t even read the instructions but knew that one of the lines meant the test had worked correctly. Then the other window was one line for negative, two for positive. So I wasn’t pregnant but I’ll just check the instructions. One of the lines meant the test had worked correctly. Got that. Then the other window was no lines for negative, one for positive. Oh. I have one line. But it’s a very strong line and when people are pregnant they only have faint lines, don’t they? Duff test.

And so to Google again – typing in ‘false positive pregnancy test.’ Which Google tells me doesn’t exist. You can have a false negative but never a false positive. I’m fucking pregnant. The shock literally hit me like a brick wall. I cannot have a baby. I am not ready for a baby. I don’t even believe in abortion under those circumstances but I was going to get rid of the baby and not tell my partner. Then I realised I couldn’t do that and live a lie. So I’d tell him. Tell him I was pregnant but couldn’t have a baby. I went downstairs and flung my positive test at him (the cap to protect the wee soaked bit was still on, don’t worry). His face lit up and he went to hug me and all I said was “I’m not having it.” Talk about pissing on someone’s chips!

He convinced me I was in shock and needed to sleep on it. Which I did. And I woke up the next day guilty as fuck. He’d gone to work so I went out and bought another test (partly in case I had the world’s first false positive), weed (still positive) and wrote him a little note “To Daddy” about how sorry Mummy was and how excited to meet Daddy this baby was. All that excitement in his face and I’d just flung a stick of wee at him and told him I was getting rid of his baby. What a bitch.

Thankfully I got over the shock and it was time to get excited about my little bundle of joy.