As I know quite a few people who have just
had babies or are due to have I felt it might be useful to some people to hear
how my first 4 months have gone.
I’m not writing this for sympathy or support
but to offer a bit of insight and hopefully it might be helpful for other
people to read.
I know I found it helpful to read about
other people’s experiences and I wanted to add to that but at the same time I don’t
want to rub people’s faces in it if they don’t want to know hence putting this
on the blog instead of straight on FB!
So where do you start? Perhaps I should say
that while I was pregnant I had this nagging feeling that I wasn’t really sure
how things worked out being a mum, a lot of people said not worry it just
‘happens’.
Perhaps I should start with the incredible pressure now put on mums
to breastfeed? Because both of these things are supposed to be the most natural
things in the world I tried not to let it worry me and figured that everything
would just work out - after all everyone always talks about how wonderful new
babies are etc.
I do want to make something clear at this
point, I support breastfeeding, and any mother who can is amazing, it is an
incredibly difficult thing to do, and any mother who manages should be
supported to the best of everyone’s ability. But perhaps in trying to encourage
and help breastfeeding mothers, the pendulum has swung a little too far in the
other direction again not everyone can, incredible as it seems not every baby
wants to, and so came the trauma that happened once baby was born, and what was
supposed to be the most natural thing in the world turned out to not feel very
natural at all.
I had Emily one week late, she had been
giving me signs that she was coming for the whole two weeks before her due date
and the whole week before she actually came. I had a Sweep, to encourage her
along at which point I found out she was in position and I was 2cm dilated. I
started with early Labour signs a couple of hours later but I didn’t want to
get too excited as I knew that sometimes that would happen and they would stop,
and so they did at 1am in the morning.
24 hours later they picked up right where
they had left off! 2.5 hours after that I went to hospital and found I was 4cm,
a blurry many hours of contractions and gas and air later I was 6cm dilated,
and then at 9am I entered into the later stages of labour, it got to around
10:50am I was coming up to the two hour mark of when they start to intervene,
baby was not distressed, I didn’t want a ventouse. I got cross with myself and
the baby for not being there and pushed extra hard, tore and had Emily at
11:03am, 6lb12.
When I looked round to see my baby two huge
eyes looked back, she was slightly grey from being newborn and I couldnt help
but think – oh she looks like a frog! Things are a big foggy here now, but basically
everything happened as it should, I held her to the breast for her to suckle, I
felt exhausted but adrenaline had kicked in and I actually didn’t feel that
bad, I had stitches, I had a shower, I remember feeling a bit distant from the
whole situation but I thought that was just shock, and exhaustion. At this
point Emily was pretty quiet, she was healthy, I felt well and so we went to
the ward, I wanted to go home all was fine.
And then while everyone else’s babies were
basically chilling out after all the strain of being born, Emily decided she
was hungry, she was cross and my god did she cry. And cry, and cry, nothing
would settle her in her cot, she wanted to be held. She was so cross and hungry
she shook, we tried everything to put her on the breast to see if that would
help, in the end the nurses asked me if I wanted to try feeding her some
formula and they thought she was behaving a bit like a premature
baby.
She was just so hungry and so desperate I agreed. It was the right thing to do. She
wolfed down the milk the nurses cup fed her and so started the nightmare of
working out what to do next, all the while I still felt distant from her, she didn’t
feel like mine. I didn’t really understand - but I thought I was just tired and
the crying and the feeding problems were stressful. I thought things would settle down. At the
very least my husband had wanted this baby, even if things were a bit rocky now
he’d be good with her and that would give me time to sort myself out.
Of course things never work out that easy.
The struggle with breastfeeding continued,
she could latch on, she would suck (my god would she would suck) but then she
would fidget herself off the breast and instead of doing what would be sensible
and latching back on, she would immediately scream, and then the battle to calm
her down and get her back on would start. On, off, on, off until I couldn’t take
it anymore and the nurses would help me latch her on and then finally the
nurses would give her formula and be astonished at the rate she gulped it up,
and at the amount she wanted. She wasn’t even over feeding and throwing up she
was just desperately hungry.
The nurses checked how she was latching on
and couldn’t find a problem, they double checked her mouth and couldn’t find a
problem. One of the breast feeding specialists wondered whether my fairly flat
nipples were making it more difficult and so we tried ‘The pump’ mainly to try
and make it easier for her to latch on. We tried nipple shields. It became
clear that supply wasn’t an issue as I pumped, colostrum came out. Those first
few drops felt so precious and I was so proud and happy that it wasn’t that I didn’t
have anything to feed her, it was just Emily being difficult.
The regime became more complicated, I would
try to breastfeed and then when I couldn’t cope anymore the nurses would cup
feed her the Milk I managed to express, and then top up with formula. And I
would break for half an hour to an hour and then express, then break again for
half an hour to an hour and then we would do it all again. They were still
surprised at how much she was wanting, in the end I was expressing plenty but she
still wasn’t staying latched on. I was running on no sleep, my husband was so
distressed at not being able to help and the desperate crying of the baby that
he had to keep leaving the ward. The nurses insisted I get an hour or two’s
sleep at night and managed to take her off me while they cup fed her my
expressed milk and the formula. It didn’t bother me. She still didn’t feel like
mine, but I felt sorry for her - she was hungry and I would do what I could,
but I still didn’t feel attached to her at all.
And so after 4 days in hospital I was
allowed to go home, we had not progressed at all with the feeding issues she
still wouldn’t stay latched on, and was still desperately hungry but I wanted
to go home. The hospital lent me the breast pump to take home on the theory that
as much breast milk I could get in her the better. My breasts were covered in
bruises from where the nurses had pinched to try and get her to latch on, my
right nipple was scabbed from how hard Emily had sucked, both breasts were
tender from the shear effort of trying to breast feed and pump. I just wanted
to sleep. She still didn’t feel like mine, my husband admitted he also didn’t feel
a bond with her. I got home and cried. I was relieved to be home, but where was
this incredible bond I was supposed to have, where was the perfect family that
was supposed to happen. Where was the breastfeeding? Emily wouldn’t even look
at me when I fed her, she was soothed by people holding her but she didn’t seem
to care who it was who held her. She also didn’t seem to have that bond with
us.
So there we were at home, one broken family
and at 4am in the morning we ran out of the formula the hospital had sent us
home with. I had run out of the milk I had pumped. My husband rushed off to
Asda’s to find more formula milk, and Emily screamed, I tried to breastfeed her
with my bruised and sore breasts, and she just screamed. And screamed and then went
from red to purple and then stopped screaming. She had also stopped breathing. I fortunately remembered my cousin telling me her
daughter would sometimes do the same when she was a baby and I jolted her,
she started breathing again, I rubbed her feet and hands so that the colour
came back. I swore I would never try to breastfeed again. Nothing was worth the
anguish it caused the both of us.
But I still felt it was important to give
her the breastmilk I knew I could supply. I pumped, I pumped every 4 hours for
2 months, it meant I never got any proper sleep and she would often want comforting
when I was pumping so I would sit with her on my lap, her kicking the funnels
of my breasts while I tried to pump. Sometimes I would reach over to pick her
up and the milk would spill from the bottles. I managed to produce enough milk
after the first week or so that I didn’t need to supplement with formula. I was
proud I could feed her, I was exhausted, and she still didn’t feel like mine.
And my husband still couldn’t cope with her crying.
He tried so hard, he would change her and
feed her my milk from the bottle. When he finished work he would come home and
take her off me so I could have a break and get something to eat, and yet she
would just cry and I would have to take her back because he would get so angry
it scared him. It scared me.
After a while the formula started to sneak
back in, I was tired, I’d miss a pump so I could sleep. At one point I was so
tired I actually slept through her crying in the night - even though she was
right next to me in the cot and my husband got up and sorted her. So much for
the nurses saying you’d never sleep through your baby crying! At 3 months she
was half formula half breast milk as I tried to balance out what was best. I
wanted to stop, it was exhausting mentally and physically but I had decided I
wanted to give her as much breastmilk as I could up until 4 months - I would review
it again then.
For that last month the pumping gradually declined until finally
I was doing it only once a day. At 4 months 1 week I decided enough was enough.
I wanted my body and my sanity back.
She finally started looking at me while I
was feeding her at around 3 months, she started being more clingy and seems to
recognise me as her protector now. I still don’t feel that bond but I do feel we get on better, I try so hard
to do what’s right for her because at the end of the day she is a living
breathing human being, but sometimes I forget she’s mine. Sometimes I look at
her and I don’t recognise the fact she is my child. My Husband is so much
better with her now too, she has stopped crying like the apocalypse is coming,
she laughs and smiles and giggles and can be very cute- she’s becoming a person
in her own right. He looks forward to coming home and cuddling her. The worst is behind us.
I have been incredibly lucky to have incredibly
supportive friends and family. I was so close to breaking so many times, just the fact they were there, even talking about other things was helpful.
I had people also tell me about how difficult
they had had it when they had their own children, that helped. I wasn’t on my
own. I wasn’t the only one who has struggled. I have got through what I hope is
the worst of it.
I can’t say it’s easy to talk about it
though, I understand why people tend to keep quiet about it, but I found it so
helpful to hear about other people I really wanted to be able to help someone else.
It’s so hard, but you can get through it. One
day it will be in the past and you can be proud you got through it. Don’t ever
feel guilty for the decisions you make for your own sanity and for the health
of your child.
To the people who might not have had
problems, and cannot understand how hard it might be for someone who has - I have this to say. I am so glad you didn’t have
problems, it’s good that you didn’t however please understand how someone might
feel before you say something like “Well I managed fine, so can you”, and never
EVER say something like “you are a failure” because even as a joke, it is not
funny. It hurts. It hurts so deep because you are trying your very best and
somewhere at your core you are afraid you are.
You are not.
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