A mother from London got in touch with us and wanted to share her infant feeding experience. She said that she found reading other parents’ stories on our blog the only thing that made sense at a time that healthcare authorities did not. This is her story:
One minute I was being discharged from hospital with my beautiful baby, the next we were readmitted and I was told that he was at risk of brain damage.
I had always intended to breastfeed. From everything I knew, it would be the best thing I could do for my son. Shortly after his birth, I tried to breastfeed a couple of times with help from midwives. He only latched on for a minute before falling asleep, so I was shown how to hand express into syringes.
When the short feeds continued, I repeatedly asked for help. I said to anyone who would listen that I was only expressing small amounts (less than a millilitre). I was told that he only needed small amounts, that it would increase and to keep trying. I was told that if he needed formula, it would be prescribed. When my husband asked a midwife to prescribe formula, she just replied ‘we don’t do that here’.
Then I was discharged and sent home. Looking back at my hospital discharge notes, I can see that they wrote ‘breastfeeding’ under feeding method. My son was one day old and he was not feeding properly.
I spent that first night at home trying to comfort a newborn, who screamed through the night and wouldn’t latch, as I carried on expressing small amounts into syringes to try to feed him. I had been told before the birth that he would cry a lot the second night, so I thought it was normal.
The next day, we were visited by a nurse who noticed that he was very sleepy. She helped me with breastfeeding positions, but he still could not latch. She recommended visiting a local hospital and I’m unbelievably grateful that she did. I now understand that she may have saved his life.
On admission to the local A&E, my son had his blood sugar tested. He didn’t cry as they took blood from his heel, and I still remember the nervous expression on the nurse’s face. While waiting for the results, they recommended formula. Then I was told that if his blood sugar level dropped too low, he could have brain damage. It was day two of his life and this was the first time I had heard the risks of trying to exclusively breastfeed. The previous message ‘keep trying and it will be fine’ and ‘they only need small amounts’ from the hospital, midwives, nurses and NCT advisors was wrong. It was not fine.
We gave him formula. His blood sugar test result then came back and it showed that before he had formula, he had dangerously low blood sugar (hypoglycaemia). I waited for a bed to clear so that he could be monitored and I still remember clearly what a member of nursing staff said to me: ‘I hear you’re the one who wants to breastfeed your baby. I’m all for breastfeeding, but not to the point that you’re starving your baby.’
I was given a feeding plan, and a torturous journey of ‘triple feeding’ began. I was told to try to breastfeed every three hours, then give him expressed breastmilk, then give him a formula ‘top-up’. Trying to breastfeed would take about 30 minutes, then giving expressed milk about 20 minutes, then giving formula another 30 minutes, if I was lucky. Expressing milk with a pump took another 30 minutes. That left just over an hour to comfort my son back to sleep, change his nappy if needed and clean pump parts balanced on a tiny hospital sink, before the cycle started again.
I should have questioned this. When was the time to sleep? At this point I hadn’t slept for more than about an hour a day for five nights, in and out of hospital. Writing this out makes it sound ridiculous, and it was. But I was on my own and I trusted the advice from professionals and followed it blindly.
The next day, things got worse. Despite triple feeding through the night, my baby was lethargic and looked jaundiced. Antibiotics were given and tests were run. I remember cutting a sleeve off his onesie so that a cannula could be fitted. Until test results came back days later, he was monitored every two hours, night and day. I continued my attempts to triple feed in hospital by his side. I was then sent home to carry on triple feeding. I remember seeing the words ‘hypoglycaemia and poor feeding’ in his discharge notes and sobbing.
I kept it up for four weeks. I had no time to process the trauma, because every minute of my time was dictated by triple feeding. I still couldn’t get a latch of more than a couple of minutes. By this point, I’d paid for a lactation consultant and seen a lot of others at free clinics. And it still wasn’t working. After kind advice from one lactation consultant, I reduced pumping from eight times a day to six, then four. She was the first to hint that I should stop trying. I’d lost the ability to think for myself from sleep deprivation. I decided then to just stop and move fully to formula. I now know that the hormone drop can be a lot worse if you stop suddenly. The gravity of what had happened after his birth hit me.
Having triple fed for so long, I found that at this point the hormone change wasn’t as bad when my baby breastfed. I would breastfeed him for a minute (still the longest I could get with a latch) at roughly half hourly intervals through the day on demand, and give him formula every three hours, still following the feeding plan because I was so scared of him being underfed after what he had been through.
I fell into a pattern of mixed feeding, with formula as his main nutrition in the day and breastfeeding as snacks and every couple of hours through the night. I found that this worked. My baby was thriving and I was surviving. But I had to deal with health visitors, one who referred to a particular brand of formula as ‘the worst of the worst’ (despite it saving his life and being the only brand I could get him to take), among so many nasty comments from strangers.
I wish I could go back and tell myself the risks of exclusive breastfeeding. I am so lucky that my son is still with us and I am grateful that my friends and family showed up for me when I lost myself in the exhaustion of triple feeding. However, it has taken me a long time to make peace with what we went through at such a vulnerable time.
Ally, London