Peer Counsellor Course – Breastfeeding Management

The lovely N with her two rather adorable daughters turned up a little late and frazzled to take Monday’s course, which was very informative.

C had asked me to bring along my slings and breastpump if I had one (which I did) but we had to get through so much in one session that we didn’t get chance to go into that.

We discussed positioning and attachment, thrush, galactagogues, mastitus and blocked ducts, expressing (and N brought the hand expression hand creme doll with her)  and all manner of things, really.

It seemed a shame to end the session. I wonder why that’s only one session? I would have thought it could benefit greatly from being spread over two sessions. N gave us many handouts, some of which I have yet to work my way through, but two sessions would have given us chance to pay more attention to things like attachment (which to my mind is probably one of the most important things when it comes to breastfeeding) and positioning.

Different positions, how to check a latch is right (because there were so many people who told me baby B’s was, and it wasn’t), how to check for tongue ties, how to improve a latch, that kind of thing probably deserved an entire session on its own.

I definitely think it could be done in the scheme of things as there are a couple of sessions where we’ve finished early; cram two of the shorter sessions into one and spread Breastfeeding Management out into two sessions?

Poorly baby B – update

Baby B is feeling quite a bit better. He’s managed to keep down rather a lot of milk. I’m not giving him any solids for a while though until I’m absolutely sure he’s well again.

He’s being very “good” (as in, “is he good?”) which tells me he isn’t quite back to normal yet.

Last night though, I came down with the bug and could not stop vomiting, mainly blood, and had horrific runs too. Nice! I was sitting on the toilet puking into a bucket. Worse still, I couldn’t feed baby B because I couldn’t hold anything except the bucket, and would have been sick on him.  Thankfully I had some EBM in the freezer, which dh defrosted and fed to baby B in the slanted cup. By two in the morning I already felt better (although semi-engorged – shows how much milk baby B must take in the evening and night!) and managed to lie baby B next to me and feed him off to sleep.

I have to say I am thankful to dh; as soon as my runs had stopped I went upstairs with my bucket and tucked myself under the duvet and attempted to sleep; dh wandered around the living room with baby B in the sling until two in the morning.

Poor dh now has the bug, although it is starting to clear.

I’m in the middle of pouring disinfectant over practically everything that moves, and putting every scrap of cloth – clothing, nappies, sling, bedding – in the washing machine.

I’m even washing at forty degrees. Slap hand!

Baby B’s birth – part two

With legs like balloons and having forgotten to bring slippers, I crammed my feet into my shoes and sprinted after MH to the special care unit.

There was baby B, hooked up to a monitor and fast asleep.

And so it began. He wouldn’t latch on. I could barely sit down because of my stitches. I was shown the “cross cradle” hold with a mountain of pillows, but he just sniffed at my nipple and did nothing.

After several attempts one of the special care midwifes gave him formula from a cup. I’d actually been offered a choice of Cow and Gate and SMA. Despite the free cuddly cow I’d been sent by C&G, I opted for the latter, with its pretty blue and pink curvy lettering, curvy and safe like a mother’s arms, but with a smell like failure and guilt. The S and M were like the start of the word smug. “You can’t feed your baby. That’s okay. We can. So there.”

Several trips to special care later, one with dh (who, bless him, actually thought it would cheer me up to learn the womanly art of, er, cup feeding and got the midwife to show me how to do it, without realising that I felt like I was failing with every gulp he took) and another night on my own in the ward and someone finally came to show me how to hand express.

But as only one blob of colostrum came out of one nipple, I was advised to keep him on the formula until my milk came in.

That night, I got to take him back to the ward, finally. MH was there, and made pointed comments about how late the special care midwife was dropping me back there, and how it wasn’t fair on the already overstretched night staff.

I was told to ring the bell every time I wanted to breastfeed him, and the lovely MH or her deputy (whose name I forget) would help me. How kind of them.

Three o’clock in the morning, baby B woke for a feed. He wouldn’t latch on when I tried, so I rang the bell.

MH to the rescue.

“Some babies just never latch on. We’ve a ward full of ‘em at the moment. Would it really destroy you to give him a bottle?”

She cup fed him, all the while saying, “so much easier with a bottle but they have these rules now, don’t they?”

MH swaddled him in a blanket and laid him on his side in case he vomited.

As soon as she’d left the room I turned him onto his back as I was scared of him turning onto his front.

He woke again about an hour later, and I went through the motions of trying to feed him. Then I rang the bell. MH’s deputy came to help me this time.

“Why won’t he latch on?” I said with desparation rising in my throat.

“What did MH tell you?”

“That some babies never latch on?”

“Sadly, she’s right.”

After the cup feed, I cried, and cried, and cried. I’d really wanted to breastfeed. I didn’t want to bottle feed my baby. I wanted to give him milk from his Mummy. I didn’t bother hand expressing as I’d been told to wait until my milk came in. I texted my friend from Mumsnet who told me the midwives were talking bollocks and that eventually he would latch on.

Thank goodness.

I texted dh and told him I just wanted to get out of there and back home. I felt like I was in a prison.

The next morning, a new midwife called DS arrived. She told me the Infant Feeding Team could see me, but there was little point as she would just tell me exactly what they would.

She showed me the rugby ball hold, after a fashion, and gave me a little syringe to catch the colostrum, which I fed to baby B. The sun was shining outside and I felt a little more hopeful.

I didn’t need the syringe long as baby B latched on. It hurt like hell but I didn’t care because he was sucking from my breast.

I wrote down how long he’d sucked and from which side.

I wanted to go home that day, but DS said “one good breastfeed does not mean it is established”. So that night I kept writing my log, and in the end baby B spent an hour each side. I thought that was marvellous, proof that breastfeeding was working.

I had to stay another day because they thought I’d picked up a water infection.

Then finally, on a glorious April’s day, I was allowed home. Dh came to pick me up. I left on a high.

And that’s the birth story. The end of this is the highest it gets for a while. At some point in the future, I’ll write the story of the early weeks which will be “The Empire Strikes Back” in comparison to this, “Star Wars”.

Baby B’s birth – part one

Ah, the sorry tale of baby B’s birth, or “how I wish I’d stood my ground and not agreed to an induction”.

I’d opted for Liverpool Women’s hospital for a few reasons:

a) I’d been told Whiston was crap by various acquaintances.

b) I’d been told Liverpool Women’s was fantastic especially if you wanted to breastfeed.

c) I was born there (when it was Oxford Street hospital) and there was an element of “we shall not cease from exploration”* to it.

d) Liverpool Women’s had a “choice”** of birthing centre or hospital birth, and I wanted a birthing centre style birth, with a disco ball (yes, really) and a birth pool.

I’d opted for dh and mil to be my birth partners. I’d heard that having a female birth partner greatly reduced your chances of intervention.

Trouble is, baby B did not want to come out of his cosy uterine living room. At forty weeks plus ten days, I was called in for an examination of my cervix. Posterior. Sweep did nothing. I was told I’d be induced at plus fourteen days unless I agreed to monitoring every other day.

Dh wanted me to be induced; he’d started his paternity leave that very day after feeling like he was being pressured by his boss in work who was apparently fed up with waiting. If I was induced, it would give him a good two weeks’ paternity leave. If not, and I just waited, he could end up using his paternity leave watching me get bigger and less mobile.

This was where I’d been hoping my female birthing partner would come in handy.

But she just said, “well, with things like this, it has to be a joint decision.”

My heart sank; this clearly meant I was to get no support. Not in real life, anyway. On Mumsnet I got plenty of support. But of course, dh and mil had my best interests at heart and they knew best. And anyway, those women on Mumsnet are a bunch of lentil-weaving knit your own Mooncup hippies, aren’t they?

So – and I still feel guilty about this – I agreed that if baby B hadn’t come out by plus fourteen days, I’d go in for an induction. They actually made the appointment for me at plus fifteen days as there wasn’t one available earlier.

I drank my own body weight in Raspberry Leaf Tea. Sex wasn’t really on the menu as dh just couldn’t get his head round finding my pregnant form attractive so that old fashioned induction method was off the menu. I went on long walks, out of breath and weeing in the bushes because I had very little bladder control. I went in on the morning of plus 15 days for a sweep, which did nothing. So that evening, I went back for them to “start me off”.

Dh and mil were with me, but mil wasn’t allowed in the induction ward; secondary birth partners were only allowed in full labour, when birthing women are transferred to their own rooms.

First pessary. Nothing for a bit, then what felt like mild period pains. Tethered to the bed for monitoring for hours and hours and hours dying for a wee, with no midwives about to offer so much as a bedpan. So uncomfortable. Second pessary. Strong contractions.

I’d gone in at seven that evening, and at ten o’clock the next morning I was finally deemed to be in “proper labour”, and moved to my own room, where I was told I had to be monitored continuously but that the midwife would try her best to let me move around to ease labour.

Gas and air – great stuff, but when they added the synthetic oxytocin drip, and broke my waters, it barely touched the sides. So I asked for diamorphine (not knowing how it would affect breastfeeding) which did nothing except send me to sleep for two minutes between each contraction.

Dh insists it must have stopped the pain as I seemed much calmer. But it didn’t, it just stopped me being awake between pains. The pains were severe. I screamed “it fucking hurts!” around the ward a couple of times. Well, every time, actually.

Finally I felt I needed to poo more than I’d ever needed to poo in my entire life.

But the fetal heart monitor, by now connected to baby B’s head, was telling the midwife that baby B was in distress.

A Doctor flew in through the door and said that they were getting theatre ready.

I so needed a poo. I kept trying to push this poo out.

I was nine cm dilated. And kept wanting to poo.

It transpired it wasn’t a poo at all, but was actually a baby I was desperate to push out.

He wouldn’t come out. I kept screaming, “he won’t come out! he won’t come out! I can’t push! I can’t push!”

Mil, dh and the midwife all said, “you can! you can!”

“I can’t!”

The Doctor came in again muttering darkly about theatre.

A bit of anaesthetic injected into my perineum and then the midwife cut an episiotomy and out slid baby B. I was glad of the cut. It saved me from a C-section I think.

Baby B had the cord wrapped around him and he was whisked off… I was too doped up on diamorphine to really know why or what was going on… mil tried to follow to find out why but was rudely barred from following.

Five minutes later baby B was returned to me. He made a little sniff at my nipple and put his mouth around it, but didn’t suck… I was then stitched up and baby B removed from me and given skin to skin contact with dh.

Very little memory of the next bit. Cord ph just slightly lower than the norm. Special care unit. Okay to give formula? He will get low blood sugar else. Will feed from cup.

Dh & mil say it will give me much needed rest, I am too doped up to think anything else. Not told about hand expressing or anything like that.

Dh goes off to special care with baby B and I am stitched up, put in wheelchair, taken to my room and put to bed.

I wake at six in the morning, shivery, frightened, and wanting to know where my baby is. I am rescued by a midwife MH who we will encounter in part two of baby B’s birth story, who gives me some paracodeine, helps me while I shower, and agrees to show me where baby B is.

* from TS Eliot’s Four Quartets (Little Gidding): “We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.”

** You can only go in the birthing centre if you go into labour naturally, between 38 and 41+3 weeks’ gestation.

Poorly baby B

Well, it was only a matter of time; baby B has caught H’s tummy bug

He was fine until yesterday evening when all of a sudden he had a huge posset. I thought nothing of it,  until I gave him carrot, swede and chicken for tea and he threw all of it up, “Exorcist” style. And continued to throw up.

I then breastfed him. He threw it up.

And all night long this was the pattern.

I’d try and feed him to sleep. He’d take a great deal of milk, lots of active sucking, and then he’d throw it up. He lay there listlessly on the bed next to me, and just fell asleep by himself (now, when he did that, I knew he wasn’t right).  Then about twenty minutes later, he’d awaken and want to feed.

And then throw it all up. This continued for the entire night. At one point I pulled my top up over my breasts so he couldn’t feed, as I wasn’t sure it was good for him if he was only going to throw it up again, but he kept patting my breasts so pathetically, and doing his best to make the sign for “milk” with his hand, that I thought, “well, even if it is going to come up again, at least it’s comforting while he’s on there,” and fed him some more.

And it did come up again. But that’s demand feeding, or cue feeding, or whatever you call it. He knew what he wanted, and I suppose even if the tiniest bit stayed down it was all good stuff.

Anyway me, dh and ds went to the Dr at ten o’clock this morning and she couldn’t find anything specifically wrong with him. She said to put him on yoghurts and runny foods instead of more “solid” stuff, and to give him extra water.

However this just didn’t quite sit right with me, so I checked with Sharon Trotter, and she recommended to just keep feeding him with breastmilk, which made a bit more sense to me. It did him for six months – it’s not suddenly turned into “just a drink” overnight!

He kept a lot down this morning, but then when I fed him again, he threw it all up again. I’ve just managed to get him to sleep on the bed upstairs and am about to go and check on him now. I’m not feeling too hot myself either but I suppose at least if I catch it, my body will make antibodies against it which I can pass on to him…

If you build it…

…they won’t come

Well, anyway, they didn’t today, at the antenatal breastfeeding workshop.

So N and I sat there for an hour (K and H were ill, A unfortunately got the time of the workshop wrong so had already been to Whiston and back that morning and wasn’t about to do that long walk again with little S!) and had a lovely chat.  But no antenatal women came to play the nut game, the jellybean game, learn about hand expression on a scarily realistic fake boob full of hand cream or play with the knitted boobs. So we left at two o’clock, somewhat demoralised.

Well, next time they will come.  I had two interested parties on Mumsnet who said they couldn’t make it this time but could come to the next one… and if I have to, I’m going to accost pregnant women in the streets and garner their support.

Bottles, bottles everywhere

Breastfeeding is the biological norm, but not the cultural norm. The cultural norm is to feed a baby formula from a bottle.

Once I learned about “cultural norms” I started seeing bottles everywhere.

On t-shirts in the “blooming marvellous” (well known purveyor of maternity and baby clothes and equipment) catalogue.

On windows for shops that sell baby clothes and equipment.

On cards that congratulate parents on the birth of their baby.

On baby changing / feeding rooms.

On baby clothes sold in our local market stall.

And where have I seen pictures of breasts? Or a suckling baby? Or the breastfeeding symbol?

Er….. erm….. on other breastfeeding blogs, and in Sure Start centres.

“But it WORKS!”

To me, if a parenting guru’s method “works” it means that it results in a happy, healthy, well-adjusted individual. And that’s the only test of whether or not it “works”.

Now if, as a side-effect, it gets the baby, say, sleeping through the night, self-settling, gaining weight well or whatever, then all to the good.

So if you asked those people who were Truby King’d in the fifties if they are happy, healthy and well adjusted, knowing some who were Truby King’d and unhappy about it, they’d probably say no. So the method doesn’t work, because it doesn’t result in happy, healthy and well adjusted individuals.

Even if it does get a baby sleeping through the night according to Claire Verity on “Bringing up Baby”. A baby sleeping through the night is not proof a method “works”.

Peer counsellor training session and a good old moan

There were only three attendees to this week’s session, and the lovely C took the session which was about preparation for birth, breastfeeding and home.

I’m afraid I ended up having a good old moan about my birth experience, and about lack of support from mil in the early days.
Afterwards I did think I probably came across as a bit of a bitter old cow. I wonder if it’s time to forgive and forget those early days and the lack of support, and move on? After all, baby B is six months of age now.

An alternative to THAT advert

You know the advert I mean. “I promise to do my share the the night feeds,” etc. “Aw, that advert brought a tear to my eye,” women say, dreaming that one can only have the ideal husband and father if one feeds one’s baby a certain brand of formula. (Oh, but it’s follow-on milk, from six to twenty-four months; if you look closely enough, you can see it on the packets featured in the advert, can’t you? Ah well that’s all right then.)

Why can’t we have a breastfeeding alternative to that advert? It would go a little something like this:

<Gorgeous bloke massaging partner’s shoulders as she breastfeeds the newborn baby>

“I promise to support you in your decision to breastfeed, and never to suggest that any problems would be easily solved with a bottle.”

<Picture of said bloke cooking hot casserole as partner nurses the baby>

“I promise to “mother” you, as you mother our baby, and never to hassle you about household chores.”

<Picture of bloke carrying baby around in a baby sling in dead of the night as woman lies upstairs asleep>

“I promise to learn ways of settling our baby to sleep.”

<Picture of this lovely chap – tastefully done of course, this is a prime time telly slot – taking a bath with the baby>

“I promise to do my share of baby related duties, seeing them not as chores but as bonding time.”

<Picture of Mum and Dad sharing sleep – safely – with baby>

“I promise to welcome our baby into the family bed, if that makes it easier for you to breastfeed.”

<Lovely picture of Mum, Dad and baby, all smiles>

“And all this I promise because I know that breastfeeding will ensure our baby has normal good health and a happy start to life.”

What do you reckon?