The Birth 3 - Coping With Hospital

I was in hospital for six nights. For the first three days I was too weak to get out of bed..

Like most other mums I desperately wanted to breastfeed. But after the pain and trauma of the labour my ME flared up badly and I was too weak even to sit up in bed. My arms shook for hours following the epidural so at first I couldn’t even cuddle Sofia. A midwife wanted to give Sofia a bottle of milk just a couple of hours after she was born because she was concerned about her low blood sugar levels. Babies born by ventouse are more vulnerable. When we protested M was taught how to cup feed Sofia instead to get some milk into her. Cup feeding doesn’t interfere with a baby learning to breastfeed, whereas bottle feeding does. I badly needed to get some sleep but wasn’t given enough pain relief to cope with the stitches I’d had once the epidural wore off so I was in too much pain to sleep. So the rest of that night and the next day was spent in a semi-conscious state, too exhausted to move or think but worried that breastfeeding would be sabotaged by introducing a bottle before Sofia learned to latch on. But I had Sofia curled up on my chest which was the best feeling in the world.

The first night was so hard. I hadn’t slept in two days. M had to go home at 11pm like all the other dads. Sofia was beside me in her cot, crying. I couldn’t get out of bed to pick her up. A night-duty midwife (the ones who have little enthusiasm for the job and want to work as little as possible) came into my ward and ordered me to feed my baby. I begged her to help me latch Sofia on. Then I asked if she could take Sofia away so I could get some sleep and bring her to me to be fed. She barked that if I wanted to abandon my baby at night she would be given a bottle. I agonised. Thus far we had managed to avoid bottles but I knew without M for the night I couldn’t physically cope so I surrendered. I had to accept that I just had to get some sleep even if that meant Sofia might not learn to breastfeed.

I remember the feeling of waking up after my first five hour’s of sleep and calling for Sofia to be brought back to my room. Seeing her all bundled up in her cot through the Perspex. It was like Christmas a hundred times over. I phoned M on my mobile and croaked “she’s beautiful”.

It was a miracle that I eventually managed to breastfeed. A miracle largely due to an amazing midwife, Maria, who spent hours holding Sofia and getting her to latch onto my breast for the first two days when I couldn’t move or sit up. Sofia kept trying and getting frustrated and crying and I was catatonic with exhaustion and ready to give up too but Maria just persisted and persisted and eventually Sofia got the hang of latching herself on. So my baby learnt to breastfeed before I did! Maria showed me how to do it lying down but as a novice it’s very difficult to learn to breastfeed lying down because you can’t see what’s happening. For the first days I needed someone to help me latch Sofia on every time I breastfeed. It didn’t exactly boost my confidence.

I almost gave up several times. Even though on day three I was suddenly given VIP treatment. I had been languishing on the post-natal ward with everyone else’s babies crying around me. The nasty weekend duty midwives had me down as a lazy, depressed, middle-class mum who couldn’t hack looking after her baby and couldn’t be bothered to have a bath. They were horrified when I asked for a bedwash to clean up the litres of blood still caked all over me from the labour because I couldn’t get to the bathroom. They left me without water to drink. It turns out they hadn’t bothered to read my notes where my consultant explained my ME and asked for me to have my own room post-delivery if possible.

What happened is that M did one of his famous complaints. That I was being badly treated, that I was ill, not lazy and they had to do everything to help me. The next morning I was wheeled into my own suite and treated like royalty. I was even given a private session with the expert breastfeeding counsellor because I was too weak to get to her class. But she made it sound so complicated and technical and demanding that I cried from sheer exhaustion and sense of defeat. She said that if breastfeeding hurts it means you’re doing it wrong. It hurt like hell. And the idea of demand feeding horrified me. Sofia was ALWAYS hungry, it seemed. However long and hard I struggled to breastfeed her the midwife would come in ten minutes later and tell me her whingeing meant she was still hungry and I should feed her again. I had reckoned on a feed every 2 and a half hours so I had recovery time in between. I panicked because I needed that hour and a half to rest before the next feed.

I felt completely steamrollered. I still didn’t really understand the latching on. It hurt like hell. And they kept telling me Sofia was still hungry so I couldn’t be doing it right. And it goes without saying I was exhausted. But on day four I was finally able to sit up properly and a lovely midwife piled some cushions on my lap and lay Sofia on top and finally I got to see what this latching on business was all about. And it turned out Sofia had gained tons (well, ounces!) of weight in that first week. So, as she said, I must have been doing something right.

However, every night in hospital I gave Sofia to the midwives for the night and she had a bottle, sometimes two. Sometimes they were nice and agreed to cup feed her, but sometimes not, because it takes much longer. That allowed me 5 or 6 hours of sleep per night. There was no way I could have done otherwise. I just had to let go and accept that if this hampered breastfeeding then so be it. I was already doing a superhuman effort to feed throughout the rest of the day. Luckily Sofia was a hungry baby and a good latcher and I had M’s unfailing support and midwives on call around the clock for 6 days to help me get the breastfeeding established.

When I first stood up it felt like I had been lying in bed for six months .At last I was able to shuffle up and down the corridor a bit and felt ready to go home. I was so lucky that the hospital never put me under any pressure to vacate my private room. We bundled Sofia up and I wrapped her in my arms as M. wheeled us both out in the wheelchair to face the cold, March night. People looked at our unusual means of transport out of the hospital with a mixture of tenderness and slight pity. But we felt nothing less than triumphant bliss.