Mother & Baby Big Heart Awards

Yesterday afternoon I was lucky enough to attend the Mother & Baby Big Heart Awards at the Dorchester Hotel in London.

Kit with her super-proud daughter Kate, the award, and Jenny Frost.

Anyone who knows me (or reads this blog) will know that S's birth was fairly traumatic for me. During my time in hospital, a nursery nurse called Kit offered me so much help and support, and really helped me to find my way as a parent. I wrote about the first time I met Kit here.

In November last year, it was World Prematurity Day and Twitter was awash with tweets and photos of new mums with their tiny babies doing "kangaroo care." I posted a photo of myself with S and mentioned that I wouldn't have even known what kangaroo care was if it weren't for Kit. They suggested I nominate her for a Big Heart Award. I took a look at the site, and then emailed in my nomination. This is what I wrote:

When my daughter was born 5 weeks early, she had no suck/swallow response and so was fed formula through an NG tube. The morning after she was born, Kit came down to the ward to feed Samaire. Kit told me about kangaroo care, and how all of the mothers on NICU were encouraged to do it. She undressed my baby and put her on my bare chest, then put a blanket over us.

After a couple of days, my daughter had jaundice so they moved her into NICU. I was distraught. I wanted to breastfeed, but my milk hadn’t come in yet. While Samaire was in NICU, Kit got screens to put around me so that I could sit next to my baby and keep trying to express milk to encourage my milk. When they tested for bilirubin levels Kit would bring the chart into me and show me where her levels were, and what it meant. When we went back to the ward, Kit came down to help with every feed when she was on shift. She worked really hard to help us establish breastfeeding. She helped us try different positions. When I was tired and fed up, she showed me how I could feed my daughter whilst laying on my side. She stayed with us while my daughter fed, and would always tell me well done, you’re doing really well, look how well she’s feeding, she’s really getting it. 

I was in hospital for almost two weeks. By the last few days I was really fed up. Kit came in one day and told me we couldn’t go home yet because my daughter’s bilirubin levels had gone back up, and she needed to go back under the lights. I was distraught at the thought of being separated from her again while she was taken back to NICU. Kit stayed and talked to me until I’d calmed down. She told me that although it felt like the end of the world now, it was just a few days at the start of a long life. She went off to speak to some people and came back with a lamp. She told me we could have the lamp on the ward over night, so that we didn’t have to be separated. Then she had me take my shirt off, laid my baby on my chest, and set the lamp up above us. I suddenly went from “oh no they’re going to take my baby away again” to complete contentment, cuddling my baby on my chest and felt relaxed for the first time since she was born.

I felt like more than just a patient to Kit. She seemed to take a personal interest in our wellbeing and really helped and supported me. She never made me feel like she was too busy to spend an hour sitting at my bedside helping me. I will be forever grateful for the extra work she put into helping us establish breastfeeding. My daughter went on to breastfeed until she was 17 months old.

I forgot all about the nomination, until last month when I received an email to tell me Kit had won the award. I sent her a message to warn her to expect a call, and she thought I was joking!

So yesterday we went up to London for the awards ceremony. There was free champagne and fancy sandwiches, and even a few celebrities - but the main point of the event was to celebrate amazing people who've done amazing things. There were a lot of tears as very emotional stories were told, and I was a bit of a wreck when Kit's award was announced. 

Me with Kit enjoying some champagne!

We had a really lovely day and despite Kit's insisting, "I was just doing my job!" everyone else agreed that she regularly goes above and beyond what is expected of her. She is passionate about her work, and rightly so. She's not just looking after sick babies, but helping their shell-shocked parents to come to terms with what's happening, and helping the whole family to figure out how to cope. She spends endless hours helping women to express milk, to learn to breastfeed, to change nappies, to deal with the emotional hell that can be having a baby in NICU.

I know how lucky I am that S was only 5 weeks early, and that she was relatively healthy. I feel even more lucky that Kit was on shift that first day. Since we left hospital I've heard horror stories of how other women have fared in similar situations. The world needs more Kits in it, for sure.

Well of course, when you go to these things you need to have your photo taken with the doormen!

Why You Shouldn't Ask Me For Advice

When I first had S, I thought I was in the worst situation possible. A single mother, alone with a tiny, jaundiced, premature baby. Sounds pretty bleak, doesn't it.

In the nineteen months since, I've realised that actually I am very lucky. As my friends (and my sister!) have had their own babies around me, I've realised just how lucky I am, and have always been, with my little bundle. You should probably never ask me for advice, because the only advice I can give is based on experience - and is therefore not likely to be helpful! Here's why:

• If your baby is constipated, my advice is likely to be "meh, just leave it; it'll be fine in the end." S has never been a prolific poo-er. She was exclusively breastfed until almost 6 months, and during that time she usually only did a poo once a week. She once went 18 days without a poo. I kept checking with health visitors and GPs (and Facebook, of course) as to whether my child was normal, and the resounding response was - if she's not in discomfort with it, it's fine. 

• If your problem is that your changing bag is just too big and heavy and it's such a mission to go out anywhere... my advice is likely to be "ahh, just leave everything home and take yourself and baby out for a bit!" Because S was breastfed and didn't poo much, and I live very close to the city centre, I've never had to worry about taking masses of supplies out with me. If I needed anything from town, I always just shoved her in the sling and made a quick dash for the shops. Also, the fact she wore cloth nappies meant that any poorly-timed poos were well contained; her first proper poonami was a couple of months ago. My sister has not been so lucky with her son; when she comes out of the house she has to bring at least two changes of clothes. He poos after (usually during, actually) every feed, and it usually wrecks every piece of clothing he's wearing.

• If your baby is crying, my advice will probably be "just give him a cuddle." S has never been a great wailer. She cried when she was hungry and that was about it. Yep, she never even cried when her nappy was wet. Still doesn't. She's just getting to the stage where she'll pretend to cry if she thinks it'll get her something she wants, but on the whole, she doesn't scream unless there's a big problem. On those rare nights where she's not settled, I've always just put her in a sling and rocked her to sleep. When she was very small and I couldn't get her to settle after a night feed, I'd just lay her on my chest and we'd sleep like that.

• If your baby doesn't settle to sleep at night, I'm a great advocate of feeding to sleep, and co-sleeping. From a very young age, I fed S to sleep and she shared my bed. Once she started nursery, the only time she was breastfeeding was at nap time or bed time. I was still feeding her to sleep when she was 17 months old. Everyone told me I was mad to be relying on feeding to get her to sleep, and that I should move her out of my bed soon or I'd never have it to myself again. Well, balls to you all. She stopped breastfeeding one week when she had a bad cold and couldn't breathe through her nose, and has never asked for it since (much to my dismay). She started sleeping in the cot one night when I was too tired to stay awake and watch her, and now she sleeps there every night. She started sleeping through the night at 13 months, though I was still waking every few hours to check she was breathing. No fights. No controlled crying. No begging. No pleading. No pain. No fuss. 

• If you can't get your toddler to let you clean her teeth, I'm likely to just say "well, leave it a few days and try again." I had terrible trouble trying to get S to clean her teeth. Proper screaming with the mouth clamped shut business. Eventually I just gave up trying. One evening I couldn't be doing with the fight before bed time, so I just gave her a cuddle instead. The next couple of nights I forgot... and then one evening she was in the shower and made a grab for her tooth brush on the side. I figured it was worth a shot, so I put some toothpaste on the brush, and we went for it. And so began our evening ritual of cleaning S's teeth with absolutely no fuss or bother. At all. Nothing.

• If your toddler has trouble settling at night, I'm likely to suggest you just stick a dvd on and leave em to it. We get by on a combination of Despicable Me and Peppa Pig. I am fairly sure this makes me the worst mother in the world. At the very least, it rules me well and truly out of the running for mum of the year. But we're happy; it works for us. I put a dvd on; S lays down in her cot with her books and her Tigger, and she goes to sleep. For anyone who wants to tell me "oooh, you want to get her out of that habit before it's too late..." - see my point above about the cosleeping and breastfeeding. And then knob off. 

I'd like to take credit for these lazy parenting tips, and to say that S is such a dream because of my amazing parenting skills - but I'd be lying through my teeth. I'm just a bit lazy and cut as many corners as I can legitimately get away with. I have been blessed with possibly the easiest child in the world. She's so easy, she makes me look like I have a clue what I'm doing.

So yeah, don't ask me for advice; I don't have much experience of challenging parenting!

Mummy Really Needs Some Me Time!

I had a minor meltdown this evening.

After a week of S waking up at 4am and not really settling;
A really hectic, unsettling weekend;
2 months of being back at work and my only time to myself being after bed time or 15 minutes on the way to and from work;
A really very hectic day at work


I really was very tired and fed up. The plan was for S to go to bed at 6 as usual. I would then eat some tea, watch some crappy telly, and go to bed shortly afterwards.

That didn't work. She went to bed at 6, but she didn't go to sleep. She sat in her cot periodically crying, then stopping just long enough for me to think perhaps she'd gone to sleep and I could have a break... And then starting to cry again.

I came up to try and settle her several times; nothing worked. She was not in a good mood. She wasn't even properly crying, there were no tears. She was just cross at being left alone.

In the end I abandoned my evening and any thoughts I'd had of eating tea or chocolate, or of catching up with Big Brother or putting another load of washing on. I came upstairs, lay down on the bed with her, and fed her to sleep.

Scared she would wake up again if I moved too far away from her for too long, I read my Kindle for half an hour. Then I decided to fetch the laptop from downstairs and see if I could use the time to catch up on reading some blogs.

The problem is that when I started feeding her, it was really just to calm her down. I didn't think she'd actually go to sleep. So of course she fell asleep star-fished in the middle of my bed, on top of my duvet. I managed to move her slightly though, and now I'm going to bed.

Yet again, a massive meltdown avoided by just giving up my rigid idea of what I had to do in order to relax. I should really learn to accept these situations before I start to hate everything shouldn't I!

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Feeling Fortnuate

When I first had S, and had to deal with the whole situation surrounding her father, as well as a tiny, jaundiced, premature baby, I don't think I felt particularly lucky.

But just lately, having spoken to many other women about their experiences in pregnancy, childbirth, relationships, childrearing... I realise just how fortunate I really am.

I am definitely the most lucky mummy in the world.

Here is a list to remind me of my good fortune...

• My pregnancy, if you remove the ex from the picture, was actually fairly easy. I had a little hip trouble, but I didn't end up having to leave work early or confined to a wheelchair from it. I didn't have gestational diabetes. S was born before she was big enough to be anything but a pleasure to feel kicking me. I didn't have to endure a hot summer of pregnancy, I didn't get preeclampsia, I had water retention but not too badly. All in all, a relatively trouble free pregnancy.

• Although I was induced, and labour was painful (and ten and a half hours!) I have heard some real horror stories that have made me realise how easy I really had it. I didn't tear, S wasn't distressed, despite being early she was a good weight and healthy. I didn't need to have an emergency C-Section, and was lucky enough to be able to go through the process without drugs or epidural.

• S was born with no suck/swallow response, and was fed formula through a tube for the first few days. I was very lucky to have the help and support of hospital staff, who helped me to begin to breastfeed. They would say it was down to my hard work, but I really didn't put any work in, other than pumping before S's NG tube was removed.

• I have been so lucky with the breastfeeding! No mastitis, no bleeding nipples, no engorgement, no painful breasts, no low supply, no leaky boobs when I went back to work. Whenever S wants milk, it's there. When she doesn't want milk, I'm not in pain.

• Linked to the breastfeeding: S did not poo much before she started solids. For a while, she was only going once a week. At one point she went for 18 days without a poo, during which time she was perfectly happy and content. Apparently this is not unusual; breastmilk is so efficient, there's little waste from it. 18 days was a record for most of the health visitors I spoke to though!

• I was a high risk for post-natal depression. Everyone thought I would end up depressed, including me. I have more than one friend who has struggled with PND; I've seen how utterly horrible it is. I am so fortunate to have never experienced it first hand.

• When S and I first came home, she was still jaundiced, and I had to wake her to feed her. As she got better, she would wake for feeds; but she didn't cry unless there was something wrong. She didn't have colic and has only ever had a very mild nappy rash once or twice. It took me a little while to realise that actually, some babies do just cry a lot. Actually, I have been very lucky that S is just incredibly easy-going, and only cries when there is something wrong. And that something is usually fixable. Being on my own and lacking in confidence, if things had been different, and S had been a screamy baby, I'm not sure I would have coped so well.

• Seriously, I know I'm gorgeous and all, but how the chuffing hell did I manage to produce something that perfect?! She is so much more naturally happy and laid back than I am. And I don't think either of those is a quality the sperm donor possesses. I definitely lucked out where this child is concerned. Even when she cries at 2am, and she snots in my hair and digs her nails into my boob, she's still perfectly adorable. How the hell did I do that?

• Being on my own with S definitely has it down sides. For instance, my work is having its annual summer BBQ this week; it starts at 5pm and is infamous for all the free food and booze... and I can't go because I have nobody who could look after S and put her to bed without tears. BUT I also don't have to compromise with anything I do with her. As I noted in this post the other week, we get up in the morning, decide what to do, and go. When we come home, we have whatever we fancy for lunch, and spend the afternoon doing whatever we please. I don't leave her to cry, she still sleeps in my bed on a regular basis, I still breastfeed her, and I'm careful about what I do and don't say to her. I don't have to worry about someone else coming in here telling me I really should get her out of the habit of sleeping in my bed, or her cot should really be in her room by now, or haven't I given up breastfeeding yet, or telling her she's good or naughty or bad or telling her to say thank you.

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Early Motherhood - The End of the Paternity Leave

This post is one of a series I have written about S's birth and first few weeks of life. The first part is here.

The next few weeks were very stressful and confusing for me. 

I have already posted about how the ex hated my midwife, and I was therefore keen to have her discharge us from hospital care. S was still jaundiced, and I was terrified they would take her back into hospital; I knew if they did this, I wouldn't be admitted with her, and would have to be separated from her. That first visit, the midwife did another heel-prick test on S for her jaundice levels and weighed her. She had lost a bit of weight and I nearly cried. She told me the best thing to do was to feed, feed, feed, and to prop up the head end of her Moses basket to avoid any vomiting. I was also supposed to express milk into a cup or syringe, and top her up after feeding. This was the most depressing thing, as I didn't have a pump and had to do it by hand; it took ages and hurt, and was often wasted as S turned her head away at the wrong moment. Premature and jaundiced babies are often too tired to suck enough to feed as much as they need to get rid of the jaundice and put on weight. S slept most of the time, and I was still waking her every 3 hours to feed.

My tiny girl wrapped in blankets

That first day, the ex busied himself unpacking what was left of the boxes in my flat, and putting things where he thought they should belong. He went out to get teabags, and came back with a microwave. He'd forgotten the teabags, so he went back out and came back with a vacuum cleaner, broom, dustpan and brush and mop and some random food: bread, jam, cheese. He wanted to provide for us. I avoid eating bread because it makes me ill. I already had a dustpan and brush. I don't even drink tea. When I took the mop out of its box, it was broken. When I pointed it out to him he shouted at me: "I can't do anything f***ing right can I, nothing's good enough!" All I'd meant was that perhaps he'd like to take it back to the shop and exchange it. At one point he told me he might not be able to get a sitter to be able to see me over the weekend, and gave me £20, sending me to the shops to buy some food for myself. I left S sleeping in her bouncy chair, and him organising things in a cupboard, and wandered into town. It was nice to be out in the air, but I felt like I was missing a limb without S. It also crossed my mind more than once that I might return home and find that the ex had taken her away. I half expected the house to be empty when I returned, but it wasn't so I sat on the sofa with S and fed her early.

Because of the damp upstairs, the council had brought over a dehumidifier the size of a cooker. It was in the bedroom, wired up to some special box because it was too powerful to run off the mains. The man who brought it showed the ex how to work it, but he never showed me. This meant I couldn't switch it off, and the noise and heat it generated were too much to sleep with. For the next week, S and I slept downstairs, me on the sofa and her in the Moses basket next to me. I was still setting my alarm for every 3 hours, and would wake up, switch the TV on and feed her, then settle her back into the basket, switch the TV off and go to sleep. Several times, I then woke up half an hour later in a panic - I couldn't remember putting S in her basket, had I fallen asleep holding her? Where was she? Oh God, you've suffocated the baby, where is she, where is she... oh wait, she's in the basket next to you. I would also regularly wake up in a panic, convinced I'd slept through an alarm and S had gone more than 3 hours without a feed. I was exhausted and it was driving me mad. All I could think about was making sure she was fed on time so that her jaundice went, and she put on weight, and nobody would take her away from me.

The following day the ex was unable to visit. My mother came round instead, with a friend. They brought gifts for S, clothes that would fit her which was good. I forget what we talked about. When they left, the friend gave me a hug and told me I'd done really well and S was beautiful. I didn't know how to respond to that; I wanted to shout at her, no I haven't done well! Look what I did, I went into labour early and now my baby is tiny and orange and they're going to take her away because I'm doing it all wrong!! I knew it was all my fault, that something I had done over the Easter weekend had resulted in my going into labour 5 weeks early. Throughout my pregnancy the ex had told me so many times that other women had been pregnant with his child and ended up having abortions, they'd murdered his babies, and that if anything happened to this baby he would never forgive me.

The midwife visited a couple more times, and then discharged us. I was so relieved at this; no more tension with the ex thinking I was telling the midwife bad things about him. More importantly, if the midwife had discharged us then I thought she must think I was doing an ok job, and wouldn't take my baby away. I was petrified those first few weeks that I would be somehow "found out" and they would take S back to the hospital, where she would be safe away from me.

My little orange baby!

The pushchair I had bought was quite large and cumbersome. I found that I wasn't comfortable bumping it up and down the stairs with my tiny baby in it. This meant that I could only go out of the house when accompanied by the ex. If he didn't visit, or came round and didn't fancy going out, I was stuck in the house. I wanted to buy a sling, but had no money until pay day. A dear friend must have realised I was going a bit mad being stuck in the house, and posted me a sling she had not been able to get on with for her baby. The minute it arrived, I read the instructions as to how to tie it, put it on, and put S in it. That day was like a transformation in me. I didn't just wear the sling to go out; I wore it all the time, happy that I could now keep S close to me. The ex insisted S would not be warm enough in the sling, and bought a snowsuit which she had to wear whenever we went out. 

The week after we came out of hospital, we went to the council offices to register S's birth. As was standard, S was wrapped in 3 or 4 blankets inside of the pram, with a rain cover over the top because of the weather. How she never overheated during those first few weeks, I will never know. She must have been boiling. When we arrived at the office, we had to leave the pram outside and go into a waiting room. The ex carried S. He held her in the waiting room, and refused to let me near her. When we went into the office to register her, he held her. At the time I felt strange, not being allowed to hold my child. Looking back at it, I  notice that I was not allowed to hold my child until I had signed the register, put his name on the birth certificate, and answered the registrar three times that yes, I was sure I wanted her to have his surname and him to be on the birth certificate. I couldn't figure out why she kept asking me, and telling me that it was my choice, and mine alone. I held S briefly while he signed the register, but then I had to give her back. We were given copies of the birth certificate, and we left. 

I was glad when S was back in the pushchair, because I was allowed to push that. I did it wrong, of course, and was constantly told I was being stupid about waiting to cross the road and not bumping up and down kirbs. His favourite trick was to suddenly take off down a steep kirb and cross the road diagonally, then turn around to smirk at me trying to get across the road and keep up with him without getting run over. He also regularly tutted at me for being too slow and cautious. On the days we took her out in the sling, again he stormed off ahead of us, and I had to try and keep up without having S bump about too much in the sling.

None of this turned out to matter though; within a week the ex had stormed out, and a few days after that he finished with me. I was soon to become a single mother.

The happy ending is on its way... 

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Early Motherhood - Coming Home

This is the latest in a series of posts about my daughter's birth and first few weeks. The first of these posts can be found here.

We came home from hospital on a Thursday afternoon, my sister driving very slowly and carefully.

It was raining, and had been almost the entire time I'd been in hospital. When we got out of the car, the ex wouldn't let me carry S up the steps to the flat (I live on the first floor) in case I slipped and dropped her.

Coming back into the flat after so long away felt strange. When I'd left, I'd been heavily pregnant, but ultimately answerable only to myself. It felt weird to have brought this baby back with me. We put the heating on, and sat in the living room. My sister and her boyfriend had bought S a bouncy chair, so I put her in that. She looked so tiny in it; there was no point in fastening the straps around her because even pulled as tight as they would go, they were massive on her. She sat on the floor in front of me, wrapped in several blankets (as the ex had decreed she should be). It felt wrong to have her on the floor, in a chair like that, so far away from me; she had spent most of her time in hospital curled up on my chest. I didn't want to pick her up though, and be told off for holding her wrong or doing something else wrong.

The ex didn't like the idea of me being alone in the house with S, so we had arranged that my sister would stay with me for the first couple of nights. I went upstairs to sort out S's Moses basket, make sure there was a bed for my sister and so on. When I went into my bedroom, horror struck me - the roof had leaked while I'd been away. And not just a little bit; it had clearly been leaking for the entire week and a half. There was water dripping above the window, and the wall was damp almost down to the half-way point. Worse, some furniture was against the wall with the pram attachment of my pushchair had been against that wall, and everything was wet. I went into the bathroom, and dirty, brown water was leaking  through in there too. When I came downstairs to the kitchen, I saw that the water dripping from the ceiling onto bare floorboards upstairs had come through above the sink.

I was distraught, and had no clue what to do. As I took time to think about it, I realised there was no way this was the first time this roof had leaked; if it was this bad, it must have leaked when the last tenant was here. I was livid. I called the council's repair line and told them I had just come out of hospital with a premature baby, and they needed to come and sort this out immediately. Then I had to call back, because half the radiators in my house weren't heating up. Within a couple of hours, there were men on the roof clearing what turned out to be a blocked down-pipe and a foot of standing water above my bedroom. Two men from the council came to assess the internal damage with clipboards, and a man from British Gas came to sort out the radiators. By this point, S was due for her next feed so I was sitting on the sofa with a blanket over me, while the ex showed the men the problems.

After a while, the people left, and the place began to warm up a little. My sister left for work, but said she would be back later this evening. As the radiators began to warm up, we could smell paint. Before I had moved in, the council had decorated the flat - every wall with magnolia paint, every door and radiator with lashings of white gloss. Since the heating had never been on since, the radiators were now heating the gloss. It was bubbling and causing quite a strong smell. The ex went mad and told me there was no way I could stay here with S with such a strong smell, it would damage her lungs. I called the council, but by that point it was after 5pm and everyone had gone home. Their out of hours service was not much use. We moved upstairs to the bedroom, where we turned the radiator off and plugged in an oil-filled radiator. Eventually it was decided that S could not possibly stay here overnight, and that we would stay at the ex's house, coming back first thing in the morning for a visit from the midwife. 

My sister gave us a lift to the ex's house. His children were being looked after by a neighbour, so we went over to surprise them with S. Everyone was crowded around me, wanting to look and touch. She was still so small and delicate and precious to me, I didn't want all these people poking and prodding, and I still didn't feel able to hold up my end of  a conversation. I just sort of stood there, clutching my baby, until we left. As we walked across the green to the ex's house, one of his children did something up ahead of us. He shouted across to her really loudly, and S woke with a start. I asked him to please not shout and he told me off for over-reacting. 

The rest of my evening was spent sitting on the ex's bed, holding S. His children took it in turns to come in and see us and ask questions, and were then sent away. Not sent to bed, or to get ready for school, or to tidy their rooms, just away. "Go away now." I remember the youngest one standing outside of the door, crying. The room was small and full of junk. The ex had boasted to me while I was in hospital that he had cleared it out, and made space for S and her things so that we could stay at his house. Once we were in the room, with the Moses basket and a changing bag, there was nowhere to put your feet on the floor. It crossed my mind that once S was too big for her Moses basket, he might make me put her in a cot in a different room to sleep. One of the rooms that already slept 3 children and had a snake in a tank with a dodgy door. One of the rooms with no door and a big lumbering dog that wandered about throughout the night.

She really was that jaundiced.

I was scared to leave the room to go to the toilet, afraid of what might happen in my absence. When we finally went to sleep, I had set my alarm to wake me every 3 hours in the night. S's Moses basket was as close to the bed as I could get it, and I moved down towards the foot of the bed so that I was closer to her. The ex told me off because I kept the bedside lamp on all night, but I needed to be able to check on her. In hospital it is never dark, and I had always been able to see her whenever I looked over. He told me I was being ridiculous. Every time my alarm went off in the night, the ex huffed and told me to hurry up and turn it off. One time he made a big show of rolling over and putting a pillow over his head. I sat in his bed, feeding my baby, and cried. I had no idea how this was ever going to work. I had put all my energy into concentrating on getting home. I'd thought that everything would be ok once we were out of hospital, but now I realised that even with him next to me, I was on my own.

The next part of the story is here

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Early Motherhood: Escape From Hospital!

This post follows on from my posts about S's birth here and here, and the posts about her first days here and here.

S came out of NICU on a Saturday afternoon, and I believed we'd probably be going home the next day. Maybe, at a push, the day after. She had been starting to try and feed, and I was sure my milk would come in soon.

On the Sunday, the ex didn't visit. He couldn't get a baby sitter. I found it really tough. In NICU you're only supposed to have two people at a time with the babies, and I didn't want to have to deal with scheduling people or having to turn them away. I couldn't bear the thought of two people turning up, and perhaps having to leave my baby's side so that they could gawp at her. Plus I just didn't want people to see me in that state. I had contacted everyone and told them it was best not to visit. When we came out of NICU, I knew there was no chance of going home before we had established breastfeeding, and I wanted to concentrate on that without feeling self conscious about random visitors turning up half way through. I told people it was  best not to come, so that I could concentrate on the breastfeeding and get out of hospital. It was starting to do my head in a bit.

So that Sunday, I saw nobody. All day, it was just me and S and the ward staff, and someone from NICU every 3 hours. By the afternoon it was starting to get to me. I was surrounded by happy couples, men arriving with gifts for their wives and new babies, fawning over them, doing things for them, cuddling up with them. I was sitting on my bed, reading a book, bored out of my mind. S was still very sleepy so she mostly slept on my chest in between feeds. I couldn't get any phone signal to be able to call or text anyone much, and didn't really want to any way. I didn't want to tell people how unhappy I was, how abandoned I felt. And I knew that if people found out the ex wasn't with us I would be in trouble for making him look bad. So I stuck it out, and just cried quietly to myself.

In the next couple of days, my milk came in. I was sure this was a sign we would be going home soon. S still had her feeding tube, but I thought now my milk was in she would just feed, and it would be fine. I began expressing milk and putting it in the fridge, ready to be fed to her in her tube instead of the formula. I felt a lot better now that we weren't relying on the formula to feed my baby. One of the NICU nurses was called Naomi. She had looked after us in NICU, and she also came down to the ward to feed S. I remember she was off for a couple of days, and when she came back she came down to feed S. I was holding her, sitting on the bed and said to Naomi, oh, there's some milk in the fridge I'll just grab it for you. I started to wander off and she said, "aw, can I have a little hold of S while you're gone?" So I left S with her, and went to get some of the milk I'd expressed from the fridge. When I returned, I handed it to her and took S, and she began doing her paperwork - they recorded whether S had had a wet nappy since the last feed and a couple of other things. Naomi was busy going through this, and getting the syringe ready to put the milk into S's tube, when she looked up and said "I've just realised you've handed me expressed milk, not formula!! Your milk came in! I'm so pleased!" There may have been a little yelp there too. She was genuinely pleased that my milk had come in and that S was now getting breast milk.

One evening, S pulled her feeding tube out. It wasn't the first time she'd done it; she'd pulled it right out once before, but had also half removed it a few times too. It was almost feed time, so I waited for one of the NICU nurses to come down. It was Naomi again. She said, well since your milk is in and she's been feeding from you a bit, how about we just don't put it back in? Instead we can top her up from a feeding cup. I was so excited; now there was no feeding tube, surely we could go home really soon. I fed S, and then we gave her some of my expressed milk from a little feeding cup. It was very messy, but I didn't care. The next day the doctors reviewed S's progress, and said that fine, she didn't have to have the tube put back in - but that she must have X amount of milk supplemented on top of her feeds each time. They were worried about her losing weight.

During that first day of breastfeeding, S put on a ridiculous amount of weight in the space of 24 hours. It was Tuesday, and I remember them bringing the scales round, and saying to her, "think fat, we need a big number so we can go home!" they weighed her and it was a good number. I was hopeful they would let us out. I'd got up that morning and sorted through all our things, packing them into bags ready to go. 

When they said we couldn't go home I cried. I couldn't help it; I was sick of being in hospital, on my own.  I remember one of the ward staff coming to collect my plate, and asking if I wanted her to leave any of it with me to eat later. I said no, I wasn't hungry. I think it was the only time I was properly short with any of them, and I felt bad for it. She was lovely about it though, and just told me I needed to keep my strength up. I remember Kit coming down to help with feeding; even though I was breastfeeding S now, they were still coming to support us and make sure it was going well. She told me if I wasn't getting on well sitting up on the bed with her, perhaps we could try it laying down. I cried and said, if I lay her on the bed with me the ward staff will tell me off, I can't remember what else I said but I basically just broke down and blubbed for a while. Kit was so supportive. She told me that it might seem like a never-ending nightmare right now, but in reality it was only a few days at the start of S's life, and soon it would feel like nothing. She put so much effort into helping us to establish breastfeeding, and could see how much I needed to get out of there.

I think it must have been on my notes that I was a high risk for PND. Most mothers have their babies, and have left the ward within a couple of days. I had been there over a week now. They still came round to do obs, check my blood pressure and my temperature, but it was a formality. They would chat to me, ask how I was feeling, explain that I could go back onto my medication if I wanted to. We talked through warning signs for PND, and how important it was that I ask for help if I felt I needed it. I hated being in hospital. I'm normally a fairly solitary person, and to be in a position where I was sharing a large room with several other people, with no door to close behind me for a bit of privacy, using communal toilets and showers, having to walk past strangers in my pyjamas, was really getting to me.

I'd been in hospital over a week now, and had run out of most of the things I'd packed in my hospital bag. I'd had to ask the ex to bring more nappies, more cotton wool, more maternity pads, more clean knickers, more clothes, more shampoo. He brought most of the things I asked for, as if he were doing me a great favour by providing these things. He took his kids to school by 8 each morning, and the bus from his house came straight to the hospital, but he still never got to me before lunch time. He never arranged for someone to pick his kids up from school, so each day it would get to the time he would need to leave to pick the kids up, and he would try and get me to call his neighbour and ask her to pick them up. Apparently, I should ask her because it was me she would be doing the favour for, letting him stay with us. I refused, embarrassed at having to ask at such short notice, and he would text her. Sometimes she answered in time, and he didn't have to leave. Other days he had to go. I could never understand why he didn't just ask his neighbour in advance, please would you pick the kids up from school this week so that I can visit Vicky and S in the hospital. He never did though. He would take away mine and S's dirty clothes, wash them and bring them back. But he refused to buy non-bio washing powder for S's clothes. He also refused to sort the washing, so the only babygros I had that did fit S came back dyed dingy brown colours and smelling strongly of the scents used in biological washing powder. I didn't want to put them back on her in case they irritated her skin. The pile of clothes, blankets and... well, just crap next to my bed got larger and larger, but he would never take more than a bag away with him at a time - despite the fact the bus went straight from the hospital to his house. He complained that he was tired and stressed, that his house was a mess, that it was really upsetting him to visit us in the hospital, breaking his heart, he wanted us home. If I asked him to stop off in town and get me something, he complained that he was too tired to walk around town. If I asked him to stop off at my house to pick up something I needed, he complained that it was too far to walk to my house, and would delay his getting to me. The bus from his house to the hospital stops in town, and also outside of my house. He would not have needed to walk further than 500 metres for anything. On the one occasion I did manage to persuade him to pick something up from my house on the way, he arrived a full hour later than usual. One day I asked him why his Facebook status mentioned his daughter being in the hospital, but said nothing about me. He told me he didn't want to tell people I was breaking my heart being stuck in the hospital.

On the Wednesday morning, the shift changed over at 8am and I recognised a friendly face: Joy, who had been with me through most of my labour, was here. She came over to say hello and to see S; she didn't seem surprised we were still there, but I suppose they have a briefing at changeover, don't they. I thanked her for everything, and was so glad to have seen her again. Later that morning, Kit came down from NICU. She looked at S and said she was worried about her jaundice levels again. My stomach lurched. They did another blood test. Kit came back with the graph from before, and showed us how S's levels had gone dangerously high again. She said we'd need to use the lights again. I was horrified. I didn't want them to take her away from me to NICU again, I couldn't bear the thought of it. Kit went to speak to the consultant about it, and came back saying that we would have the lights on the ward, so that I didn't have to be separated from S. I was glad they weren't taking her, but still miserable. I had hoped they would be letting us out today. Seeing how distressed I was, Kit told me to take my shirt off. We stripped S down to her nappy, and she lay on my chest with the lamp over both of us. It was the perfect compromise. I lay like that all afternoon, stopped for some tea and a brief visit from my sister and sister in law, and then spent the evening like it too. I moved only to feed her every 3 hours. At midnight they came and turned the lights off, and took S up to NICU for a hearing test. When they brought her back, I fed her and put her down to sleep in her crib. I fell asleep as far down the bed as I could get, with the crib right next to the bed so that I could see her. Because she was premature, and jaundiced, she didn't wake to feed. So I had to set an alarm to wake me every three hours through the night to make sure she was fed on time.

On the Thursday morning some doctors turned up. One was the lady I'd met the previous Thursday, who had told us they were taking S to NICU. She was with another lady, who wasn't in scrubs; I suppose she must have been a consultant or something. I don't recall her introducing herself to me, but to be fair I wasn't entirely with it. She checked S over and asked some questions and made a comment that if everything stayed ok we should be able to go home in the morning. My heart sank, and I blurted out "why do we have to wait until tomorrow? Why not today?" The lady looked at me in surprise and said, we'll see. A couple of hours later, the ex turned up and I told him I was determined we would be going home today. At lunch time someone came and took blood from S's heel again to test her jaundice levels; they have to leave it for 12 hours after the lights are switched off, to get a true result of how effective the treatment has been. They found some scales and weighed S as well, and it looked good.

Finally, the word came that we could be discharged. Naomi came down from NICU with S's discharge paperwork and said S would need to have vitamins and iron supplements, but that she didn't want to hold us up by waiting for the pharmacy to dispense them, so she would have them ready for us when we came back in a couple of days for the infant first aid class they had offered us. We packed up almost 2 weeks' worth of stuff and waited for them to bring my discharge paperwork. It was a very long wait, but eventually someone came along with some paperwork. It was a lady I was Facebook friends with, and had known when I was younger. It was so good to see a familiar face. She gave me some infinitely useful advice about breastfeeding (buy Lansinoh!) and told us we were free to go.

My sister came to pick us up, and we packed up our bags. S was dressed in one of the outfits her father had bought on that first day, and it was miles too big for her. I hated it, but it was important to him that she left hospital wearing an outfit he had bought. He had me wrap her in about four blankets to stop her getting cold, and off we went. All the way up the corridor, he told me I was holding her all wrong, I looked awkward, was I about to drop her? I was doing it all wrong, I looked like I didn't know what I was doing, I shouldn't hold her like that. When we got to the door, it was raining. We waited under an awning while my sister went and got the car ready. Again, I was told off for not having S wrapped up enough, the rain was going to get on her, I looked so awkward holding her. Eventually we put her in the car seat, and I sat in the back of the car next to her while we made our slow, cautious way home. Freedom at last!

At the time, I hated being in hospital, resented the constant interruptions from ward staff wanting to take my temperature and blood pressure and ask how I was. I must have had latching and positioning advice from every person who worked on the ward, and everyone saw my breasts in the end, as I gave up caring whether the curtain was pulled shut or people were wandering in and out. By the time we left I was so glad to be leaving. Looking back though, I am so incredibly grateful to the people who looked after both S and I. The NICU nurses I have mentioned in this post were truly amazing, and I believe they went well above and beyond what anyone would expect of someone coming in to do a 12-hour shift in a hospital. 

Although my pregnancy, labour, birth and first few days of motherhood were far from perfect, and fairly traumatic in places, I can happily say that, except for the situation with the ex, I would not have had it any other way. I could not have asked for anyone to have treated me any differently, and were I to have another baby, I would have no worries at all about being treated in my local hospital, by the same staff.

The story continues here.

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Early Motherhood: NICU

This post follows on from my post about my first day of motherhood, here.

The next day, a Wednesday, continued much as the previous one had: I wandered about in a daze, NICU nurses came down every three hours to feed S for me, visitors came and went.

I eventually started using the pump, and hated it. It hurt and made a lot of noise, and it was really quite disheartening to sit there for twenty minutes and produce nothing. I started to think perhaps all the comments the ex had made were right, and I really just wasn't meant to be a mother - I'd already almost killed her while giving birth, hadn't I? He would encourage me to pump while he was there, and turn the dial up as far as it would go so that the pump was working really hard. It hurt so much I wanted to cry, and still nothing was coming out. I was failing at being a mother already.

Someone brought me some flowers, but the ex refused to go and find me a vase for them. He put them under my bed instead, and they just sat there and died. I didn't understand why I couldn't have flowers; the lady opposite me had a massive helium balloon with "It's a boy!" on it in big letters, and he was her fourth child. I felt like I wanted someone to make a fuss of me, but nobody did.

At some point on the second day, one of the NICU nurses made a comment that she thought S looked a little jaundiced, and would get it checked. To do this they make a little prick on the baby's heel, and then squeeze blood out of it into a little test tube. S had already had it done a couple of times by this stage, and I hated it. On the Thursday, mid-afternoon, a young female doctor came into my bay and told us that they had tested S's blood, and she was indeed jaundiced, and so would need to go under lights. She said she wasn't sure whether they could do that here on the ward, or if she would need to go up to NICU, but would speak to her consultant and find out. She came back five minutes later and told us that because S was already being tube-fed by NICU nurses, the consultant felt it would be better if she went up to NICU for treatment. I don't know what I expected to happen, but it was a shock to find that they wanted to take her right then. The nice lady who had helped me with the pump went and got a heated crib, and I had to get S dressed and put her in it. My bed was right at the far end of the ward, and as we followed her, the nurse and the doctor out of the ward I could feel everyone staring at us. I imagined they must think I'd done something wrong, made my child ill, and now she was being taken away. We walked up the corridor to the temporary NICU; they were in the process of having a fantastic new ward built, but in the meantime we had to go through an old ward, out the back and into another building. It was a long walk and I  felt sick for all of it. It sounds stupid now, but until we got to the door of NICU and saw the words "Neonatal Intensive Care Unit" it hadn't occurred to me what the letters stood for. When I saw the sign, all I could think was "my baby is in intensive care..." I started crying and couldn't stop. It got worse as we walked in, and I looked around me: all these tiny, poorly babies, all these monitors and wires.

The NICU staff were lovely. They took S's clothes off and put protective goggles over her eyes (this made me cry even more - the fact they were blindfolding my little girl) and turned the lights on. The consultant came in to explain what was going on, and how long he thought we'd need the lights for. There was one under her, and two above. It was very hot. He asked if we had any questions and I asked him, what do I do now? He told me to make use of the excellent babysitting services, and go out to dinner. I don't think he understood quite what I meant. As soon as the consultant had left, the ex left too. I walked out to the ward entrance with him, crying all the time. He told me to stop, that one of his other kids had been kept in hospital with jaundice,  it was nothing and everything would be fine. After he'd left I went back to NICU and sat in a chair next to S, watching her. They had put an apnoea monitor on her, and it beeped every time she breathed. Sometimes she wriggled though, and the monitor fell off and an alarm went. One of the nurses came in and asked if I was ok; I said I was fine. She told me to maybe go for a little walk and get some air. I got as far as the hospital cafe, and felt like I'd gone too far, been away for too long; what if something happened. I bought a drink from the machine and hurried back. 

The shift changed over at 8 and a lady called Leigh came in to say hello. She told me she would be looking after the babies in S's room overnight. One of the babies was almost ready to go home, and was having a trial night with his mother, so it was just S and one other, super-tiny baby in a massive incubator on the other side of the room. Because of the heat of the lights on her, S's temperature was getting dangerously high and it was worrying us. Leigh showed me how to sponge her down with tepid water to cool her off a little, and we put a fan next to her too. I felt better now that I had something to do. Later she asked me what I planned to do and I looked at her with a blank expression. I replied, "I don't know, stay here until they let me take her home?" She tutted at me and told me that would get me nowhere. She looked at the paperwork and said "right, we're tube feeding her every 3 hours, and you need to pump when she's fed, right? Well you'll get on better with the pumping if she's next to you, and we can try and get her to feed straight from you too... but you also need to rest." she pulled a hand towel out of the dispenser and wrote out what she called a "magic tissue" - she told me she did this for all the mums who were a bit bewildered. She told me to go back to the ward and get some sleep, and not to come back until the early morning feed. I folded my magic tissue, and put it in the back of my Kindle case, and wandered off to the ward. On my way there, the ex called to see how S was. I told him I had been sent back to the ward to sleep and he seemed cross - was I not staying with S in NICU? Who was going to look after her? I felt a bit put out at that, considering visiting in NICU is pretty much 24 hour access, and he had left as soon as we'd got there. I apologised to him though; I didn't want to upset him in case he stopped coming to visit us. I went back to the postnatal ward and walked the entire length of it alone, past all these happy families with their new babies, right to my bed at the end of the ward. I pulled the curtain closed around the bed, sat down and cried. How did they expect me to go to sleep on a ward full of babies, when mine wasn't here? After a couple of minutes one of the ward staff came to check on me. She said I'd missed dinner, but offered to get me some toast if I wanted. I said no thank you. She said if I wanted to put in my meal requests for the next day, I could go for the sandwich and fruit option and then it could just be left on my bed for me whenever I wanted to pop down. She also told me the times I needed to be on the ward to get my medication ( I was still taking antibiotics, codeine and ibuprofen for a chest infection and bruised ribs), but not to worry if I missed it; I could just come and knock at the nurses' station and someone would get it for me. The ward staff were so lovely to me, I felt so guilty having to get them to do extra trips to the medication room and things for me when they were clearly under-staffed and very busy.

On the Friday, S and B, who had been there when S was born, came to visit. While they were there, the ex made a comment to them that "every time I have a baby, I can't stop staring at them, I hold them all the time and they're the centre of my world... but then the next one comes along and I do the same with that one." My friends suggested to him that perhaps he should stop having babies, and concentrate on the children he already had. By this point though, another girl was already 2 months pregnant with his next child. S and B took my house keys from me, and went and unpacked my house. They put together furniture, put clothes in wardrobes, cleaned and tidied. They put a frieze up in S's bedroom to make it more like a bedroom, put the cot together, put her clothes into the chest of drawers, and baby toiletries lined up on top.  They wired in my cooker, took stacks and stacks of rubbish out for me, everything it would normally take you a few weeks to sort out when you moved house. When they'd finished, the ex had already left for the day (he didn't stay long - something about not liking to see S in NICU, and me so upset and drained, poor thing). I sneaked out into the car park and they drove me home to see their work. I cried when I saw my house, which had looked awful the last time I'd seen it. There was still a lot of work to do, but now it looked more like a home. S's room looked like a nursery. I had somewhere to bring her home to when they let us out, which I was sure would be any day now. I called the ex when I got back to the hospital and told him I'd been to see the flat. He told me I was stupid to have left the hospital; what if I'd haemmorhaged, and nobody knew where I was? My point that most women left hospital within 24 hours, and I was only still there because of S, fell on deaf ears. I was clearly an idiot. Oh well.

S spent two days in NICU. On the Saturday morning I went up to see her, and one of the lights had been taken away. The nurse told me that she had been getting too hot overnight again. They'd re-checked her blood again, and showed me where her levels were now on a graph where they'd been recording it. My poor little baby had no space left for more blood tests, both her heels were covered in little scars.  The graph looked good though; her levels had gone right down below the dangerous point. They said they were waiting for the consultant to come round to see whether we could go back to the ward. Eventually a doctor came round, and they said it was ok for S to come back to the ward with me, but that she would still be under NICU care. I didn't like the sound of that; it sounded like they could take her away again at any point. But for now, I was happy. We all paraded back down to the postnatal ward in a long line again, and back to our bay. I spent the afternoon with S down my top cuddling, determined that now my milk would come in, she would learn to feed, and we would get out of here!

The story continues here.

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The Work Debate

I'm still trying to decide whether to go back to work, and to make all the mini decisions that go with the larger one.

Last week I finally bit the bullet and made some calls to some government departments. After a morning listening to Vivaldi, I'm fairly sure that all benefits are paid from the phone charges. If they're not, they should be. We'd all be rich.

If I go back to work:

Artist's impression of me at work

• My pay will stop in January, but they will hold my job open until May.
• I will need to find childcare for S. If I use a childminder, this is around £100 a week. Despite several phone calls and messages, I've not been able to get a response from the nursery closest to me as to what their costs would be
• Regarding payment for childcare, there are two options. My employers are part of the childcare vouchers scheme, which is a salary sacrifice set-up. I can opt to have a maximum of £243 per month taken from my pay (before tax and NI) to be paid to my childcare provider. Or I can have my Working Tax Credits help with childcare costs. They will pay "up to" 70% of the cost of my childcare. But if I do the childcare vouchers thing, I can't get Tax Credits for my childcare. Unless my childcare is more than £243 per month, in which case I can apply for Tax Credits to pay "up to" 70% of the difference. It's almost as if they're trying to trick you into being out of pocket.
• My employers are obliged to provide me with a place I can express breast milk for S while at work, but only until she is a year old - so April. After that I suppose everyone thinks she should be fully weaned, and to hell with whether she actually is or not.
• As far as I can tell, I will be earning just enough that I won't qualify for Housing Benefit, or Council Tax Benefit. 
• I would qualify for free prescriptions, eye tests, dentist, etc.
• From a pre-tax pay of around £200 a week I will have to pay £85 rent, £25 council tax, childcare, gas, electricity, food, water... I'm no mathlete, but I can't see how that adds up. Little bit worried. It's difficult to get any sort of prediction as to what my Tax Credits would be.

This is what staying home entails

If I don't go back to work:

• Income Support is £71 a week.
• I would get Child Tax Credits, but (obviously) not Working Tax Credits.
• I would qualify for Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit
• I think I would get some sort of vouchers for fruit and milk.
• I can stay on Income Support until S is 5, if I so wish. The thought of five years of daytime telly is a bit horrid though.

One thing I need to take into consideration is that I have signed up to do this OU course, and want to do a good job with it. I also want to finish as soon as possible, which means taking as many credits at a time as I can - which means having the time to study them!

I spoke to the Income Support people a few times last week, and discovered that between February and May, while I am technically employed but receiving no pay, I can claim benefits as if I were not employed. 

For the moment my plan is to do just that. From February to May I will claim Income Support, and see if I can live reasonably on benefits and not go mental. By that point I will have been off work more than a year so I may well find I really need to go back to work. My bank balance may agree with me.

So what I've basically decided to do is to postpone making a decision for a few more months. Good work, Vicky.

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Ten Reasons Breastfeeding is Better than Formula

Let me start with the usual disclaimer: I am fully aware that many women are unable to breastfeed, or choose to feed their babies formula for whatever reasons. That’s fine, and they’re perfectly within their rights. By all means, make your own choice – but for goodness sake, make an informed choice on it.

1. Your breasts know when it’s hot out and baby is likely to be more thirsty than hungry; your milk dilutes itself to quench baby’s thirst. There’s no need to feed baby cooled boiled water or anything else; your boobs have got it covered!
2. Your breasts provide exactly the right amount of milk, with exactly the right nutrients for your baby. When baby is having a growth spurt, they will feed more often for a while, during which time your breasts think, hang on, we need to up the ante on this – and they start producing more milk for each feed – so that after the growth spurt is over, your baby is receiving the right amount of milk in each feed again.
3. Breast milk is designed by nature exactly for your baby. This means it is very efficient, and there is very little waste from it. It’s not unusual for a breast fed baby to go a week or more without a poo because every single bit of the milk your baby drinks is used to help baby grow and develop.
4. Breast milk has higher amounts of lactose than formula. Research shows that animals whose milk contains  higher amounts of lactose experience larger brain development.
5. Formula packs may boast that they contain vitamins and omega oils, but your breasts produce all of that any way – and not from synthetic sources, but in the most easily assimilated format for your baby. The vitamins and minerals in breast milk are more completely absorbed than that in formula.
6. While your baby is breast feeding, you pass on your immunities to her. This doesn’t guarantee your baby will never get ill, but it’s less likely. It lowers the risk of SIDS, childhood obesity, type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Breast fed babies have fewer chest and ear infections, less chance of being constipated, less likelihood of becoming obese or developing eczema.
7. Breastfeeding creates a strong physical and emotional bond between you and your child. I’m not saying you can’t have that if you bottle feed, but with breastfeeding there is a closeness you just don’t get with a bottle, in my opinion. It also gives you a huge sense of achievement; if you can get over that initial hurdle – and it can be a fairly massive hurdle for some women – it feels pretty amazing to look at your baby growing strong and healthy and thinking your body not only produced the child, but nourished it to help it grow too.
8. Breastfeeding uses up 500 calories a day. You can lose weight by sitting on the couch, watching dvd box sets with your feet up. And if you’re super-lazy like me and feed laying down at night, you can literally burn calories as you sleep.
9. No sterilising, no mixing, no measuring, no running out of formula and having to go to the shop in the rain. No getting up in the middle of the night to warm a bottle. No carrying bottles with you whenever you go out of the house.
10. Breastfeeding is better for you too: it lowers the risk of mothers getting breast cancer, ovarian cancer and type 2 diabetes.

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Things they don't tell you about Breastfeeding
My Breastfeeding Journey

What Does Attachment Parenting Mean to Me?

It occurred to me that I have mentioned attachment parenting (AP) in several posts lately, but I’ve never really explained what it is, or what it means to me.

AP has been in the media recently because of that controversial Time Magazine cover showing a woman breastfeeding her son, who was standing on a chair next to her. It probably gave a slightly wrong impression of AP, but one aspect of this type of parenting is “extended” breastfeeding. I saw something the other day where a woman said, “if you’re still breastfeeding at a year, everyone knows about it; if you’re still breastfeeding at two years, only your husband knows about it. If you’re still breastfeeding at three years, only you know about it.” A lot of women do continue to breastfeed their children until they are toddlers, and just tend to keep it a secret to avoid the sort of outrage generated by that Time Magazine cover. I think I’m lucky, in that when I was reading about parenting styles after having S, I stumbled upon a group whose members were largely AP, and felt happy to stay there and stop looking for anything else. To me the idea of “extended” breastfeeding isn’t so awful, and why should it be? Breastmilk is full of vitamins, essential fats and everything a child needs for development, after all.

But AP is not just about breastfeeding. The Sears’ bestselling Baby Book quotes the seven “Baby Bs”: birth bonding, belief in your baby’s signals, breastfeeding, baby wearing, bedding close to your baby, balance & boundaries, and beware of baby experts.

Birth Bonding

I was lucky when S was born; although I was fairly out of it and a bit clueless as to what was going on and what I should be doing, a NICU nurse came down to tube feed her on that first day, and told me to undress my baby and put her down my top, and just keep here there as much as I could. For the two weeks we were in hospital, whenever I could I put S down my t shirt. She slept a lot more peacefully curled up on my chest, and I slept through a lot of other babies’ screaming with her laying there. Ward staff would pop their heads in to check on us and, seeing the empty fishbowl, ask me “where is your baby?!” Although “kangaroo care “ as they call it, is something actively encouraged in NICU, nobody really mentions it on the ward – and none of the other NICU nurses really mentioned it to me. I feel very lucky that I met that particular nurse on that particular day.

In the first few weeks of S’s life, she was held a lot. Her father held her whenever he was here, and when he didn’t have her, I did. I didn’t like to put her down in her bouncy chair because she looked so small and lost in it. I did start to put her upstairs to bed in her Moses basket in the evenings, but I spent most of that time going upstairs to check she was ok.

Belief in Baby’s Signals

This is a big one for me, because so many people out there seem to be adamant that babies’ cries should be ignored, lest we create a generation of manipulative attention-seekers. I remember S’s father telling me, while we were still in the hospital, that I was creating a rod for my own back by picking her up when she cried.

This is about more than just crying though; it’s about learning what a baby’s signals mean: are they tired? Hungry? Do they need a clean nappy? All babies are born with “attachment-promoting behaviours” – they are designed to be cute and precious so that we want to pick them up and hold them and coo at them and notice when they have a wet nappy. Parents are generally able to intuit what their baby wants, but often we ignore their signs: “he can’t be hungry, I only fed him an hour ago.”

It took me a while to trust my instincts with S, and to realise that I really did know what was best for her, and I did know what I was doing. I still have times where she’s whining and clearly wants something, and I can’t figure out what it is – and then after a few minutes I think “hang on, you’ve not changed her nappy for a while you eejit.” On the whole though, she is very good at letting me know what she wants, and I’m getting better at reading her cues and signals.

Breastfeeding

When I was pregnant, I asked my mum whether I and my siblings were breastfed. She replied yes, for at least a year. S’s father’s response to this was “what? A year? Disgusting!” I suppose because I was the second of six children, and all of my younger siblings were breastfed, it just never occurred to me to formula feed. A friend advised me before S was born that I should use formula because then you can see exactly how much milk the baby is getting and make sure they get enough on each feed. At the time I didn’t fancy the idea, purely because I wasn’t sure about all the bottles and sterilising and things – I knew I would worry about germs. I’ve posted on here before about how I found breastfeeding hard in the first few weeks, but a friend pointed me in the direction of the group I mentioned above, and the ladies on there proved invaluable in their advice and wisdom. I read about the benefits of breastfeeding, and found that actually, I’m one of those people who is likely to be found banging on about how all babies should be breastfed, and formula companies not allowed to advertise at all, until the cows come home. I feel very strongly, not just that newborns should be breastfed, but that breastfeeding should continue for as long as possible. S is seven months old now, and people often seem surprised I’m still breastfeeding her and say “oh well done!” as if it’s some great achievement. Really, it’s not. Once I was over that initial hurdle, breastfeeding became the lazy option for me. A couple of people have asked me when I will be moving her onto formula, but I have literally no idea why I would do that. Why feed my child a product that’s been synthetically engineered to imitate something my body already produces? I have no plans to give up breastfeeding any time soon. For one thing, it burns a lot of calories, and I eat a lot of chocolate. A LOT of chocolate.

Baby Wearing

This one, I stumbled into. I live on the first floor, and I found I was unable to get the pushchair up and down the stairs without help. This meant I was housebound, unless S’s father came round, which he didn’t do every day. A friend sent me a wrap sling which she’d not been able to get on with for her little girl, and I fell in love with it. I put S into the sling, and off we went. All of a sudden I was free to wander off out as and when I pleased. Because S settled so well in the sling, I started wearing it around the house too, which meant I could do the washing up, cook some dinner, go upstairs to the toilet etc without having to leave her. I even started feeding her while she was in the sling. As she grew heavier, the way that sling tied across my stomach hurt my belly, so I invested in an Ergo sling. These days, we use the Ergo when we go out, but I still use the wrap sling at home sometimes, and we did use it the other day to wander down to the post box. It’s great for cuddly times. The Ergo is more structured, and can be worn in several different ways. It has straps like a back pack, and a pocket for my keys. S loves to be in the sling when we go out because she can see so much more – even when she’s facing my chest, she can look around and above her at the trees and people, and I chat to her constantly. She developed good head and neck control from an early age, and I think this has a lot to do with the fact she was always in the sling, looking up at me. She is quite the little chunk these days, and it does hurt my back to carry her around so much – but I still prefer the sling to the buggy, and miss that closeness if we’ve not used the sling for a few days.

Bedding Close to Baby

When we first came home from hospital, S slept in a Moses basket next to my bed. When she woke up I would sit up and feed her, then spend what felt like a lifetime trying to settle her back to sleep in her basket, and then go to sleep myself. I was fairly zombiefied by this point. One morning around 4am, I decided that since she was showing no signs of settling into her basket, I would just prop myself up with some pillows, and have her sleep on my chest like she used to in the hospital. She went to sleep in no time, and for a couple of weeks, every time she woke at 4am I would have her in bed with me. Then I decided to try feeding her laying down, and it was an instant success. After that, once she woke for the first time during the night, I would just bring her into bed with me and feed her laying next to me. It wasn’t long after that I decided there was no point in putting her in the Moses basket in the first place, and she’s slept in my bed ever since.

People tend to frown on this one, and think it’s terribly dangerous. If you follow basic safety precautions though, it’s really not. In fact there are studies to suggest having them that close to you can cut the risk of SIDS by a considerable amount. Mothers really do have a sixth sense as to their child’s position in bed next to them, and I’m not a particularly active sleeper any way. If I fall asleep laying on my side, that’s exactly how I wake up. If there was a man sharing my bed, I probably wouldn’t have S in it because I would worry about him rolling over on her – though to be honest, I’m more likely to remove the man than my daughter!

There is nothing better to see first thing in the morning than a great big, cheesy grin from someone to whom you are the entire world.

Balance and Boundaries

This is the one I have problems with. Because it’s just the two of us, and there’s not somebody here to take over rocking her when she’s having a bad time, I do tend to neglect myself from time to time. Over the last month or so S’s sleeping has been pretty bad, which has meant mine has been too, and I’ve not had the break I usually get in the evenings. Things like cleaning the kitchen and tidying the living room have fallen by the wayside as I’ve had to prioritise the list of things I would have liked to get done in a day. In all honesty though, I do think this has been an exercise in letting go for me. I don’t need to get downstairs and watch that TV show, the washing up is not important in the grand scheme of things, the world will not end if I don’t update my blog tonight. I decided that as long as I’ve had some dinner, the rest can wait, and once I’d adopted that mindset it made things a lot easier to deal with. It is difficult to maintain any real balance when you are the only one doing the balancing though!

Beware of Baby Experts

When you’re a new mum, everyone has advice for you. Everyone knows an old foolproof trick their mother used to get baby to sleep, or the best way to do this or that. People want to be helpful, and don’t take too kindly to being told “thanks, but I’m going to do this my way.” I’ve found that people also tend to think that because I’m a first time mum, and they’ve raised however many kids themselves, I can’t possibly know what I’m doing, and I should be doing what they did. It’s difficult to say “no, I know best” without sounding as if I’m judging them for what they’re doing, or insulting them in some way.

There are endless books and experts out there who will tell you exactly how to get baby to sleep, when to feed, how to train them to do this and that. It’s difficult to turn your back on them all, and you might not want to. I did though. I don’t want to force S into a schedule, I don’t want to train her to self-soothe, I don’t want to use controlled crying or leave her to cry it out.

When someone has raised ten kids, or is considered sufficiently expert on the subject that they have published several books on how to look after babies, and you’re just a woman who’s been handed this bundle and told to raise it into a well-adjusted adult, it’s easy to think they know best and you’d better do what they say. Turns out I’m quite stubborn though, and I read lots. I might not have the practical experience, but I know a lot of the theory and I have my instincts and for the most part, I’ve found that my instincts are backed up by quite a lot of scientific fact. I’ve decided I’m going to follow my instincts as to what is right for S, and the experts can go and sell their books elsewhere.

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