What made you worry that you didn't have enough milk for this baby?
I've got, polycystic ovaries, which, I'd read that can affect your milk supply and I'd had a friend who had quite, terrible problems with milk supply. and then when she was, the first twelve or, sort of twelve or fourteen weeks of her life she didn't put on as much weight as the health visitors said she should, she wasn't following the correct line on her chart, in fact this was about, this got to, it was about six or eight weeks and she'd not really put on any, any weight at all, although to me she was fine, and I was happy with how she was doing she, the health visitor said that she wasn't putting on weight at the right rate. This made me start to feel that perhaps, perhaps I wasn't making enough milk, although I've since learnt that, that wasn't, that wasn't the case at all. I worried about it, we did have a phase when she was, I couldn't tell you exactly, but around sort of two, two, three months where she started sleeping a bit too much for a baby for her age. Going large, long gaps between feeds and I was a bit worried that, well I wasn't really worried, but I did contact, I contacted an NCT breastfeeding counsellor, who was absolutely brilliant and said that sometimes, sometimes baby's who, who aren't getting quite enough milk they sometimes don't have, you know, enough energy and they can become sort of more lethargic. And she suggested something so simple that I was amazed that the health visitors hadn't suggested when, she said that if I felt the baby wasn't getting enough milk, or if I felt the baby was sleeping for slightly too long then, wake her up and feed her [laughs]. And looking back now it seems so basic and why on earth was I getting referred to consultant paediatricians for a baby that was failing to thrive before attacking the basic, the basic options of, you know, maybe feed her a little bit more and then she might put on a bit of weight? So we did that for, I think two days, woke her up, I was waking her up every two to three hours.
Night and day?
Yep night and day and, that week she put on about six ounces so, and from there on in she was great, it only took two or three days to get her, you know, back to, back to herself, so and she's not, not had a problem ever since and has put on weight at a wonderful rate so. But I did have a worry, at the time when, and when you think there is something wrong with your baby and when you've got somebody saying to you every week, “Oh she's not put on enough, how long was she feeding for?” and, you know, you do start to doubt yourself, and this was the first time and, you think, 'My third baby I shouldn't be having these problems I should be' and to some extent I think that the health professionals thought that, 'It's her third baby she's done it enough, she doesn't need any kind of support, we can, you know, we're better off channelling our energies somewhere else'. So I was pretty much sort of left to it, but as I said, I spoke to the NCT breastfeeding counsellor and she sort of said, “Well let's get back to basics here, what are you worried about?” and I said, "Well I'm worried that, you know, she's having these really long sleeps in the day, you know, sort of five, six hours sometimes” and she said, “Okay have you tried waking her up?” [laughs] and I thought, 'Well there's, there's an idea'. And once we started that it was absolutely fine, and she's put on weight. Although, I stopped going to get her weighed, I decided that.
So you were saying that something just as simple as feed her more often, wake her up and feed her more often?
Yes I think that when, when there is a problem, which, which there was, it was a problem, the, your instinct is to look for something there's, there must be something wrong, there must be something wrong with you, there must be something wrong with the baby, and you, you didn't think, and I certainly didn't think at the time and the, the health visitor certainly didn't suggest, you know, 'Let's go back to basics here, let's see what the baby's doing and what we can do to change this', and when I spoke to the breastfeeding counsellor, who I only spoke to for the briefest time, it was all I needed and she decided that we should go back to basics and, just, let's just try waking her up and see if that makes the difference and it did and.
So did you continue the more frequent feeding or you just needed to?
Yeah once, we did it for, I think, I'd set myself aside a week, a breast, the breastfeeding counsellor said, “You know, if you can, just take your, take you and your baby off to bed for a couple of days and just, just lie there and feed and be waited on for a few days” which sounded lovely but, in reality wasn't that practical. But I think I set myself aside a week and I cancelled all of the things that I had on for that week, by the middle of the week you could see that things were so much better anyway. She was waking up to be fed rather than me waking her up to feed her and I knew then, that she was fine and I didn't have, I didn't have to worry any more, although it was something, I've constantly kept an eye on since, I take my cues from her now and.
You were saying that after a while you stopped having her weighed?
Yes, we were referred to see the consultant paediatrician at the, at the local hospital who was, lovely, who was lovely and when we actually got there, he, the first thing he did was reassure me and said, “I'm not going to tell you to introduce bottles” [Pause]. Which was exactly what I needed to hear at the time I was convinced after, you know, not being very well supported from the health visitors, I'd had it in my head that the first thing he was going to say was, “This baby is underweight and needs, needs to, bottles, you need to be topping up.”, 'Cause that's what the health visitor had recommended, so we went in to see this, the consultant paediatrician who was so nice, put my mind at ease to start with straightaway. Just basically looked back through the chart, looked at her weight, examined her briefly and said, “She's just a healthy baby” you know, she was, he said that she just took a, you know, it was taking her a few weeks to find her sort of natural, her natural line to follow but she had, you know, after dropping through a few of their centiles on the chart was now following a lower one than she started on, but she was following it nicely. And he said that he was absolutely more than happy, she was an alert, happy baby who was feeding well and, I did, I didn't need to worry about, about her weight, and he, I don't think he was, he was very happy about the fact that, I'd been made to worry about her weight and told me to just sit back and relax and enjoy my baby which was just exactly what I needed to hear at the time, and the only time she's been weighed since then, since that appointment was sort of routine, routine appointments that we've had, sort of for developmental checks, she's never had, I've never taken her to be weighed, whereas to start with I was taking her to be weighed every week. I mean you could tell she comes in the bath with me most, most evenings, and I could tell from.
So when you give up on the weighing, how do you keep a check on your baby? How do you know they're growing, developing, what do you look for? What, are, are there other ways of telling that a baby's healthy, other than weighing? I think that's what I'm trying to say.
Well when, when we saw the paediatrician his, his main comments to us were that she's a healthy, happy, alert, smiley baby, and to hear a paediatrician say that was quite sort of reassuring in that we, you know, you're expecting them to look for other, other signs.
When you stopped weighing the baby, how were you able to tell that she was okay?
Well, when, when the paediatrician told us that his sort of primary observations of the baby were that she was a happy, healthy, alert, smiley baby, that kind of, hearing him say that made, made me think, you know, that actually, 'Yes he's right, she is fine' and I would've, hearing him, a paediatrician say that made such a difference, because it showed me that these are the signs that my baby is fine. She's always been a smiley, happy, happy baby and people in the street will comment, you know, “Oh isn't she happy, isn't she alert isn't she” so when you hear people say that you kind of think, 'Oh yes, yes she is'. I take her in the bath with me most, most evenings, and you can tell I used to, my partner comes in the bathroom and sort of sits on the toilet and talks to us and, when she was tiny, you know, and your fingers could touch around her, her middle and, you know, as she was getting bigger and we would sit there and say, “Gosh look, you know, I can't reach my fingers around her torso any more and, you know, isn't she filling out” and just, you can just, your baby can, you can tell [laughs], it's your baby and that was how I knew she was fine. When we went, did go to get her weighed, I, it had been quite a long time since she'd been weighed and the health visitor, you know, commented on that and I said, “Oh but wait till you see her, she's got, she's put on so much weight she's, you know, she's really filled out, she's filling all of her clothes” and, when we put her on the scales it reflected that and she had put on so much weight and, this was a different health visitor and she said to me that obviously whatever I was doing I was doing right and that was such a good thing to hear you know, “You've got a baby that's developing well, looks happy, looks healthy, you know, whatever you're doing keep doing it” and that's just exactly what you need to hear, when you've been through a difficult time, it's exactly what, what you need to hear, it's [sighs]. |
