Five weeks. When she came home I continued to try to breastfeed her at home, but it didn't, I wasn't hugely successful, and without, you know, somebody there standing over you, encouraging you, and showing you more importantly and saying, “Yes that's correct”, I don't know because I suppose at that time you're just so tired and you're overwhelmed with everything and then, and then the milk supply just started to stop because I couldn't then even express, only, you know, only get a couple of ounces, and so I thought well perhaps I could have her at the breast and she could be latched but there's nothing, nothing there. And because you can't at home have the facility to weigh them before and after you couldn't tell how much she was getting so that's when I sort of moved to formula milk through a bottle. Which was disappointing but not heartbreaking because I think you're so concerned that they have something you don't think too much about necessarily where it comes from and I think I was quite satisfied that I'd done as much as I could, and I couldn't really do, you know, you can't magic milk out of thin air so you, yeah.
That was at that stage?
Mm-hm.
How do you feel about it all now looking back?
I got, I go through different per, well I used to go through different periods, I would think that, I felt a failure in certain aspects and I felt that I'd let her down and I, and I went through a mixture of emotions, you know, disappointed, upset, angry but now when I look back especially as our daughter is older and quite happily, you know, and well developed and, you know, doesn't seem any, any the worse off for it, I think I did, I did what I could, and I'm just glad that I tried, because the other lady that I met in the Kinder Clinic didn't want to at all and wasn't, and wasn't forced to and just didn't and I, for no other reason than she didn't want to and I don't disagree with that, you know, that's personal choice but I think well I did, and I did what I could and it maybe never went how I wanted it to, but.
How did you deal with those emotions at the time as they came up?
I don't know how I dealt with it, you just, I think you just do, and I think once you have a baby in Special Care every, everything else seems to just go out of the window because you focus solely on them and everything else just becomes irrelevant. I was quite lucky being in Germany because when you've had a section in Germany you can drive straight away afterwards. So I don't think you get in the mindset of, “Oh gosh”. You know, “I can't drive, is it because my scar is going to pop open? Or I'm very vulnerable, or?” You, you don't feel vulnerable at all because you, you know, you can get in a car and I had to drive to the hospital to see Amy daily, and I think that just takes over anything else, I think it catches up with you later on after the event, when I look back now I think, I'm surprised how well I coped. |
