I remember it precisely it was six weeks, and I mean it was the middle of the night and it wasn't the done thing in the Middle East for women to be out on their own and I remember thinking, she was screaming, my husband was sleeping, bless him he'd probably done, I don't know, an eighteen hour day or something and I'd gone into the sitting room to feed her, I couldn't get her to settle and I remember taking the baby to him and saying, “Right that's it I'm off to the garage” and off I went, across the road, by myself, in this sort of Middle Eastern nightdress thing that I really shouldn't have been going out in, I just turned up at the garage and bought some local artificial milk, gave her eight ounces and she slept [laughs]. And, you know.
How did that make you feel?
Actually, I think probably pleased because it was the first decent sleep I'd had, I think I recall that she slept for four or five hours and I remember waking up in a terrible panic the next morning, both of us did, because we both slept, my husband and I and thinking, 'Oh my God something's happened', because she'd never slept like that before. And, I think in terms of feeding, if I'm really honest, that first artificial feed was the beginning of the end for breastfeeding because then you very quickly learned to associate that artificial feed equals baby sleeping, breastfeeding doesn't. So I did continue to, you know, to try and express and feed her myself but if I'm really honest the breastfeeding and expressing got less and the artificial feeding got more. I mean weight gain and things hadn't been a problem so it wasn't like I suddenly ended up with a big chubby baby then, you know, and all our problems were solved, because I still had, you know, the overwhelming problem of being lonely and on my own, although that's about that stage at where I'd been able to start driving the car again and getting out and about, probably slightly before then. But, I did, it did mean that, when I sort of reviewed how I felt about breastfeeding first time round, but I did feel quite guilty about it, and you kind of watch things like is she going to get eczema and other such things and no she never has but you, I did feel that I'd failed her really in terms of not having fed her for as long as (a) I wanted to, and (b) I thought I would. I just had this kind of idea of myself as a mum that, you know, I'd still be breastfeeding at a year and, the, how I was going to manage expressing my milk when I was back to work full time, well I never got that far did I, you know, had this sort of pump and all the stuff and buying daft things like the bags for freezing my breastmilk, I think they went in the bin but, so, I had this image of myself, how I was going to do and I do remember feeling very disappointed that I didn't do as I was going to do, if that makes sense? |
