I mean it's weird, though, because we were encouraged to breastfeed, and I wanted to breastfeed, which was fine - because they, they did ask me. They gave me the choice, you know, “What would you like to do?” Once you've decided that you want to breastfeed, they will help you and support you all the way and really focus on that, which is great. But the, also the, they have, there's this pressure as well, all the time. You know, you're expressing, you go into the milking room, which is what I called it, with all these machines and, you know, you're expressing milk, and you're doing it in the night and, and then you're feeding him. And then you do the kangaroo care that you do, which is skin-to-skin contact and you're, you know, you're, you're changing his nappies. And it's such a long day for you, because you're doing all of that, plus you're expressing, and also you're trying to breastfeed as well. So it was absolutely shattering. And then the other thing is because we - well, because I was actually staying there most of the time, overnight, and we were quite a way from home, it was, you know, I had to make sure, “Well, I have got some food in the fridge.” And there was only a microwave there, so you weren't actually eating properly either. And so if you're tired, you're not eating properly, surely those are the two main things that would affect your breastfeeding? And I thought that in my case that was the case, that because I was tired, stressed and I wasn't actually eating properly, I wasn't actually producing a lot of milk. And I just thought that I was going backwards rather than forwards.
So I just thought, “Well, I don't understand how I can establish breastfeeding if I'm not producing enough milk and I'm stressed.” So in the end, I think, it was because I burst into tears in the end because I, I just couldn't get him to breastfeed, because he was very little at that stage, that they actually took notice and thought, “Oh, yes, well, she has been trying for nearly five, four and a half to five weeks, and she's got to the stage now where, it's got to the point where she, you know, she's so frustrated and stressed that it's affecting her ability to produce milk.”
And I think it all sort of culminated in, in that sort of me bursting into tears and saying, “Oh, I just want to go home”, that they realized, “Oh, well, actually, you know, perhaps we ought to say, well, change tack.” But up until that point, though, they were sort of, “Oh, no, you must be doing this every three hours, you must be doing this every so often.” And they didn't sort of give any options, “Oh, why don't you just relax and not think about it for a day?” or something. You know, they would say, “Oh, go to the canteen and have a nice lunch”, but that was about it. |
