One mum shares her experience…
“Our daughter was born after an extremely difficult three days of labour with no progression, they decided to do a c-section because she was face presentation and had been that way since our last scan three weeks earlier.
As soon as I could I tried to breastfeed, but she wouldnt’ latch on – because her head and neck were sore from being in the same position for so long.
We expressed the colostrum and gave that to her in a syringe. The nurses and midwives at the hospital were not very forgiving and were very persistent in helping me breast feed.
My baby was losing weight rapidly and was still unable to feed after a couple of days in hospital so I decided to top her up with formula. There was only one nurse who helped me with the formula and sterlising the bottles etc the rest were so horrible about the whole thing. In the end I had to sneak in bottles and formula just so i could feeding my daughter.
I found the whole expreience with not being able to breastfeed terrible, most people looked at me feeding her and shook their heads – to those people, you need to consider that person’s situation, I tried to breastfeed and couldn’t, my milk had already dried up before we got our daughters problems fixed.
Todays society is so set on breastfeeding, nothing else is an option really, I really think the message needs to get out there that not everyone can breastfeed and to not treat those people like lepers!
Kelly”
