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Writer's pictureCorinne Atherton

Darling, we’re out of milk…

I was going to be amazing at breastfeeding. That was the plan.


I was going to be the woman who, whether I was on the high street or in a restaurant, would confidently whip out a boob to feed my baby, and woe betide anyone who dared question me. I was going to be a lioness: roaring about my rights as a mother and fiercely protecting my baby’s right to be fed in public.


But it wasn’t to be.


After a relatively smooth hospital birth we had to stay overnight to ‘establish feeding’. That seemed mainly to involve a midwife peering at my feeding technique —or lack of— and attempting to guide me, assuring me that ‘baby would get it’ over the course of the next day.


So, home we went. The intensity and relentlessness of labour contractions were, I suppose, a forewarning of what it’s like to look after a constantly demanding newborn.


Those first few days flew by in a hurricane of feeding, nappies and soothing hugs. Night blurred into day and day into night, as my usual eight hours of sleep was shattered into two-hour shards. Bedtime was no longer a pleasure but a snatched creep beneath the duvet until the cry for milk was heard once more.

On a sunny morning, six days post-birth, my husband and I proudly took our baby to his check-up at the local hospital.  The midwife, who I found to be quite stern, asked me how things were going. I told her all I could before she asked me about feeding. I said it was fine - he would latch on, suck for a bit, then pull away. Easy, I’d thought. She asked to weigh him, so I confidently stripped off his clothes and nappy, hoping that he wasn’t going to wee everywhere, and she placed him on the scales. Checking his birth weight in his book, she calmly informed us that he had lost a lot of weight, far more than was expected in the first week.


She asked me to show her how I fed him, and nervous as I was, I tried to breastfeed. He didn’t latch on well at all. She could tell I had the right position, but he wasn’t doing his part.


My heart thumped wildly in my chest when she said that we had to take him back to hospital immediately. Looking first at my husband and then to my baby cradled in my arms, the guilt overwhelmed me. 

My precious boy was not yet a week old and I had unwittingly let him go hungry. I felt leaden and utterly hopeless. My husband led us to the car and to home, where I darted about like a flapping hen, throwing things into overnight bags.


On the drive to the main hospital, I cried. My husband repeatedly told me not to worry, but I couldn’t lift my head to meet his eyes. My memory of this process is hazy, but once there, nurse suggested that I express while my baby was taken to have a cannula fitted, ‘just in case’. In case of what, no one said.


My husband went with him, while I stayed sitting on an uncomfortable bed, attached to an NHS double breast pump. Flicking through that day’s copy of the Sun, I failed to see the funny side of staring at a pair of perky Page 3 boobs whilst my own breasts were being violently manipulated by a machine.


We were admitted onto the same maternity ward we had left only five days before. Hours had already passed since we’d arrived, yet my tears and increasing hysteria had not stopped - probably why I was given my own room. There was mention of my son having to go to SCIBU but thankfully they allowed him to stay with me. He had no tongue-tie, no medical issues, no need for the fitted canula, just a tired mother with an inability to provide.


When my husband had to leave—not being permitted to remain on the ward with us— the wave of emotion threatened to overwhelm me - how could I cope without him? He told me he’d be back the next day with the extra things we needed, including more formula to supplement my meagre amount of expressed milk. He kissed us, told us he loved us, and I replied with the same. 

Once we were alone, the rain began lashing at the window. My tiny son, not bothered by the storm, was snoozing peacefully in his little plastic box beside me. The bedside lamp cast a comforting glow as I stared at the pattern on the maternity nightgown my mother had made me. I still felt hopeless, but also, I knew this couldn’t continue.


I gave myself a talking to. My own mother’s stoicism, ingrained on my subconscious, told me that the tears had to stop. I reminded myself that I am this baby’s mother. It’s my sole responsibility to ensure that he’s well. Of course, I became his mother the moment I found out I was pregnant. But it wasn’t until I was faced with a crisis, of both my competency and that of my child’s health, that I fully realised my role. 


This lioness had awoken. I had a job to do – to nurture my cub in any way I could. I reassured myself that I was not a failure because I couldn’t breastfeed him—I had tried— and frankly, as long as he was eating something, it was okay. 


So, I fed him with formula until he put on weight. We were discharged two days later. I quickly gave up trying to extract any of my own milk; it seemed a futile task.


I still worry that if I had been able to breastfeed, maybe my younger son wouldn't have been hospitalised with bronchiolitis, maybe wouldn’t have developed sleep apnoea, requiring an adenotonsillectomy at 20 months.  Did my inability to provide the right nutrients cause his early ill health? I hope not, because when I look at my sons, now 11 and six, I see they are happy, hearty, rambunctious boys.


Although this guilt over my incompetency will remain with me forever – I still have no idea why breastfeeding didn’t work for us – I see these boys both full of vitality, exuberance and backchat, I think that maybe this mama lion didn't do too badly by them after all.


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