Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Deirdre’s story
Deirdre is my name and I was just two weeks away from my due date when I met this woman in the clinic. She told me what a Breastfeeding Counsellor does and gave me leaflets to take away and assured me and my partner James that there would be someone on the phone for us if we needed help after the baby was born.
Three weeks later I was sitting up in bed in a very hot room trying to follow the instructions for latching on my baby. Peter had been born after a long and difficult labour after which he needed to be sucked out with a ventouse cap. I felt like I had been through several rounds with Mike Tyson. My eyes were all blood shot from the effort of pushing and I was not feeling great. The tears were falling and everyone was trying to be so nice to me. Poor James could do nothing right, and Peter just seemed to want to suck all the time. He cried every time I tried to put him down.
I just wanted to walk out and leave the whole lot behind. I was overwhelmed by it all. The feeding, the changing, the burping, the feeding, the changing etc. It was never ending. James was so good and he stayed with me nearly all day holding the baby and gooing over him. Night two was absolutely the worst day of my life so far. I asked the midwives to take Peter out of the room for a few hours so that I could get a bit of sleep. It didn’t work as I still couldn’t sleep thinking about him crying in another room away from me. Next morning with breasts hot and swollen Peter just couldn’t latch on. The midwife showed me how to get the breast a bit softer and how to get the milk to start dripping. I went home that afternoon and panic set in. How was I going to manage this on my own? James had to keep reminding me that I wasn’t on my own, I had him, several sisters, and sisters-in-law who had all breastfed. This was not helpful as I worried that they would think I was incompetent if I couldn’t feed Peter.
I rang the woman I had met three weeks earlier and she talked me through what was normal at this stage and invited me to come to a breastfeeding support group, next week, if I felt up to it. It was the best morning I ever spent. All the other girls were really nice and there were babies from a few weeks old up to toddlers. Everyone was telling their own stories about birth and breastfeeding and mine started to sound quite like the rest. I learned that it is not unusual for breastfeeding to take a few weeks to get going as both you and baby are still learning how to do it. The time went really fast and I came home tired but happier. Every week I go to a group somewhere, either Cuidiu, La Leche league or the Public Health Nurses Breastfeeding group. As far as I am concerned the more support you get the better. It is so reassuring to know that there is always someone to talk to who won’t think you’re being silly, or fussing over nothing. As for the breastfeeding – still going at 4 months with no plans to stop!
Posted on 09/30 at 06:04 AM
