Monday, September 21, 2009
Oisin’s story
Last year my girlfriend Helen had our baby. His name is Jack and he is eleven months old. As we are both students the pregnancy was not exactly planned. In fact we were both shocked to discover the cause of Helen’s extreme tiredness. As the pregnancy progressed both our mothers were really helpful with loads of information as they are both young themselves. I have a brother who is only nine and I remember him being breastfed as a baby. There are six kids in my family and three in Helen’s. Everyone was breastfed except for one, so both our mothers knew/know a lot about feeding babies.
At first when we were talking about it, Helen was not sure. She didn’t want to be tied down and have to stop her college course. I really wanted her to do it ‘cos all the things I already knew about breastfeeding made me think it was easier. So the weeks went by and Jack was born. Helen was really lucky – she had a short labour and gave birth to Jack with no drugs, epidural or any of that stuff (which she was really dreading). He just came out all pink and squidgy and the midwife put him on Helen’s tummy. After about half an hour he was mooching and rooting around and the midwife showed Helen how to get him towards the breast. And just like that he got on to her breast and began to suck. I thought it might be hurting Helen but she said it was OK. In fact she said it was quite nice. She was so pleased at the birth being so good that she kind of forgot about the ‘not so sure about breastfeeding’ idea.
The first two days were grand but on day three there was an explosion of milk. Helen was really sore and she asked me to ring the Cuidiu Counsellor we had met earlier. This woman came to see us late at night and stayed till Jack was feeding and Helen was feeling better. We went to her house a few weeks later and she showed Helen how to express milk so that I could give him the odd feed when Helen was in college. This has really worked well for us and now eleven months later Jack still gets a few feeds every day from Helen as well as loads of food with us at the table. If you had told me a year ago that I would be loving all this baby stuff I would have laughed my head off. What I would say to any one who is thinking ‘how will I feed my baby’ – get loads of information, talk to the breastfeeding support counsellors or the public Health Nurse – I forgot to say that she was great too. Thanks for letting me tell our story.
Posted on 09/21 at 09:01 AM
