"Poor individual care at postpartum wards"

I delivered my first baby after an elective C section. Ante natal care has been great and uneventful. The surgical team had been excellent. I delivered a low birth weight baby. I was in the post surgical assessment room for nearly 12 hours due to the ward being too full. Though I was assessed quite throughly no one assisted me to establish breast feeding. This was a crucial time that one should get some help to establish breast feeding which I completely didn’t receive. I did my best from what I’ve learnt but realized I haven’t stimulated my production enough. When I got transferred to the post natal ward around 11.30 am no midwife came to assess how I feed. So the first 24 hours went without a single mud wife giving me any kind of assistance to establish breast feeding. Baby had been crying overnight and didn’t pass urine from midnight to 2 pm next day and I finally rang the bedside alarm to get some advice. The first thing the midwife told me is that I’m not producing enough milk and need to start on formula feeds and asked my husband to get some. I’ve never imagined giving formula feeds to my baby, but at that moment I was so vulnerable and readily accepted her advice. After 24 hours of formula feeds she was fine but I couldn’t get her to latch as she used to on day 0. On day 4 she has moderate jaundice, and I had to increase my formula feeds as I wasn’t then producing enough breast milk.

When I look back I feel so let down by the system which sent me on a spiral that I’m struggling so much to get back to breast feeding. All I needed was support to establish breast feeding early on, not the quick fix of formula feeds. It is sad to think that industry influence is so high that one would readily revommend this. I’ve been so upset and crying every time I offer her a bottle to realize a few others told me that their babies have been so unfairly introduced to formula feeds by whipps cross post natal ward.

This feedback is to say that individual care is missing in whipps cross. All they do protocol procedures to be safe rather than to deliver quality care. It’s sad that my baby and I have to struggle so much now to establish breast feeding after the hospitals easy intervention of introducing formula feeds to save time for them.