"Neonatal breastfeeding and aftercare"

I gave birth to my son in March 2020. After a tough birth my son had to go down to neonatal for a few days. As a new mum I was overwhelmed, under informed and I wasn’t supported.

I tried breast feeding and was struggling with latching.  One nurse said i was doing well but with shift change a overnight nurse fed my son formula   because I didn’t come down to feed him. I should have been there but I had finally got one hour of sleep and again didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing. I had been called down every three hours and had finally fallen asleep.   I began labour on the Thursday morning and had my son at around 2am Friday morning. By the time I had showered, visited my son it was 6am. I spent all day with him with no one offering food/drink/pain relief. 

 Luckily my husband was there but I had to keep walking all the way back up to get pain relief and kept missing them so went without.

I wasn’t told to express, I didn’t know where to go/how too.

By the Sunday I was overwhelmed and only then was told to start expressing. 

I went home underconfident but managing to breastfeed but once home it wasn’t working for us. We went into lockdown 2 weeks later and no one came out to see us.  I then began to continue to express and have done for 7 months now to feed my child breast milk.

I think that for mums in neonatal there should be a leaflet in WHAT TO DO. Food times/pain relief times/how to/where to express. Somewhere to go for breast feeding support.

A daily check-in of where you are and what help you need. It’s all very new to mums and some are as clueless as I was and need a bit of extra support.