"Lack of breast feeding awareness in paediatric ward"

Recently ended up in ward 29 with my then 10 day old baby who was diagnosed with congenital pneumonia and required CPAP. Cannot fault the staff in terms of their care as all were lovely and acted with compassion at what was a difficult time. However, I feel it's important to highlight the issues we encountered around the lack of support for continuing our breast feeding journey.

The ward is clearly not set up for supporting breastfeeding mother's, particularly those who are in the early days and just beginning to establish feeding. There was a lack of understanding from staff about how to source and then subsequently use the hospital grade pumps which were crucial when my son was requiring tube feeds to keep up my supply and to provide his nourishment. Thankfully I was aware of the infant feeding team based within ninewells due to my eldest son, however when one of the team initially tried to come to the ward to provide support, the charge nurse didn't allow them access. It was then a further 24 hours before they were allowed in to support me and source appropriate pumps etc by which time my nipples were damaged. For a hospital that has a gold standard award for breastfeeding, I feel that paediatric ward let's the hospital down.

The paediatric ward  also did not appear to have all of the resources required to effectively support babies who are pre term and advice had to be asked from the NICU team to source appropriately sized equipment to look after him. It is frustrating that babies who have been discharged from hospital after birth are then no longer able to access the NICU and are put straight to the paediatric ward when had the hospital picked up when he was born that he had congenital pneumonia, he would have ended up in the NICU and therefore been in the most appropriate place to meet his needs.