"Good care for childbirth but lack of support to breastfeed"

I gave birth to my son in June of this year after having been induced. I was offered an emergency c-section 2 days later due to a reduction in my son’s movements.

I cannot fault how me and my husband were treated during that time however, when my son was delivered my husband was told that my son smelled funny by one of the staff members who helped deliver him. She said that this could indicate infection. I did not learn this until later on. This information, as far as I am aware, was not passed on to anybody else on either the observation ward or maternity ward.

That evening my son was checked over and it was discovered he was unwell. He was admitted to the special care baby unit within the hospital with suspected infection. He was treated with antibiotics and placed on oxygen. He later needed a drip for both glucose and sodium.

Staff were aware I wanted to breastfeed. The day my son was born he latched well and it seemed to be going fine however, with him being unwell and hooked up to various machines, it made it difficult to have more skin to skin and try breastfeeding further. I was also very stressed and worried about his well being. He is my first baby and I lost a baby the previous year. I made staff aware of this from the outset.

Despite this, the support I received in terms of breastfeeding was minimal. Some of the neonatal nurses were very helpful and in the early days I felt like I still had a good chance to breastfeed. My son was moved into a different room within the unit because he was deemed well although not quite ready to go home as further investigations were being carried out with his low blood sugar levels and trying to establish feeding from a bottle, given he had been fed through a tube for the most part. This also made it difficult to breastfeed because he never really had a reason to stay awake for long.

Once transferred he was placed in the care of nursery nurses. That was essentially where all breastfeeding support ended. I asked for help numerous times and was told the breastfeeding staff were on holiday. We were offered a family room within the hospital to try and help me establish breastfeeding given I had already been discharged from the maternity ward and I was having to go home each night, leaving my son in hospital for almost one week. The family room was then offered to another family because the mother had already established breastfeeding. Needless to say that was very upsetting given I had been trying to do this.

We were offered another family room although by this point my son was becoming frustrated at the breast and bottle feeding had already been established. I decided to give up because it was distressing me watching him scream.

He was eventually discharged a week later, having spent 2 weeks in the unit after birth. He is perfectly healthy and happy. The nurse who discharged us apologised for the lack of support with breastfeeding which I appreciated but wanted to share this story because it seems to be the case that it is almost presumed a woman will breastfeed - there is a lot of pressure to do so but the support is not there, especially for mothers who have sick babies who end up in the neonatal unit. It would be good if this could change so that women are offered the required support.