Mum Truths: Breastfeeding

The first instalment....
Hi readers! Welcome back to my blog, this is the first of hopefully many 'Mum Truths'. In this blog post I'm going to be speaking about the reality of breastfeeding, my experience anyways. The things you don't get told, the things you do and the things you don't realise until your actually the one with the new born latched onto you. I hope this brings comfort and a sense of relief to other mums who might be going through the same stuff and even if your situation with your child is or was completely different here is an honest experience from one mum to hopefully many others who are trying their best. So before I start, to all you mums out there- Your doing great!! Enjoy the blog!

Breast or Bottle...
So to be clear I am pretty much exclusively breastfeeding (at the moment) with a bottle of formula in the afternoon and occasionally in the night. This I have been told is called combined feeding or combination feeding.
When I found out I was pregnant I was sure I was going to ONLY breastfeed! 'Breast is best' 'Its the natural thing to do' everyone said from strangers to health professionals which is not wrong, this opinion I agree with breastmilk is made for the baby of course its good for them maybe even it is best for them but in no way does that mean its easy to do or that bottle feeding/combined feeding should be negatively looked upon. Not knowing about combined feeding, hearing how terrible formula was for your baby (untrue) and being so keen to breastfeed my naïve prgnant brain thought it will be easy right? No. Although luckily I have not had as big a problem as some others have had it is far from easy and comes with challenges as any mother would know who has breastfed. Now being a mum I can see that everything to do with parenting comes with challenges- breastfeeding, bottle feeding, sleeping, bathing ect. - and we as mums and dads are just trying our best to be the best parents we can be, so to all those parents judging other parents for bottle feeding or judging that mum for breast feeding in public, just stop. We all need to support each other and realise we are all doing our very best no matter what choices we make or opinions we have we all have one thing in common, we love our children.  Breast vs Bottle debate resolved now back to my experience.

Latched on straight away but then...
After my beautiful daughter Ella-Grace was born and we got to recovery I was lucky enough for her to latch on automatically! Hearing how much other mothers have struggled with this (hold my hands up to you ladies I don't know how you did it) I am very thankful I didn't have that problem! So yeah she latched on straight away and the first night we had together was a relaxing yet surreal night I will never forget. Things seemed to be going well that entire night and most of the second day, then the night came and things got stressful. Not having slept in about 48 hours I was tired and very emotional, obviously to be expected as I just had a baby and as everyone liked to constantly remind me MAJOR SURGERY (this is exactly how people said it to me hahaha) Ella-Grace was still latching but would continue to cry after being fed.
Being in a ward with lots of other mums and mine screaming I felt like I was doing something wrong (sounds silly now but that's how I felt). Reece came to visit us and we were both a crying mess, still to this day I don't know how that didn't scare him away being the first time he'd seen us both since Ella-Grace was born. Anyway so there we were Ella-Grace and I uncontrollably crying and Reece also being a first time parent not really knowing what to do then thankfully the most lovely nurse came in and offered a formula feed as she advised me that my milk may be taking a while to come in. Reece accepted the offer for me and although I had no problem with formula the exhaustion and crazy hormone imbalance convinced me that I was failing at feeding already how was I going to do this!!
Reece had to leave (which only made me more upset) and I was left with the nurse cup feeding my little girl. I felt like a failure. And to this day I wish I knew that nurses name as she really helped me that night- helping me latch Ella-Grace on to get my supply going, leaving the buzzer close and telling me to buzz when ever she got too unsettled, positioning Ella-Grace in her crib in order to help her tummy, giving me advice and continuously checking on me to make sure we were both okay. Although it didn't stop me from being a complete emotional wreck it did help having someone I knew could help me.
I learned 2 important things that night that have stuck in my head.
1. The second night is always the hardest. I got told this by the midwife and several other mums, the first night your full of adrenaline then the second night the responsibility, exhaustion and hormones hit you and stress is at an all time high. But guess what? The second night ends and the next day begins.
2. Almost all babies have at least one cup feed in hospital. I was not a failure because of a little bit of formula and neither of course is any other mum that has to have their baby cup fed. It was at this point I decided to combine feed with a bottle in evening as it gave me peace on mind knowing that if she wouldn't/couldn't take from my breast at least she would be used to formula. This being a good decision given my situation at the moment which I will get into soon.

Back home and the first month...
The third day after I had Ella-Grace we were sent home! Nervous about being a mum and looking after her but looking forward to being in my own environment we set off home. That first night at home Reece really came to my rescue I was so exhausted and emotional I could not function properly. I feel guilty even saying that as I am not the priority, the baby is but as they say you cant look after someone else unless you look after yourself so that's what I had to do. Reece, my hero took Ella-Grace for a few hours and bottle fed her so I could sleep so when I got up after my first proper sleep in days there he was bottles sterilised and baby fed and fast asleep, if your reading this babe that really helped. An amazing dad from the start! So after this and up to now I have been combination feeding with no more than two bottles a day usually just the one in the afternoon. And apart from the normal breast feeding problems (sore nipples, constant feeding and soaking through breastpads ALL THE TIME) breastfeeding has been going well! Until about two weeks ago when a problem cropped up which might change the routine we have gotten so comfortable with.

Lactose intolerant...
Ella-Grace is now 6 weeks old and about 2 weeks ago she started to projectile vomit up all her milk, mostly after her formula but also after my breast milk. I spoke to my mum and the heath visitor about it and we came to the conclusion that she was lactose intolerant as I was as a baby. For those who don't know Lactose is a type of glucose that is in dairy products and I think (not a medical professional so don't quote me on this) there is some in breast milk but not a lot, and this is what my baby girl is allergic to. This means we had to switch to a lacto-free formula and I am now on a dairy free diet, originally I tried to cut down thinking it might help her grow out of it but she was still a bit sick so I have just boycott it entirely. So for the last two weeks after cutting that out and switching formula we haven't had any problems but today, the exact day I am writing this ironically, she has started to projectile vomit after breastmilk but not formula? Even though |I have cut out dairy? So that's the next challenge I am on and that is as far as my breastfeeding reality goes thus far.

Recap...
So to recap on my experience.. Latched straight away, breast milk production delayed, cup-feed leading to combination feeding, good few weeks of breastfeeding, lactose allergy appeared and now only processing formula. I have the health visitor again this week so hopefully find out the problem but who knows maybe breastfeeding will work out but maybe I might have to just feed her the formula which is something I never thought I would do because of the whole 'Breast is best' which I used to be so sure of but you know what things change and all babies are different and sometimes breast isn't best, what's best is whatever your baby needs/wants and as long as they are being fed that's what matters! So there it is my first 'Mum truths' blog post I hope you all enjoyed it thanks so much for reading and Ella-Grace if in the future you read this thanks for sleeping the entire time I typed it out haha. And again for all you expectant mums, new mums, experienced mums and not to forget the lovely dads your all doing a great job!!

Next time...
My next 'Mum Truths' will be on the topic of baby blues which will also include me talking a bit about my anxiety and panic disorder which obviously had a bit of a part to play in my baby blues and experience of becoming a new mum. I hope you will all be back to read it and that it might help someone going through similar things- as I always say that's the aim of my blogs, to remind people they are not alone and make a difference in this world we all call home.

And remember Stay Happy Everyone :)!

My Pregnancy Journey. (Part 3)

The Last leg of the Journey...
Welcome back readers! Thank you so much for reading this far, I hope you have all enjoyed reading about my journey just as much as I have enjoyed writing about it. An emotional rollercoaster pregnancy I have had but wouldn't change it for the world, I just can't to have baby girl in my arms finally! So to recap, the last two blog posts covered finding out I was pregnant to around 20 weeks pregnant (go read if you would like to catch up before reading this part!). In this final pregnancy blog post I will be writing about the last 20+ weeks of pregnancy and what me and my partner experienced during this time. Like life is, these weeks had its ups and downs but HEY we are still here going strong and looking forward to bringing our baby girl into the world by the end of this week (Induction scheduled for tomorrow woo!).

Scans, scans and more scans...
Weekly scans now, checking up on that hole in the heart and keeping track of baby girl's anatomy. I would like to take this moment to thank the doctor we had in the hospital for these weekly checks, since we had quite a bad experience at the first scan we really appreciated the way this doctor was with me especially. Helped me keep calm through my nerves. So a few scans had past each seemed to be a bit more reassuring than the other as baby girl's anatomy had been growing as normal and the hole in the heart although still present seemed to be getting smaller, healing hopefully.
For people that may not know when they are checking the heart on a ultrasound scan carefully they can put on a setting which shows the direction of the blood flow through the heart, in turn being able to see if the blood is going in and out of the right chambers/crossing over properly etc. (excuse my lack of medical terminology, it has been a while since I did my biology exam) So yeah checking this each time we had a scan it was a relief for us seeing that everything seemed normal and the hole had not caused miss-direction of blood flow as if this happened it could have been a completely different and fatal problem, we feel very lucky to have experienced this as we know some parents and their babies aren't that lucky unfortunately.
So between 25-30 weeks (cant remember exactly what week sorry) the doctor gave us the all clear to begin growth scans instead of anatomy scans, YAY! The baby's hole in the heart seemed to have healed but the doctor did let us know that scans can only be so accurate and baby girl may require to have a scan on her heart when she is born as well as other tests to check for down syndrome since she was high risk and also blood was to be taken from her umbilical chord due to my blood being O-negative, this though we had been told was easy to treat through medication and only a problem if our blood mixed. I feel I should mention there are other signs in the scan that can indicate down syndrome but none were found, these signs only being present in 50% of babies who have down syndrome so even though they weren't found in our scan she was still classed as high risk hence the extra after birth checks she will be having.
The checks after birth were not a worry for us, of course its not ideal no one wants their baby to have to undergo lots of tests you just want to cuddle them and protect them but we were just so happy that she was looking healthy enough to actually get to the birth part it could have been so much worse. We were so happy for the three of us, things were looking up!

Stressful events over yet?...
So I think it would be worth mentioning that while we were getting the weekly scans and obviously our biggest concerns were the baby and her health other big decisions and stressful events had occurred making things just that bit more difficult. I wont go into to much detail as I could take up a whole other blog post but here are the significant parts. Reece and I had some trouble with our new landlord, as nice as he was he was not ready to let go of his house and we felt more like the house was just that a house not a home, not the best when you are going to bring a baby into the world. We found ourselves missing the previous two bedroom flat we had, it was so much better for us for so many reasons (better landlords, more homely, we were free to decorate, better area, more shops, could actually get signal on our phones.. just to name a few reasons). Thankfully we were able to get our old flat back in the end and the landlords even agreed to take the rent down because they the same as us missed having us occupy the flat, so much to thank our landlords for its unreal! Life is so much easier when you have a great relationship with your landlords!
Another thing we had decided to do due to the baby and moving AGAIN was postpone our wedding (originally meant to be this year now going to be next year). This being difficult for us as we had a lot of it planned out already and we really wanted to be married but at the same time love is love no matter the circumstances and we didn't need a bit of paper to show us that we loved each other, I'd like to think anyone who met us could see that we were head over heals for each other. We knew we could get married whenever, the main focus was making a good home for the three of us and making sure baby girl had everything she needed before anything else. So that was that moving again and wedding postponed two very big decisions that happened at the same time as the constant scans checking on baby, lots of worry but we got through it! End of the stressful events right? Unfortunately no.
So by 34 weeks we had, had one other growth scan which went fine, nothing to report our baby girl was beautiful and healthy. But then we got the second growth scan accompanied by an appointment with the consultant and they found what was written in my notes as a red flag. Baby girl's estimated weight was on the small side as well as her femur bones measuring significantly smaller than her weeks. The sonographer kept her cool making us feel like it was not a big deal but her concern must of been shown in the notes as when we went up to the consultant she felt the need to remind us that we had a 1 in 5 risk with no invasive testing being done. I said I was aware of this and she nodded, circled "Small femur measurement" and left the room. I already knew what was meant by this but Reece was confused. While she was out the room I explained to Reece that a sign of downs syndrome being present was small estimated weight (her being 4 pounds when she was meant to be 5 1/2 pounds +) and also a short femur measurement, I knew this through the endless amount of googling I had done on pregnancy and down syndrome signs. Although many people tell
me not to google things or that its a bad idea I find it keeps my anxiety at bay being informed on everything and anything I could be. The consultant came back in and said that she had consulted with other doctors and they had agreed that it is not a massive worry at the moment but that it was something that they wanted to pay extra attention to in the next scan, subtly letting us know that it was a sign that they would look out for by again saying 'your baby is 1 in 5 of downs and at 20 years old this is very rare'. We left the scan happy to see our baby again but now worried about her more than ever, comforting each other with a tight grip of  each other's hand the whole way home and that night for the first time it was Reece that needed comforting. More than happy to return the strength he had given me over the years we spoke about everything, cuddled in bed with our little life and eventually we drifted off to sleep.

The final weeks...
Following this scan I had a midwife appointment, this being the third or fourth different midwife I'd actually seen due to all the moving and delayed appointments because of the switch of practice. The final midwife I had and still have now was lovely and bubbly but at this appointment I got a very serious tone from her setting alarm bells off. After all the normal checks, she asked 'are you nervous since you are 1 in 5 of downs?' and to that I answered not really, I'm excited and keeping positive. The midwife heard this and seemed to be very surprised '1 in 5 of down syndrome, so young, this is very rare.. I don't want you going into hospital unprepared for what might happen'. To the midwife's defence I think she meant this in the nicest way possible and was just trying to warn/prepare me for the checks and possible lengthy hospital stay ahead but I felt so anxious in that moment right there, a sudden feeling of oh my goodness my baby is so ill everything is going wrong! I smiled when I left but as soon as I was gone I was on the phone to Reece overwhelmed.
Luckily I had learnt over time how to keep my anxiety at bay and avoid full blown panic attacks but I do have a tendency to get a bit obsessive when over thinking so when I got home at the end of the day I spent hours searching everything on downs syndrome birth experiences and other mothers stories but unfortunately no amount of social media posts, blogs, YouTube videos, google searches or inspiring stories could stop me from worrying!
Since this appointment slowly I started to get less anxious and more content with the situation and again Reece and I were more excited than worried. With every strong kick in the ribs I got being a reminder that she was okay. I could almost here a little voice along with each kick saying 'Mum, Dad I'm fine in here! Stop worrying'.  Weeks passed heartbeat looked strong, each scan even though estimated weight being small there was still significant growth so the consultant went from alarmed to accepting she was just a small baby and her femur bone length could just be a result of me being smaller height than average. Finally all positive news! The first time Reece and I had felt like a run of the mill, no problem pregnancy rather than the HIGH RISK PREGNANCY of such a young couple. Baby girl was so close to being here now (I say 6 days overdue still no baby in my arms haha!)

Good times are here...

So from 37 weeks onward things were just getting better! My maternity pay had started finally after being delayed, we had prepared everything for baby girl, had an amazing pregnancy photoshoot thanks to my talented sister, baby showers (yes multiple, I have the best people in my life) and to top it all off Reece FINALLY landed a job he had wanted after a year of gaining experience.. this meaning more money for us as a family and an overall pretty perfect life, everything coming together all we had to do was wait for this baby girl to get here! Little did we know we would still be waiting at 41 weeks.. maybe I should of ate more spicy food who knows (old wives tales ah the disappointment they bring haha)! And that's it the end of my pregnancy journey, on the blog anyways I personally still have a possible few days left of carrying baby girl.

That's all folks...
For those of you who actually made it to the end of this blog post, sorry I know it was a long one but didn't want to miss any detail, thank you so much for reading and I hope you have enjoyed reading my journey. My pregnancy has been above all memorable and certainly worth while, I am beyond ready for baby girl to be here and hopefully she will be here before the week is out if the induction goes successfully tomorrow (Wish me luck!!). I would like to thank my fiancé, friends and family for supporting me I am blessed with some amazing people in my life and can't wait for you all to meet little one. Till next time everyone, thanks again hope to be introducing baby girl to you all soon!
Stay Happy Everyone :) !