Breast feeding baby in hospital..

[macdoodle]

My 9 week old was admitted last week very ill with septicaemia ..very luckily she picked up and I was able to maintain breast feeding...
However looking back I was disappointed how little support there was for breast feeding mums when their babies are in hospital...
I understand in HDU the emphasis is obviously on the baby but when I was allowed to feed her the chair was almost impossible to sit in comfortably I had to ask for a cushion and a glass of water and no one helped me unravel all the tubes and lines attached to her...I got the idea they would rather tube feed her because it would be easier
Once we were on the general ward it was worse...I was the ONLY breast feeding mum on ward of more than 20 under 2's ...again I had to ask for a decent chair and they bloody kept pulling the curtain around me like I was a leper ....also they only fed breast feeding mums the other mums had to bring their own food even tea ....and they were quite funny about it - I was barked at about 10 times when I went to get food and then they shouted loudly "breast feeding mum" - the other mums looked at me like I was an outcast...
Other than this I must say the care they showed my DD was fantastic the nurses were caring and the drs fantastic and most important they pulled her through.....but a little more support on the breast feeding front would have been nice...

[Gem83]

When I had my dd I was the only mum on the ward breast feeding and felt like the nurses would've prefered me to be bottle feeding.

Before having my dd my midwives i saw were always encouraging me to breast feed so I decided to try it as shes my first.

But I only breast fed for a few days because of the way I was treated at the hospital. I thought if it's bad in here what would it be like when I was out and about.

[FloraPosteschild]

Oh Macdoodle, sorry to hear you've been through this. Hope DD is feeling better.

I found the 'support' when I had Ds1 negligible. I'm not surprised to hear the attitude is still so odd around Bfing.

Well done for carrying on regardless. I'm impressed

[FloraPosteschild]

she's very beautiful btw! They both are

It must have been very frightening for you.

[broguemum]

Poor you - glad to hear your DD is better and well done with keeping up the BF. Unfortunately I know exactly what you mean about the support from doctors sometimes being pretty crap.

When my DD was born she was v. poorly and was taken off to IC straight away. I was pretty unwell too but went there every day by wheel chair and stayed as long as I could. I fed her and expressed when I was back in my room and sent the bottles over to IC for her. Six days later she was allowed back to stay with me in my room. She was accompanied by a doctor with 8 bottles of formula who then instructed me on how to feed her and when. I said to him, "But I'm breast feeding her."

He replied, "Not for the rest of today you're not. We need to know how much she's eaten."

I had the confidence totally knocked out of me and felt completely useless. I even suspected my expressed milk had been binned. Luckily one of the midwives happened to be in my room at the time and told me when he was gone to ignore him and to carry on feeding her myself and so I did. I thank my lucky stars she was there or else I might have given up breast feeding then and there.

God, that was nearly five years ago and I still want to spit at the memory.