Bear with me, I am very tired and haven't had much sleep since our son was born at 1:40am Tuesday morning.
The back story - IVF baby. Measuring small at 36 weeks (actually measuring as 34). Monitored for a week. My wife had all the signs of pre-eclampsia so they stared induction at exactly 37 weeks. Induction worked but after 16.5 hours of contractions they rushed my wife in for a emergency c-section as baby was distressed.
Baby was born weighing just short of 5lb. Took a while to breath but other than that doing ok. They took him straight to SCBU because of his weight and his blood glucose kept dropping.
My wife was recovering on a different ward from her c-section but managing to spend quite a bit of time with him. She was discharged on day 2 and since then we have spent all day sat with him.
He was moved out of a incubator into a cot this morning because he's fine other than needing to be able to drink from a bottle or breast. He has a feeding tube which they said was for if he wont feed.
When he is crying they just give him a dummy while my wife is using a machine to express milk sat next to him because the staff don't want us to disturb him between his scheduled tube feeds? Not sure how he's supposed to learn to take a bottle/breast if they don't let him try. He hasn't managed to suckle properly on the breast but they really haven't allowed him to try more than I think 3 times since he was born. My wife is using the pump to get milk for him to have from a bottle but they don't want to give him it in a bottle because it will wake him up so they give him it down his nasal tube instead. They say he can go home once his blood glucose has settled and he's feeding from either bottle or breast properly, how's that going to happen if they wont let him try? It's frustrating and it is starting to upset my wife.
My wife had a 15 min cuddle earlier and that's all she got today. I would say she has had a cuddle with him for no more than 3 hours since he was born. This just seems wrong. How are they to bond and how is he to learn how to breast feed if they wont let him try?
They also wanted to leave him 9 hours without checking his nappy which seems like an awfully long time for a new born baby, or any baby really.
We changed it at 2pm and then they wouldn't let us change it again because, again, it would wake him. It got to 8pm and we asked if we could change it before we left and they said no, "a nappy can last all night if you want it to" and they said they'll change it at 11. 9 hours after his last change??? So I just changed it anyway and it's a good job I did because it was soaked and soiled. They then wanted us to lay him straight in the cot to settle himself but I passed him to my wife to have a good cuddle before we had to go home.
Tomorrow should we just do the things we want to do or should we trust that they know best? My wifes instincts seem to be right? He did need his nappy changed. He does want to suckle, they just wont let him :(
Any advice would be great.
Thank you. Sorry if it doesn't make sense, we're both really tired :lol: