I think I did it!

[showtunesgirl]

After a not great start where I had a 22 hour induced, back-to-back labour which ended in EMCS, DD had a leg which bent the wrong way (it's fine now), a 6 day stay in hospital, 2 weeks with a catheter in, midwives that pushed DD's head onto the breast, a maternity support worker who less than 48 hours after the birth accused me of starving my baby because I didn't know DD's feeding cues and demanded to know if I was going to start being a mother or she was going to get some formula, meltdown on day 3 in hospital where DH was sent home with exhaustion and DD had 45 ml of formula, tomorrow she will be 6 months EBF!

I CAN still claim EBF despite that mini top up can't I?

Of course you can!!!

And now you are feeling great and confident, you can write to the maternity unit and COMPLAIN about the rubbish support you had at the start.

Hope you will do this, and perhaps prevent other mothers from suffering.

Brava, showtunes, give yourself a massive pat on the back and buy yourself something nice- you did it!

I agree that a letter to the hospital would help them to improve their breastfeeding support.

Thanks tiktok!

Oh I took it up with them whilst I was there. I told the maternity support worker that she had no right to speak to me like that as I was new to all of it. She apologised and I think it was partly a language barrier thing as English wasn't her first language. I can't be too mad as it was her who got DD to latch on well and taught me to feed lying down. DD was very dozy after the epidural and it was a struggle to get her to latch on.

Wow - kudos to you!! :o

Can I say as a ff, you are bloody amazing

Inspirational and amazing! Well done.

Thank you!

I have to say that I couldn't have done it without this forum. In the last six months I've been advised all sorts of rubbish by HCPs like don't eat beans as it will give your baby wind.

This forum also informed me about cluster feeding which never seems to come up in NHS breastfeeding classes.

Well done you and baby, I can't wait to get there. You should be so proud of yourself, for EBF and for standing up for yourself in awful circumstances at a very vunerable time in your life.

It's funny really, it's only now when I really I look back on it, I realise that it wasn't a great start at all. It took me a long time to recover from my EMCS and it totally floored me after a textbook perfect pregnancy.

Also just as I have hit six months, all the longer term BF stuff is in the media at the moment and it's made me wonder when we will stop. I think not any time soon would be my answer now and I'd only planned to get to six months.