Help needed - breastfeeding making you sleepy and tandeming.

[confuddledDOTcom]

I need some good resources on why breastfeeding makes you sleepy and how the body adjusts to tandeming ? Needs to be as recognised as possible because I?m taking them into hospital.

Just a little background, I was in hospital last year and there was bit of a bullying campaign going on with a MW and a registrar, plus two nurses who seemed to join in. It cumulated in me being kept in for six weeks and then being referred to social services (fortunately they didn?t see the sense in keeping the case on and let me go home from my parents ? the hospital insisted I couldn?t take her home on my own because I wasn?t to be trusted ? pretty quickly). The complaints against me ranged
from petty (I do crosswords...)
to lies (milk doesn't make my baby sick - despite nurses having gone off shift regularly to change their clothes, her managing to soak both our beds... yes, milk is still an issue to her!)
to unprovable (my other children aren?t healthy ? from someone who hadn?t met them and refused to contact our paediatrician who happens to be lead safeguarding for that hospital ? my eldest is under him for prem complications)
to ridiculous (breastfeeding as a concept is more important to me than my own baby)
to ignorant (the baby wasn?t gaining weight because I tandem ? until two weeks before the birth and they kept me in for six weeks, I hadn?t fed another child in two months, but apparently I was only making ?toddler milk?)
to nasty (I?m making up my long-term PGP which I take co-dydramol and use crutches for the last 4 years for)

And those are really just a sample! One of the complaints against me was I fall asleep during feeds. Now taking out the fact that they had me expressing every two hours for a fortnight and feeding her every three hours (so pretty damn exhausted!) I know that breastfeeding is supposed to make you sleepy. Not to mention feeding a baby is so boring that even nurses have fallen asleep doing it!

I?m pregnant again and going to be visiting the manager of the ward to come up with a plan to make sure that there are no problems this time from what happened before, so I am working on a document that is my private blog from when I was in there, all the weights and feed sizes I managed to get, photos from my notes and evidence against the breastfeeding ignorance. I have found there are three hormones that work to make you sleepy but only finding blogs at the moment and I want to be taken seriously so as much as I trust the blogs I?m reading I want stuff that they will trust.

I know everyone says that it was unfair, but I had a lot of people on my side who's hands were tied at the time. The discharge coordinator said she would keep me in hospital however long it took to get me going home with my baby because she was not having her going into care. She also told Mum (Mum sees her a lot for work) that the MW in particular had been harsh. The safeguarding MW initially laughed when they told her the complaints against me, then when she realised who I was (again, Mum's daughter) she said she wasn't taking it seriously. The mental health MW (they were convinced I'm mentally ill and because they knew it the psychologist they sent to see me - who's only a psychologist what would she know - was wrong) asked a CPN to look after me when I was discharged because it had been a "witch hunt". A MW who wasn't involved told my SIL that it wasn't the MWs that had a problem, they were all happy with me (apart from that one obviously!) it was all the registrar.

It's absolutely terrible what happened to you and your baby(s)! What on Earth was going on in that hospital?? As an aside why do YOU have to prove this, surely the onus is on the hospital providing evidence to back up their claims? I know that I would want to provide evidence to back up why I had done what I had done but if they are stating something is medical fact (e.g. you were making 'toddler' BM) then they should be the one's to provide peer reviewed studies to show it!

Is there a local bfc/IBCLC who could help you? I'd try calling any of the bfing groups active in your area to see if they could assist you (try Breastfeeding Network, La Leche League, Association of Breastfeeding Mothers, NCT).

For a start the body doesn't adjust to tandemming - a full system reset happens when pg at around week 26 and lactation starts from the beginning again with colostrum appearing. The toddler just has to 'make do' with what the breast produce - they can't force the breast make milk for a toddler (toddler milk has ~11% fat as opposed to ~4% of milk from mothers of babies under 6m - here). A good textbook on lactation science should hold all the answers - something that a BFC/IBCLC would have or be able to get hold of for you.

All the very best for your new baby.

Because I'm an "impatient mum" I will be going back through possibly NNU and definitely transition. I'm planning to meet up with a friend who works for Nursing Matters (Morgan Gallagher's company) who was around a lot at the time, and my Doula to come up with a plan for my stay (like a birth plan) and I want to be able to say to the manager "Your people said this... but that's not what the evidence shows, I want my care this time to be based on this evidence and not their ignorance"

As I said in my other thread the hospital IFC is amazing, she's a MW and an NCT BFC and helped me with my other children. I was cross she wasn't involved (along with a lot of other people who could answer questions on my older children's health) as my HV had got in a panic about the eldest when she was about 4 months old because she was "failure to thrive" when this lady saw her she said no way was my baby failing to thrive! They couldn't have a serious conversation with me because they had a baby wearing NB clothes sat on my knee watching them talk and nodding like she was following the conversation! I'd like to get her involved in making this plan, but I'm not sure whether she will at the moment.

Basically what it all came down to was they gave her formula because they had to split us up, she doesn't tolerate cows milk and threw it up. They gave her more, she threw it up. I expressed 6ml next morning, they split it over two feeds and cut it, she threw it up. "Oh no she's thrown up colostrum! She's very sick!" Took them 10 days to take her from nil by mouth gradually changing the amount on the drip/ NG until she was taking all my milk. They then decided that despite her being very ill and having lost a lot of weight that they would put us in transition together and make her fully breastfed. She couldn't handle it, lost more weight. Started top ups, she gained weight and started to fight the jaundice on her own for the first time. Then one day when I was out of the ward and she shouldn't have been weighed she lost 5g (yeah, like a teaspoon) and they went into panic mode! They had to find a way it was all my fault and wouldn't accept that milk made her sick (like me and all my siblings) and the teaspoon she lost was so terrible that no one would actually talk to me about it being a pathetic amount. They then put me on this three hour regime with quite a high amount of milk that meant she never woke up between and I couldn't breastfeed so I had to pump two hourly to make 90% of her supply. After two weeks of this and having drugs smuggled into hospital I was wrecked and could barely keep awake. OK, that wasn't the basically! It's shorter than the 8 pages I've got though.