advice wanted breastfeeding/health visitors

[willyk]

Hi all, we would really appreciate your help/advice/thoughts

We had our ds four weeks ago, we also have dd who is 2.3years old, when she was young she had problems with weight gain and we felt the health visitors undermined my wife breast feeding, in the end we dual fed, but both my wife and I felt that we didn?t get the support she needed for breastfeeding. She was encouraged to get dd weighed every week, and tbh that really stressed us out.

Now with ds I feel we are, yet again, being undermined? DW is really keen to ebf, and she has done a breast feeding peer supporter course, and has received help from the people who ran the course,

He was born at 8lb4oz,and by day 10 he was back up to his birth weight, and we were really happy (for dd it took three weeks). My wife took ds to be weighed yesterday, and saw one of the health visitors we had when we had dd, she weighed ds and he had gained 9oz in 16 days. She promptly said to my wife ?here we go again?- meaning ?this isn?t enough weight gain?. I saw dw at lunch time today and her confidence is shot, she?s worried she doesn?t know when he is hungry/windy/tired, which is crazy, she is a fantastic mum, and imho is going an amazing job.

Now ds has had a cold for five days, and although 9oz isn?t massive weight gain considering this cold , I think that this is well within the normal range.

To be fair, dw also saw the health visitor we would usually see, and she wasn?t concerned by this weight gain, but I feel like the damage is done.

Reading back I?m not really sure what advice I want/am hoping for, but really appreciate any thoughts??.

I think HVs try to get you to come to clinics as they can't offer 99% of mothers any other support, so tell you you 'need' to get the baby weighed. The fact that you aren't allowed to see the HV without weighing doesn't help. And the huge numbers of staff recording weights act like they are HVs and are the ones who come out with the worst bollocks, ordering me to take my healthy baby to the doctor ASAP etc, but aren't in fact qualified to do anything other than weigh a baby and record it.

My second baby I've been repeatedly told to come get her weighed and see the HV. I go to the breastfeeding group sometimes, chat to the lovely qualified staff, and weigh her myself. And put my initials in the red book so the weight 'counts'.

Hope OP can find a good breastfeeding group and avoid the HVs and women pretending to be them who are draconian and/or bonkers.

Wow, I'm shocked but not particularly surprised at the stories on here - we've found a massive range of HV's in our area, some have been great, but others just seem to have their own agenda.

With our DD there was an underlying problem in that she had silent reflux, we spent months in and out of hospitals and with hv's but they would never listern to what we were saying and usually would cut us off before we had finished talking. In the end we went to a cranial oesteopath, who sat, listened and diagnosed in 5 minutes, months of no sleep and stress could have been avoided.....

DW is feeling a bit better today, and I'll make sure she call's her bf buddies to get their support.

In a related problem most of the baby groups and breastfeeding cafes in our area are now shutting and are aimed at the more vulenerable women - which is all well and good, but I think these are the women who are less likely to go to the cafe's and groups to get the help......

And again tahnks for all your replies, we both appreciate it

Raspberry thanks for that, it was a very tough time and I still find it very emotional.

willyk that's good news, hopefully she'll get back on track now.

Poppy if you were on a drip before the CS then your baby proberly was bloated.

I was told that the excess fluid I had been given after being in and out of hospital for a week and lots of drips had gone to DD and she was a pound heavier as a result.

I was similar to your wife - wanted the reassurance of having the babies weighed every week to know they were gaining weight (were premature so I felt we were always on catch up). Unfortunately HV vary enormously in their empathy with mothers and their communication skills - they don't realise how anxious new mums are for all sorts of reasons and rightly or wrongly, look to the HV as the "professional". If that HV then criticises them, its hard.

As others have said, some are good, some are bad. Mine were horrendously bad and I made a formal complaint about mine (after she'd told me I'd damaged their digestive systems by weaning them early - which I did on the advice of their consultant, and then she subsequently telephoned me to tell me my daughter needed a heart operation (she had had a heart murmur when she was born but we thought it had closed) - turns out she'd got my daughter mixed up with another Isobel and "hadn't had chance to check the notes to check she'd telephoned the right mother").

notcitrus, I've consulted the HV without weighing. I told her I was there about a health concern unrelated to his weight and didn't need him weighed, she accepted that. It's astounding some of the things I'm reading here, why does practice vary so much? OP, stand by your wife and keep offering your support.

DrC - if I go to the local clinic to see a HV, the HVs are kept behind locked doors and you have to get the staff who act like HVs to add your red book to the pile for HVs. Which they tell you they can only do once the baby is weighed. As I said, they talk a pile of rubbish but as it's around an hour to wait, weighing passes the time.

The bf group staff are qualified nurses and sometimes there's a HV too, so much better to go there. But generally if I want advice I talk to the sensible chemist on the corner, or the GP. Amusingly I had the good HV come round recently to ask me for advice on some new stuff she was supposed to impart to her mothers!