Tiktok, it will be fine. The anxiety has literally just gone. I've had a lot of CBT and medication and I am really quite well, I just really believed that the outstanding issue was an irrational fear about breastfeeding when ds2 was "clearly thriving".... and when I heard the bad news that he had dropped through the centiles, for a few brief hours I thought: this is it, all my irrational worries are true, I can't trust anyone etc... but you know, no one will ever really know why my kids had trouble bfing. I coud quote evidence and what should have happened til the cows come home but the truth is, it's complicated and no one has ever researched my exact circumstances, there just isn't evidence to say why this has happened.
Basically, I have had years and years of stress in my life and have a history that means I hadn't learned a lot of helpful strategies for dealing with it - alcoholic father, mother who denied it all etc - and a difficult birth and breastfeeding difficulties just put me into overdrive.
I believed - I REALLY believed - that there MUST be an answer, and that a good mother would do anything possible to make it work and that it was totally untrue that breastfeeding wouldn't work if you did everything right. So I thought that the reason ds1 lost weight was because I gave formula too early and I was determined this time not to supplement because if I trusted my body, fed on cue, coslept and trusted my instinct it would all work. And everyone around me supported that and reinforced that as healthy behaviour...
but the truth is, I did need help.. the issues aren't just because of poor advice, though that may be part of it. The issue wasn't just ds1's forceps delivery or the fact I had an epidural or the size of his head or when he was supplemented or the fact I couldn't express... though all may have been a part. There is no answer to this and I've been trying to problem solve a feeling - I've been trying to find an answer to a question that can't be answered. Unfortunately no one actually realised the extent to which the birth and breastfeeding difficulties really did precipitate this. I don't think ds2 has anything gravely wrong with him. I just think that he has lost weight because of poor breastfeeding management, but with the information I had available to me, I did what seemed to be best and everyone else did the same but we were all working on assumptions that have proved inaccurate. There's no blame, it just is what it is.
One of the professionals I spoke to yesterday said that when she had kids, she never told anyone what she did for a living... but she went to groups and thought oh my god all these people are obsessed, I give medication to people who sound like this and they all think they are normal and that all this stuff they are saying is absolute fact... how can this be normal? Which is pretty much where I started off... how can this feeling be normal, why do I feel this guilt about feeding, why didn't I try harder, was I lazy? have I put my needs ahead of my child's, what sort of mother would do that? etc etc.
The problem isn't these thoughts, the problem is believing them. That is OCD in a nutshell. I am fine. I just need a bog standard lac consultant visit and to see a Paed and to ensure that this is dealt with. That's all.
I have been one of those NHS professionals who got it wrong. I have thought that a person's fears are anxiety when really they turned out to have a large grain of truth. I have seen this over and over... I was so worried that I had been depressed with ds1 but I wasn't, I was stressed... and everyone kept saying there was no issue but I knew in my heart that he wasn't getting enough mik, and lo and behold he went from 2nd back to 75th centile within weeks of weaning.
Now I can do what needs to be done. Finally.