Want to breastfeed this time.....

[MrsGiraffe12]

This may be a long post so please bear with me....

My Ds who is now nearly 6 was 8 weeks premature and as a results spent a lot of time in SCBU and had to have a ventilator. As a result I had to express breast milk. This was tough as I was recommended to feed 4 hourly, so by the time I had expressed enough milk and washed the pump and then fed my DS it was about 2 hours until I started all over again.

He was born early due to pre-eclampsia so I was on a powerful cocktail of drugs due to this and the pain from the emergency c section and stuff which I'm sure affected my milk supply, and I ended up with mastitis and then bled into milk as I was so sore.

I have up when he was 5 weeks old as he hadn't put enough weight on for how old he was and I am still upset about it nearly 6 years ago.

Now, I'm 16 weeks pregnant with my 2nd child and although I'm having an elective c section again (medical advise due to other reasons aside from the previous one) I'm determined to breastfeed this time.

I'm just so anxious and scared it could all go wrong again and I really need some advice / positive words etc.

Does it matter that I have to go back to work when this baby is 5 months old? Should I start expressing ASAP when baby is born to build up a supply?

I'm working myself into a frenzy already :-S

Hi, best of luck with your second pregnancy. DD was prem (6 weeks) and I also did the expressing and tube feeding thing while she was in SCBU so I can empathise a bit. It sounds like you had an awful time with the drugs and the mastitis, please don't beat yourself up, you did the best you could in very difficult circumstances. Many would not have managed 5 weeks in your situation so it's great that you did.

So, the first question is, what are the reasons why you think it did not work out first time round? and can you avoid them happening next time? Hopefully an ELCS will be less painful and less of a shock to your body than EMCS, and hopefully DC2 will not be premature/no pre eclampsia (is there a chance it will happen next time?) so you have these factors on your side. And you now have BF experience of course, which is helpful for getting the latch right etc.

It may also be worth getting DC2 checked for tongue tie if you find any difficulties - it's a common reason why BF babies don't put on weight and it's possible this was the case with your DC1 even though the drugs/CS etc do seem like the obvious reason. If your DC1 was tongue tied there is a strong chance your DC2 would be, but if so, it's easy to fix.

Perhaps you could do some research in advance into recommended BF counsellors near you, preferably ones who are qualified to check for tongue tie, so you have their number to hand if you encouter problems next time?

I don't think it matters at all that you have to go back to work at 5 months. Personally I don't think you should put yourself under pressure to build up a supply for returning to work - see how it goes, if you have loads of milk and spare time for expressing then think about a freezer supply, but that is a "nice to have". If you can BF until 5 months you will have a strongly established supply and you may be able to switch to mix feeding with BF morning and night and FF in the day. Or if you prefer you could stop BF altogether at that point, 5 months is still great.

Best of luck