Angry!!! [angry]

[Splizzard]

So today I took my little one who is 6 weeks old to my local baby clinic.

If you want to speak to a health visitor, get your baby weighed and checked you have to go to the baby clinic. My Health visitor will not come out to me.

So anyway, you know the scene....young baby, demand bottle feeding, it takes all day to get out of the house. The "drop in" clinic is for 2 hours.

Finally got baby ready and im out the door, hes due for a feed in the next hour but I have no need to worry do I? Surely a BABY clinic will be an ideal place to feed your baby? Whether its breast OR bottle?

Wrong. I had some made up formula in my bag. Cold formula. The clinic out right REFUSES to give you some way to heat up your bottle due to health and safety. Ok, I understand the need not to have jugs of boiling water lying around when there are a dozen babies and toddlers lieing around.

But this is a BABY clinic! Where they expect you to bring your NEWBORN baby in the tinyest timeslot in the world!

I asked them why and said "so I have to starve my baby at a baby clinic? Is that not mad? Ill have to go to the pub then where they WILL provide me with some hot water"

The answer I got was "its not us. We arent even allowed a cup of tea"

This is INSANE. Surely a baby clinic could have a cheap bottle warmer? Or a seperate room where they can heat the bottle for you? Or even them heat pads that fit around bottles to warm it?

What is the world coming to when I cant even feed my baby at a baby clinic which I am EXPECTED to go to if I want my baby weighed and checked!

INSANE.

Has anyone else had a similar problem? or does anyone know who is behind this stupidness and who I can complain to?

I used the hot water trick for ds. Worked well for us.

Our local clinic has bottle warmers for anyone to use (we can also have hot drinks during postnatal groups there), although I do think it is better and much much easier to "encourage" LO's to take room temp milk. My DD1 took EBM straight from the fridge and still has all her milk cold. DD2 is reluctant to take bottles full stop and I am certainly noticing how much easier life was with DD1 when we could just give her the bottle of EBM wherever we were without having to stop and warm it up or look for a seat to BF etc........

shlushy why are you expecting fire for that?

FWIW my ds was bf until 11 months then started drinking cows milk straight from the fridge! Puzzled me, that one

Ooh so there's hope yet of a simpler life with DD2 ? Don't fancy having to heat everything to boob temp when we stop !

Just wanted to say please check the current guidlines re water temp and making up formula. There has been a change fairly recently after some poor babies were very ill.

"When using powdered infant formula milk, it is very
important to ensure that it is prepared in the safest way
possible. Powdered infant formula milk is not a sterile
product, and even though tins and packets of milk powder
are sealed, they can contain bacteria such as Enterobacter
sakazakii and more rarely Salmonella.
If the feed is not prepared safely, these bacteria can
cause infections ? and even though these are extremely
rare, when they do happen they can be life-threatening.
Therefore, it is important to make up the formula milk
with water at a temperature of around 70ºC, which will kill
these bacteria. In practice this means boiling the kettle and
leaving it to cool for no longer than 30 minutes. Very young
babies are at most risk, and it is better to use commercially
sterile, liquid ready-to-feed products for premature or low
birth weight babies."
I got that from here
As I say this has changed fairly recently and some of the mums on here would not be aware of this.
Hoping to help.

THIS makes me THINK of someone else, a previous POSTER.

what's that supposed to mean skramble ??

To Splizzard-
I cannot believe the way some people have spoken to you on this thread!
People telling you to more or less get over yourself for mentioning no warming facilities at a baby clinic- which by the way, I happen to think is a reasonable expectation.
But what I find the most surprising is that everyone of the posters on here are other mums. Some may have sailed through the first few weeks and months of being a first time mum,some may have just forgotten how it was- but the lack of understanding to how you felt was astonishing!!
It doesnt really matter what the issue was you originally complained of, it was very clear that you posted here becuase you needed to vent and that there were other issues surrounding it. I would have thought more people would have been more understanding.
As far as you defending yourself and also the way you handled the not so nice posts, I think you did very well!! I would have crawled under a stone thinking I was an idiot and it would have put me off looking for help elsewhere. Some people need to think about that before they respond.
So well done for sticking up for yourself, and good luck for the future with your wee one

they won't heat it because enterobacter sazakaii is found in many many tins of formula. It is the a killer of newborn babies.

heating up already made up formula is the main way promote its growth.

here is a very recent case that hasn't made much news.

"YOU have decided to have a baby and your posts very much read like you want someone to hold your hand and show you how to do anything without any effort on your part. As another poster said, google is your friend."

I'm sorry, but I think comments such as the above are extremely harsh. Not commenting on the bottle warmer situation as I have no idea whether or not this is a reasonable expectation, but honestly..
The first few weeks with a new baby are hard and no amount of reading can prepare you for the practical things. Google to show you how to bath a baby and change its nappy? I don't think it's that easy. I needed to be shown how to do it and the midwives in our hospital did this as a matter of course. If you have no experience of handling a baby, coupled with possible mobility/physical problems from a difficult birth, feeding issues, "baby blues" or pnd, and severe sleep deprivation, I don't think it's just a case of reading how to do it and it will all fall into place.

It does get you down all those little frustrating things. They do feel like the end of the world.
I remember having a double buggy (with two babies in it)that wouldn't QUITE go through passage of Dr's surgery to get to the consulting rooms, (although it did get into main reception) and spitting with rage about it, you think they would have designed the place better.
6 weeks is so little, it's such a big deal getting out the house and you obviously had planned everything beautifully, were being very careful not have a germy bottle etc. I don't think health visitors understand just how protective we feel about our tiny babies because they have seen it all, and know a bit of a wait won't matter, but for us, a hungry baby crying is a devasting sound.
So sympathy for how you are feeling in general.
I think when I did just get my babies used to bottles at room temperature in the end, when I used them. If I had wanted it warm I suppose I might have carried a thermos of hot water.

oh dear splizzard, looks like you've caught quite a few people on bad morning here, never mind.

Your op was pretty aggressive which would have got people's backs up to be sure.

I know when it is your first you are both precious and clueless, not a good combination but it is true for all of us, we have all been there.

it is a sad fact that health and saftey is spoiling a good many things on today's society and over stretched HV's cannot offer much of a service at all.

In the 10 year since I've had my first I've seen a shocking deterioration in the service, really it's got very bad in the last three years and i feel very for first time mothers now, what with lack of maternity care and lack of post natal care. I can only hope when my daughters have kids that it will be better for them than it was for us.

Anyway, go buy some things and just have the mentality that nothing is available to help that way you'll never be caught unawaress!

excuse typos etc, jelly for brains today

2 words...

Room temperature

splizzard - don't go to the bnaby clinic. Not necessary if you're happy with your baby. if the HV has to see you, she can call at your house.

I went to a baby clinic once. Never again.

Actually, bottle warmers are not that great, imo.

When we first used ours with dd1 (5 odd yrs ago) we did it on the setting stated, for the suggested time.

It was SCALDING. We had a newborn, screaming for food in the middle of the night. (OK, not best time to use such an appliance first time, but being new parents, we believed the instructions when it said it would be the perfect temp after x seconds) we also didn't know that we could cool it down using cool water. For some reason it took a good few minutes for logic to kick in & tell us to start again, leaving out the whole bottle warmer sequence.

No less than 20 minutes later we had a contented baby feeding!

We tried it again the next day & again, the feed was scalding so we reduced the time, still too hot...in the end we stopped using it...

So I can see why a baby clinic would be reluctant to have bottle warmers on hand, as there is, IMO still the potential for overheating. Not to mention that you need to fill them with water so that would need maintaining & many baby clinics won't have the resources to be constantly refilling.