What could I/others have done better? V.V.LONG. SORRY

[herethereandeverywhere]

I'm bf my 13 wo dd. Exclusively now but she had formula earlier in life, as I'll explain.

Basically I had a dreadful start to bf despite me reading everything I could before hand, taking all advice as best i could and being hugely keen to bf and make it work. I've now got enough space between me the problems in the beginning and want to understand why it all went wrong and what could/should have been done differently.

The facts are as follows:

Traumatic forceps delivery after 18 hr induced labour - dd had extensive bruising and cut to her face
Had epidural and some other drug to "dope" me (as I was literally going mental with the pain) it began with "v", would love to know what it was called
Discharged 24 hours after birth. I wanted to go home, hated the lack of privacy on the ward
DD very sleepy for first few weeks, esp. so in first few days would suckle for literally a minute then fall alseep
Latched and fed well (compliments from midwife) immediately after birth
Too sleepy to feed much the day after birth was told it was because of her traumatic birth and to keep trying
1st day at home (Sat) baby jaundiced and still v.sleepy so v. short feeds. One wet nappy today. Midwife said to keep an eye on it, keep bf
2nd day at home (Sun)jaundice much worse, still so sleepy she's barely feeding, no wet nappy. Also projectile vomiting gunge. Hospital and midwife said vomiting was just clearing herself out after the birth.
V. concerned by Sun pm, ring hospital who tell us to bring her in. She's readmitted and is forcefed formula through a tube down her nose.
I see the breastfeeding co-ordinator who halps with latch etc. Milk still hasn't come in.
DD is discharged on proviso I see midwife the following day. But no midwives were available.
Its now Wed Milk still hasn't come in. See midwife, dd has now lost over 10%, told not to introduce formuls not to use nipple shies to relive my bleeding nipples and to keep exclusively bf. DD still to sleepy to feed for more than a minute.
Milk comes in eve of day six, see a bf counsellor day seven who recommends formula top ups until my supply is established, we'd already started to do that out of concern for the weight loss. It was then we turned the corner, jaundice diminished, dd syarted to gain weight, I built my supply and started to de-stress and begin to look after my recovery. DD had regained all of her birrh weight bar 100g and continued to gain normally. Was exclusively bf by 4 weeks.

What I'd like to know is:
how could I have prevented the hospital readmission?
Should I have introduced formula earlier despite all advice to contrary?
What should I have done differently?

I really want to learn from this and hope experienced mumsnetters can help.

Thanks.

Whoops sorry about typos.

Should have said "dd regained all of her birth weight bar 100g 14 days after birth"

Oh sweetheart you were constantly asking for advice and calling and checking. MV not turning up as well truly doesn't help and was out of your control, short of chasing by phone constantly and you had a newborn baby to deal with! You did everything right. You followed their advice as well in the early days. If you had a sleepy baby as well whose tricky to feed you cannot blame yourself or think you could have done better in my opinion as you DID ask their advice the whole way along.

I suppose if you'd stayed in hospital longer it may have been picked up sooner - but sweetheart no one sleeps well in hospital, everyone wants to get home where they're comfortable and it's quiet and you have privacy etc.

I think you were doing the right thing by only BF and no formula at home, that is the advice in all books on feeding on demand, not replacing feeds etc. As you are meant to feed from you often in the early days to build up supply. The only stumbling block was your baby being sleepy and then unwell.

I think you are amazing for having persevered through it all and BF your baby. I only have 2 kids so not an expert expert but seriously lady you have done so so well!

Well done for getting through all that!

The only bit I have experience of really is the jaundice - DS1 was quite jaundiced and before we were allowed home I got a bit of a lecture (in a good way ) about the sleepiness etc. and was told to wake him for feeds every 2-3 hours in the day and if there weren't wet nappies to call the ward as he might have needed phototherapy to clear the jaundice.

It might not have prevented you having to go bsck into hospital but you sound to me like you could just have done with some more information in advance.

Should also have said that waking for feeds is only going to be successful if they stay awake - but that was another thing we were told to look out for.

i don't know any answers but i think you need to change your first question - instead of asking "how could I have prevented the hospital readmission?" you need to ask "COULD i have prevented it?" because it may very well be that you couldn't have prevented the nasal tube feeding being necessary.

i had friends with a baby with similar problems and he was tube fed for a couple of days about two days after the birth. the only difference is that they were still in hospital and hadn't left. again, they're now ebf and happy and healthy.

Thanks for all your kind words and comments. It actually made me cry which came out of nowhere! So I think I must have been bottling up my feelings, this has really helped.

I had no real advice re: feeding before I left hospital. There was a bf class each morning but I missed it because despite my requests no-one had come to help me out of bed so I was still sitting in a pool of my own blood at that point!

Any other thoughts gratefully received

Seems to me that you did all you could and that there was nothing you could have done, but a WHOLE lot more the HCP dealing with you could have done.

I had a traumatic forceps delivery with DS who had his jaw pushed out of alignment by the forceps as he was back to back and the forceps went over his face. No one picked this up. Jaundice, losing over 10% of body weight and nightmare bleeding nipples (and pain worse than labour)led me to the bottle after 10 days. It wasn't until I saw a cranial ostepath at day 14 who worked out why he wasn't latching and 'popped' his jaw back in. By then I was so traumatised by the whole thing I couldn't face trying to breast feed again. I don't really regret my decisions as FF saved him really and he thrived. I still had my horrendous feelings of guilt though (stupid, I know). I was so upset and hurt by the sheer lack of support from everyone that I was dreading trying to BF DD....

However, it could not have been a more different experience and we're still going strong BF at 7 and a half months!

No advice to give other than I've been there and didn't even persevere as long as you. Well done to you and don't beat yourself up about any of it. You have done marvellously well xx

With my first child I had a forcep delivery, she wouldn't stop crying that night in hospital (I think because she had a storming headache quite frankly, as the bruising on her head was awful). Anyway the MW came over to my bed after a few hours of me desperately trying to nurse her to sleep and offered to take her off my hands and give her some formula to quiet her. I was exhausted after a non progressive labour and a 3 day nightmare and just said "yes". Also the MW was scary and I didn't want to say no by that stage. Scared that I was disturbing the whole ward who were trying to sleep and all had babies who were quiet.

I felt guilty for weeks and weeks about my little girl having formula at only hours old due to being bullied into it by MW.

I honestly think in the face of all the trouble you had, you are one amazing lady - don't feel guilty for a moment about it just to reiterate my earlier post, there's no need to at all x

You've had terrible bad luck. That's all. Don't beat yourself up.