What is the etiquette regarding alarm clocks in postnatal wards?

[Cattleprod]

I had an incredibly long, tiring labour with DS, who was then born late morning so it was a few more hours before we got the opportunity for a good sleep. The first night we both slept continuously for 14 hours. Nobody woke us up.

I'm sure that this ridiculously long sleep led to a chain of events (jaundice, treatment in incubator, falling asleep as soon as feeding commenced, almost 2lb weight loss, nursing strike) which meant that despite an enormous amount of support, breastfeeding didn't really work for us and supply ran out at 4 months.

I'm now pregnant with DC2, and I don't really want to repeat last times events. I'm not sure what would be the best thing to do - ask a midwife to wake me up (if they aren't too busy), although I'm unsure if it's even possible to feed a fast asleep newborn? Or take along a foghorn style alarm clock and probably piss off all the other new mums on the ward?

Did anybody else sleep for far too long on their first night post-birth? Did it cause problems for you too or were mine just coincidence?

I think I'd better forget the alarm clock idea and hope the midwives will wake me up instead!!

cat64 - the long sleep was just the first step on a long chain of events. I've heard that jaundice can be worse with insufficient feeding in the first couple of days, then DS was put in an incubator for treatment and I was told to leave him in there for as much time as possible. This combined with the fact that he would fall asleep after a couple of sucks when feeding meant that he lost almost 2lb in the first 10 days. I was then advised to supplement with FF after each BF (only 1oz) or he would have to be re-admitted to hospital. As much as I tried to increase my supply (and I had a lot of support from BF counsellors), it never happened, and at 9 weeks DS would go from completely calm to howling and screaming every time I tried to BF him, absolutely refused to latch on. After another 8 weeks of expressing several times a day, getting a maximum of 2oz, and the occasional dream feed if I could catch him before he woke up and realised what he was doing, I was getting barely half an ounce from one side, nothing from the other, so I had no choice but to give up.

I just want to nip it in the bud next time so there's no way things can follow the same path. The first step is to avoid jaundice severe enough to need treatment, and as I understand it BF can help with this.

' I slept through a very windy night's camping when the tent fell down on top of us.'

Cattleprod, do I know you? (memories of mad German camping trip when pretty much everything fell down...)

the 2 nights i've spent on a postnatal ward i got no more than about 10 minutes sleep at any one time - with dd last year i was awoken at 8am by some sort of evangelical baptism thing going on opposite me... i'm seriously impressed that anyone could sleep for 14 hours!

Lance we weren't in Germany sadly. We were on top of Beachy Head near Eastbourne. Had to spend the rest of the night with 6 of us crammed inside a Metro car. Guess who had to sleep on the gearstick?

Maybe stick a big A4 sheet of paper to the curtains with "Wake me at 4am" (or something) on it - that way when they do their drug/BP etc rounds, somebody might see it if they have forgotten, and will wake you then! If nothing else it'll remind them that you need waking..

If your baby was awake and wanting feeding and you were asleep I would gently wake you. If you were both asleep I would not. New babies that have feed well following delivery will often go for a long period without a feed. They are built to do this.

Ward rounds started at 6am, followed by cups of tea at 7am, followed by breakfast at 8am, followed by BP checks, followed by more ward rounds, followed by woman doing hearing tests, followed by woman selling photos, followed by woman with Bounty bags, followed by DH visiting.

I think someone's alarm clock would have been the final straw for me.