Hello
My first post on here.. Having seen the recent very sad article about the baby who suffered brain damage due to not feeding after birth, it got me concerned about my own baby.
When he was born I was keen to leave the hospital, and we left after about 8 hours, arriving home in the afternoon. Before we left he hadn't fed as he wasn't latching. The midwife who went through how to breastfeed asked me if I was confident getting breastfeeding going at home, to which I replied well I can only continue doing what you've showed me. She said 'don't worry if he doesn't feed very much, newborns are usually really sleepy'.
I knew nothing about how much babies would feed, so wasn't worried when he didn't feed that afternoon. He didn't feed all night, so at 8am when the community midwives opened we called for advice, and was told it was perfectly normal for them to not feed for that long.
When my community midwife came to visit later that morning she was totally panicked that he hadn't fed, showed me how to express colostrum (only managed a drop or two), and gave him some formula (having apparently never given a baby formula before in her career!). We ended up back in the hospital where we saw an amazing breastfeeding specialist who diagnosed a tongue tie and got me expressing/giving formula, and eventually we got him to latch using a nipple shield.
It was probably 36 hours from him being born to actually feeding. His blood sugars were low and he started getting jittery. Does anyone know whether this could have caused brain damage and how we could tell? He is 17 months now and is healthy and happy so there is obviously nothing major. However he has been fairly slow to reach the developmental milestones and reading the article got me wondering.
Many thanks.