It is my first time posting here, but have read and learned from so many posts from others, so thank you.
I was hoping for some opinions about a situation that has occurred regarding my daughter's birth weight.
I am a first time Mum and all of this is very new to me, but I can't help but feel that currently I am being gaslit by professionals at the hospital where she was born. My daughter was born vaginally at 38 weeks after an induction (due to slowed growth rate, she'd dropped from 90th percentile, to 50th to 13th over 4 weeks).
At my daughter's 3 day weigh in with the midwife, the weight was showing that she had lost 20% of her weight. She immediately called the hospital, who told me I would need to come back in immediately and be monitored for 24 hours. The midwife made me feel awful, asking how I had not realised my baby was unwell, blaming it on me being unable to wake her for one feed during the day (she still now at 5 weeks naps for a 5 hour stretch at the same time, so think this is just her own schedule) saying that she may need to go onto a drip when taken into hospital. I was absolutely devastated, as my daughter had been having more than the minimum expected wet and dirty nappies, she was also feeding a lot and I know I was producing colostrum as I had been harvesting it (but unsure how much colostrum she was getting when feeding, because how would you know?) so I thought everything was fine. My daughter was also alert and not yellow and had not had any dehydration spots in nappies or sunken fontanelle.
I started to panic, not knowing what this all meant, only feeling that I'd failed her as a mother. The midwife leaves and I'm distraught - I speak to my husband, who mentions that he thinks that there has been a mistake, as he had noticed when our daughter was being weighed, that she was wearing two towels, a hat and a nappy and that he thought that this was weird. He does have a photo of this, but it is not showing the weight measurement and our daughter in the same photo at the exact same time, maybe a couple of minutes apart. I do believe that he believes this is what happened - I am unsure as I was being stitched at the time.
We take our daughter into the hospital and my husband explains what he thinks has happened and showed them the photo. A doctor comes in, asks me some questions and inspects our daughter and says she seems fine and he thinks that there has been a mistake. They apologise, weigh two towels, a hat and a nappy and deduct this from the original birth weight, giving a new birth weight and send us back home. With this new adjusted weight, our daughter had only lost 4% of her birth weight which seemed much more reasonable.
However, following this, our daughter continued to lose weight at her next two weigh ins, 60 grams 2 days later and then 5 grams 2 days after that. It was at this point that she was also having increasing difficulty with latching. The hospital asked us to come back in to do blood tests when our daughter was 2 weeks old just to confirm that everything was OK (I think to cover their own backs). All her bloods came back normal, no signs of jaundice etc. However, because she was not yet gaining the weight back, they put us on a very intensive feeding plan and then went back on what they had said about the mistake and that they now do think that their original weight recorded was correct and that she was now having difficulty latching because she was so malnourished and had basically given up. We discovered only a few days later, that she did have a tongue tie (which is now resolved) and after I started pumping I did have a relatively low milk supply (unknown if these two things are related or not).
At the time, I didn't care, as long as my daughter was healthy and gaining weight as expected. However, I do feel traumatised by the whole experience and I am now constantly doubting myself about whether my daughter is feeding enough, if she was starving for the first 2 weeks of her life. The more that I think about it, I don't see how it can be possible that she lost over 20% of her birth weight in 3 days when there were no signs that anything was wrong.
Now because we can't agree, we have to have a formal meeting with the hospital. They have started an investigation into what has happened and have taken the specific brand of weighing machine out of circulation at the hospital (although I still maintain it was a human error). I don't feel happy for them to record what I feel is an incorrect birth weight, as it makes me feel like I failed as a mother. It's also a shame that we will never know for sure what our daughter's birth weight actually was. She will likely have failure to thrive recorded on her medical notes which also makes me sad to think about.
I suppose I just wanted to know if it is likely that she lost 20% of her birth weight and I just need to accept that, or whether it seems unlikely. Or what to expect at this formal meeting - any thoughts are greatly appreciated and thank you in advance.