The night she was induced was incredible. I had a 2hr labour and the waters broke, she was born and the placenta were all delivered with 15 mins start to finish.

On her birth she had snapped her cord so had blood loss and was double clamped as the tissue was torn and not a good hold. She was blue from the start and needed oxygen.

On day 1 she was diagnosed as having a murmur but on day 4 it was declared as Tetralogy of Fallot.

My world crashed in on me that day.

Here I was a divorced single mum with three older children and a child with severe medical condition.

Luckily she was also born with an in bred ability to find and attach to the breast. She has fed well from the very beginning and I had no problems with mastitis as I did with my other children.

At 13 weeks old she had minor surgery involving a 2 week stay with me by her side the whole time expressing away until she could take 5ml an hour, 4 days post op.

When we got home she was having trouble gaining weight and was diagnosed failure to thrive. On no less than 5 occasions I was told to wean her “for hr own sake” but I was determined that she needed my milk more than anything else.

She has sensory issues with spoons etc from being forced medications orally and intubations. The only thing she would allow near her mouth was a breast. She is behind developmentally by around 4mths physically and in speech.

She has extremely low iron which is borderline anemic even whilst she is taking supplements.

By 6 mths she weighed just 5kg, at 12mths 7kg and now at 16mths she still weighs only 7.6kg.

She had more minor surgery in Oct 2010 aged 10mths and I was there expressing away again.

And now we are preparing for major Open Heart Surgery this time which keeps getting put off because of the cell counts in her blood.. But I will be there again, sleeping over and expressing away so as I can continue our journey.. And I’m so passionate about breasfeeding that I’m training to be a part of the Australian Breastfeeding Association Community Education Team..

‘Im so glad I have never listened to health professionals who have been telling me to wean so they can see how much she is drinking. I know how much she is drinking… enough to keep her safe, secure and nourished.. Roxie knew exactly what she was doing when she picked me to be her mum and to advocaate for her right to breastfeed through her surgical journey.

I then allowed my milk to dry up as I focused on getting better mentally. After finding out that I had lost my first pregnancy early in the second trimester, I understandably was anxious during my second pregnancy and beyond. As a result, I had postnatal depression & anxiety all surrounding the fear of losing my son and not being a ‘good enough’ Mumma to him.

I so desperately missed breastfeeding – not only for all of the health benefits to him and myself but because I loved it.

I started being very conscious of eating well, drinking loads of fluids, resting, and nursing him as often as possible. He would latch on but got increasingly frustrated because I was producing next-to-no milk. I was taking several galactologues and started pumping regularly. I stayed in contact with a lactation consultant and ordered a Supplementary Nursing System. A generous Mum donated expressed breastmilk to us as well.

To say I was determined is an understatement.

I was so blessed to have a cooperative baby and an extremely supportive husband. I went from expressing literally a couple of mLs from both breasts at a time to producing more than enough breastmilk (750 mL in a 24 hour period) in just seventeen days!

Getting my supply back was only half the battle. It was then a matter of getting him back to the breast. 11 days later, after much frustration and a few meltdowns (from both him and I) my baby boy had his first of many feeds from the breast… and we haven’t looked back…

That was almost 10 months ago (my bub is almost one!) and my ‘boobah’ loving baby boy is healthy, happy and thriving!

It was trying, don’t get me wrong. I had to hand express at first and expressing so regularly and constantly was draining both physically and emotionally. I had all the normal duties of a first time Mum to contend with alongside postnatal anxiety, an exhaustive pumping schedule, painful nipples (hello nipple thrush, meet hospital grade double breast pump), the financial cost and it was so time consuming. But it was beyond worth it.

I spent time researching relactation on the internet. I searched for success stories, blogs, articles, anything that would tell me that it was not only possible but that it was worth it (you can find my relactation blog at http://relactater.blogspot.com and my motherhood blog at http://racheous.wordpress.com).

At one point I remember saying I just want someone to come to me from the future and tell me that this will all be worth it. Well, it is. It really really is.

I didn’t just want to breast-feed. I wanted to breast-nurture. I am a relactation success story. I just want to be a voice for relactation to say that it is achievable and gaining back our breastfeeding relationship has been so very rewarding.

In the very early hours of the 8th December 2008, my health took a turn and my son was born by emergency instead of elective C/S at 37 weeks. I knew this was how my baby was to be born though and still had dreamy visions of laying him on my chest and breastfeeding him seconds after birth. After what seemed a life time though, the doctors ran with him out the door and down the hall while a nurse was left behind to explain to my husband and I that he wasn’t coping very well with life. A few hours later, before I was in a position to even lay eyes on him, I was told that the Royal Flying Doctor Service were sending up a retrieval from the Mater Childrens Hospital who would be escorting him back to Brisbane soon after they arrived. My legs were still numb from the spinal but I knew if I didn’t get out of my hospital bed and into a wheelchair, I wouldn’t get to see him before he left…. or maybe even alive. At around 8am and 6 hours after his delivery, I pushed through the intense pain and got out of bed and into a wheelchair. I made it to the SCN in time where I was able to see my boy strapped up inside the transport cot before they wheeled him out.

For the next 3 days, I remained in my local hospital while my son was 700km’s away and very very sick. I spend this time expressing while looking at a single photograph of my son that a nurse took for me before he left. The photo though was of a baby that I had never touched, who was fully ventilated and covered in wires. Combined with an early and sudden delivery, it was not enough to produce even a drop of colostrum. Well meaning friends told me to give up on the idea of breastfeeding. It’s too hard, it’s too stressful they would say. At this point though, sitting in hospital alone trying to get that one drop of anything for my newborn son was the only thing keeping me focused and preventing me from crumbling.

While in hospital in Brisbane, my son was fed nutrients from a drip in preparation for my arrival. I asked my husband if they were giving him any formula at all.

He said no, a nurse told him that the drip was a far better option, especially for a child so sick. On the afternoon of the 3rd full day of mother/baby seperation, I was transferred to Brisbane with the RFDS as an inpatient. I was myself still very unwell with pre-eclampsia and was admitted into the Mater Mothers Hospital where I remained for a further 8 nights before moving into Ronald McDonald with my husband. On arrival I was so excited to be so close to be near my baby though who was only 3 levels down in the NICU!! I soon as I lay eyes on him, I felt the milk flow in and within seconds they were full and hard and leaking!!

Before I arrived my son had already been through 1 minor surgery to keep him alive in preparation for his major operation on his heart. A nasal gastric tube was inserted for feeding now that I had arrived and I got straight onto expressing. I was still not able to hold him as he was in a sterile environment but just looking at him was enough to keep some milk up and I expressed about 25ml’s every 4 hours… sufficient when he was only on about 2ml an hour!! Because of his limited intake, over the next few days I managed to collect a fairly impressive frozen stockpile!! (For some reason I never did produce any colostrum.)

On day 7 after his marathon 9 hour open heart surgery (and now in PICU at the Childrens Hospital accross the road) he was nil by mouth for around 7 days.

I was still expressing around the clock to keep up supply and was pleased that beside his bed in the PICU was a breast pump that I could use whilst being right next to my baby. I was frustrated by my pesky 20-25ml efforts, but the nurses were exceptionally encouraging and put on a fanfare every time I added another (albeit small) container to the freezer!!

After his week of nil by mouth, they began weaning him onto 1ml an hour then 3ml an hour etc of EBM through the NG tube. We were able to cuddle him at this point but I still couldn’t put him to the breast as he was too heavily dosed on drugs. I was determined to not let the stress of open heart surgery combined with not putting bub to the breast affect our breastfeeding relationship outside hospital life.

25ml’s was not a not ideal in normal circumstances but I had to remind myself not to stress and remain practical. The pump of course was not withdrawing what my baby would.

At just over 2 weeks old I put him to the breast for the first time. To my astonishment, he latched on beautifully and drank an entire feed. You wouldn’t believe how pleased I was!! :D Here was my frail, scrawny little baby, having lost 900g and now just under 2kg looking up at me as if to say “mamma, where have you been my whole life!!” Up until this point.. friends and family would still persist by putting their hands on my shoulder and say things like “let it go, give him a bottle, people will understand, it’s too much pressure on you.” The thing is though that for me, the thought of NOT being able to BF was far more stressful then the round the clock expressing!!

I went home from hospital with LOADS of EBM but I made a decision to throw it away. At that point, successful BFíng was still too good to be true and I did not want to compromise that by giving him a bottle. I should also mention that they did offer to feed DS2 the EBM though a bottle rather then the NG tube once he was improving from surgery… but before I could hold him at the breast. I declined this and preferred that he be fed through the NG tube. They didn’t care either way, but I really didn’t want to have attachment issues and I believe this was the absolute best decision and reason why we got such a good attachment first go.

My son is now 22 months old and still enjoying mothers milk. I have now successfully breastfed though a 3 day 700km separation from my son at birth.

We have breastfed though 2 minor surgeries -

the first at one day old and the second at 5 months old. We have also successfully breastfed though 2 major open heart surgeries, the first at 7 days and his second on the 23rd of September 2010 at 21 months old. Together my son and I got through it all without a drop of formula and I can proudly say that he has been the healthiest ‘sick’ kid I know. Actually he has the best general health of any kid I have come across and has experienced only 1 mild cold, has never had gastro, vomiting or so much as an ear infection either despite me being told over and over how much more susceptible he is to these things. I am exceptionally proud of our breastfeeding relationship and can advocate first hand how possible it is to BF even in the most extreme and extenuating circumstances. A little determination goes a long way!!!

Circumstances led me ‘not having enough milk’ myself. My daughter was three weeks old, losing weight, and only getting 200ml of breast milk each day. I ended up feeding her until she weaned just before my second daughter was born at around 15 months of age. Here is my story:

DD fed for 2hrs after being born. I now know that she was not really ‘feeding’, just sucking, bonding and having cuddles, which was lovely. The various midwives in the hospital popped in to see ‘that baby that’s still sucking’ and laughed at her appetite. We thought it was funny too. Unfortunately she was not properly attached and grazed both nipples. I felt I was not ‘getting her on’ properly, but every midwife who checked in the next few days said she was fine, that I was doing well and that was correct. By this stage each nipple had a scab covering the entire top of the nipple, which would come off each time I fed and bleed. My daughter would vomit bits of blood and scab after feeds, but the midwives weren’t concerned, so I persevered, and was sent home. Needless to say, feeding was very painful and not that enjoyable though of course I enjoyed the cuddles and the wonderful feeling that comes with being able to feed your baby and help her grow.

When DD was born, she was wide eyed and placid. Within 24 hrs she was screaming her lungs out and this continued for 3 weeks. She rarely slept; about 3-8hrs in 24, the rest of the time screaming. I now feel she was hungry but I was so reluctant to feed her because of the pain. I tried to keep her to 3 hourly feeds recommended by the Child Health Nurse and the hospital midwives. We actually took her to hospital at about 10 days old because she was ‘too placid’ – we thought there was something drastically wrong with her!

Our GP sent us to a paediatrician and she was diagnosed with lactose intolerance, colic and reflux. She was prescribed medicine for the reflux and he suggested feeding her a combination of lactose free formula and breastmilk to see if that would calm her and help her sleep/relax. Neither of us were really happy with this diagnosis and treatment, but we were exasperated and didn’t know what else to do.

I was not overly pleased with the course the Paed. had set for us. I knew this path would lead to DD being fully weaned and formula fed in a very short space of time. I was determined not to give in, and to breastfeed my daughter. The medication and formula didn’t help not matter how much we wanted it to, so after about a week, we stopped the medication and took her to the Breast Feeding Centre at a nearby hospital. The lactation consultants there were amazing. I had laser treatment on my poor nipples, which helped them heal and they were able to see that yes, she wasn’t attaching properly and helped me sort it out. DD refused to attach in a manner that was totally comfortable, it was much better and obviously my nipples hardened up and got used to ‘her way of doing things’. In fact, as soon as I relaxed about trying to get her to attach properly and just let her do her own thing, it hurt a lot less. I stopped the lactose free formula and started exclusively breastfeeding again. This was against the Paediatricians wishes, but with the support of the lactation consultants at the BFC. She was still screaming a lot and not sleeping and by this stage, about 3 weeks old, she had started losing weight.

The penny finally dropped that she wasn’t getting enough milk, so I convinced the BFC to lend me their scales so I could weight her before and after feeds to work out how much milk she was getting each feed and in a 24 hr period. This confirmed my suspicions – she was getting 20-50mls per feed and under 200mls in 24 hrs. Failing to demand feed from the beginning and switching to formula had severely depleted my supply.

When I was at the BFC I met a woman who had 5 children. She had come back to catch up with the midwives with her bubba. After feeding her first 4 kids, the 5th simply refused to take her breast. So she expressed for 6 months and kept trying until finally her baby agreed it was better from a boob than a bottle. At the time I was pretty ‘woe is me’ about my situation, so it was great to have a reality check in the form of this amazing mum, who committed to express every day, in between getting 4 kids fed, dressed, to school and everything else, so that she could breastfeed. If she could do it, so could I.

With the fantastic help of the BFC, I started using a ‘supply line’ to increase my supply. It is a tiny tube that you put into a bottle of expressed (I had to start with formula) milk and stick the other end to your nipple, so that when the baby sucks your nipple they get milk even though your boobs are empty. The extra sucking stimulates extra supply and the theory is that it slowly increases your supply. On the paperwork that came with it were details of how to use if for mothers who are breastfeeding adopted babies, which I found so interesting.

I spent the next two weeks in the following routine, 24hrs a day:
-Feed DD from my boobs
-Place supply line with expressed milk (formula for the first day or so) on nipple and let DD have that as well
-Settle DD to sleep
-1 hr after end of feed, express (luckily we hired an electric pump!) milk for next feed
-crawl into bed for 45 min sleep at night or do a chore/sit down with a cuppa in day
-start again!

At night I would normally set my alarm for 1 hr so that I could sleep in between feeding and needing to express, then express, then crawl back to bed

My partner was amazingly supportive, cheering me on from the sidelines. I must admit though, that he just didn’t understand my determination to breastfeed and would regularly reassure me that it would be OK to ‘give up’. In fact, everyone around me seemed to be trying to convince me that it was OK to stop breastfeeding. The only people who seemed adamant that I could do it were the midwives at the BFC. They were supportive, but at no stage did they suggest formula, and I really looked to them for support as a result.

I felt every emotion under the sun: Desperately tired, extremely proud of myself, completely overwhelmed, angry about the events that lead to the situation to name a few. Every night I would cry saying ‘I just can’t do it anymore, I’m going to give her formula’ and every morning I would wake up saying ‘I’ll just do it for 1 more day’. I lasted 14 days, by which time I had increased the feeds to 60-90ml on average, but at times 120ml. This was pretty exciting as you can imagine.

I had done it. And it was so very worth it.

DD will be 7 this month. She grew out of the lactose intolerance at around age 5, although she is still reactive to cow’s milk protein. I had no difficulties feeding my second daughter and she has no allergies or intolerances.

If you’re reading this feeling it’s all too hard and that there is nothing you can do about your low supply, I am living proof it can be done. I’m not superwoman or super anything, just a normal person.

xx Louise

I had been sick for months and putting on weight. I had a thyroid problem, but it was getting worse and I had started to suspect that I had some kind of gut problem, so I went for an ultrasound.

“Oh, you’re pregnant,” said the technician.

“What?” I asked, leaning over to see the monitor, shocked and somehow expecting to see a jelly bean foetus in a blur of undefined body tissue.

“Here,” she said, turning the monitor towards me, “here’s your baby. Did you really not know you were pregnant?”

I couldn’t answer because there was a ribcage on the screen, and it wasn’t mine. I didn’t really have a giant stomach tumour or an immune system disease. I was 28 weeks pregnant. There was a whole baby inside me, well developed enough to survive if it was born that very day.

I don’t need to tell you that I was in a lot of shock for the next few months. I hadn’t planned or intended to have a baby. On the one hand, my fiance and I were planning our wedding, paying our mortgage and in good jobs, so we were in just the right circumstances to have a baby. But on the other hand, I was studying, had travel plans and was on medication for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

As soon as I knew I was pregnant, I stopped taking the Pill (yep, still on it and everything happening as usual) and my antidepressants. By the time I went in to labour, I had all the usual worries and fears of a very pregnant woman as well as increasing anxiety due to the OCD.

At that stage I still hadn’t decided whether I would breastfeed or not. I hadn’t decided anything much! Apart from repainting the spare room (my fiance insisted that if the walls were still magenta, he wasn’t doing any night time nappy changes in there!) and reading as much as I could about childbirth, I hadn’t been able to really face the reality of a baby. I hadn’t even turned up to the breastfeeding antenatal class.

On top of that, I really don’t like my breasts being touched, never mind sucked on and chomped on! But I hadn’t decided to go for bottlefeeding either, because it seemed selfish to me to not even give it a try. I had had 12 weeks of feeling guilty over all the things I had done to my baby already – drank at parties, flown to Seoul to eat street food and hike around the city at -12C, taken my Pill and my antidepressants and stayed out dancing all night. Not to mention not loving my baby or talking to it at all! I felt that I owed it to this baby to make up for six months of unintentional neglect.

I was so proud of myself that I lasted 18 hours into a 24 hour labour before having an epidural, and my little boy was born in the early hours of the 3rd of June. Just like every mother, I promptly went into shock, adrenalin taking the place of exhaustion and I happily let the midwife help my baby attach for the first time. It wasn’t too bad, certainly not yukky like I expected, and I decided that for now, I would try breastfeeding.

Four days later when I left the hospital, Dominic had a name but he still hadn’t had a proper feed. We had tried with every different midwife giving us different advice. I had refused to let him be bottlefed, but had learnt the uncomfortable art of hand expressing so he could be syringe fed some colostrum. I had a little bit of success using a nipple shield, and of course when my Mum came to see us Dominic would attach and drink like a little angel, meaning Mum was reassuring me that he was just fine. The midwives were getting worried because Dominic was sleeping for 7 or 8 hours overnight and not waking up for a feed because he wasn’t getting enough milk to get any energy. So I was pretty stressed by the time I took him home.

Over the next few weeks, my nipples cracked and bled, becoming more and more painful. I was starting to dread every feed, and Dominic still wasn’t getting much milk. We hired an electric pump from the chemist, and it was pretty clear that I was producing hardly any milk. In an hour I could manage perhaps 10mL or 20mL and it was scarcely less painful than feeding him myself.

We had many visits to the local clinic, where the nurses ranged from kind to brilliant, and they were all encouraging, but nobody had the magic solution I was looking for.

Some time in the third week, as I sat on the sofa, both of us crying our eyes out, my wonderful fiance went to the kitchen and made a bottle of formula. Dominic had his first bottle feed with Daddy. I felt a huge pressure had lifted and I realised that if Dominic and I were crying and dreading our feeds, we couldn’t possibly have a good relationship.

So for the next few weeks, I would feed Dominic a bottle whenever my nipples felt too sore to feed comfortably. And a couple of times a week, Daddy would do bottle feeds overnight and give Mummy a rest. My fiance really treasured those times with his little boy, and he delighted in sending me out to do the shopping or visit a friend while ‘the boys’ had ‘boy time’ together.

I was really lucky at this time because my Mum, my sisters-in-law and some of my aunts are very very pro-breastfeeding. They were encouraging me to keep on giving it a go, when I felt I could. My sister-in-law in particular said to me that I should stick to it for six weeks, using formula and expressing to help, but that if I managed six weeks, I could be satisfied that I’d done my best. So I persevered with nipple shields and Lansinoh, and fed Dominic at least a few times every day. During this time I also had Maxolon prescribed by my GP to try and increase my milk supply, which was still very poor.

At the same time, Granny and some other aunts had bottle fed, either from the start or from a few weeks in, and they were quick to point out that there was no shame in deciding not to breastfeed.

I had encouragement from both sides of the bottle/breast divide. And I had it fixed in my mind that if I persisted, even just once a day, until the six week mark, I could then hang up my maternity bras and pat myself on the back.

One evening when Dominic was about four weeks old, I was giving him a pre-bed cuddle when he threw up all over me. Not unusual for Dominic, he was the spewiest baby I’d ever met, but this time it had blood in it. It seemed far too much to be from a cracked nipple, so I shouted for my fiance. We bundled Dominic into the car and rushed off to casualty. Being such a tiny baby, he was attended to instantly, with specialists being hurried out of bed and all the nursing staff fussing over him. It seemed that he had reflux, and that he had thrown up so much that he’d irritated his throat to the point where it was bleeding.

After this drama, as well as combining bottle and breastfeeding, we were now adding reflux medication and formula thickener to our repertoire. That worked straight away, and Dominic’s paediatrician even gave me permission to take my OCD medication while breastfeeding, so ‘anxious cranky Mummy’ and ‘crying spewy baby’ almost overnight became ‘happy Mummy’ and ‘contented baby’.

Suddenly making it to six weeks didn’t seem like such a big trial: I would just keep on rubbing Lansinoh on my nipples, using the nipple shields and topping up with a bottle of thickened formula. I could do this!

Then one day, when he was about six weeks old, Dominic just… latched on! All by himself! No nipple shield, no careful inserting of nipples, no aiming. Within a day I was breastfeeding at every feed, and topping him up with a bit of formula a couple of times a day. Within a week, my nipples were completely recovered and I hardly ever needed any Lansinoh. ‘They’ were right, once breastfeeding worked properly it didn’t hurt at all.

We continued with mainly breastfeeding and a little bit of bottlefeeding until Dominic was six months old. Doing both meant that I could go out to a party and leave Dominic with his Daddy or his grandparents for a few hours. I would still be home within a few hours because my breasts would be huge and leaking everywhere, but at least I knew that if he was hungry, Dominic could have a bottle. On the other hand, breastfeeding is so much more convenient out and about. I could just find a comfy spot and breastfeed any time Dominic was hungry or stressed, and stay out as long as I wanted without worrying about running out of bottles.

I was due to go back to work at the start of January so I started to offer him a bottle for his feeds during work hours, followed by a breastfeed top up, so that hopefully when I was due to go to work I could send him to daycare with bottles of formula. My Mum was very positive about managing part-time breastfeeding as she continued with morning and night feeds for some months when weaning my sister and I. But Dominic had other ideas. Over the course of a week he completely dropped the breastfeeds and had his last breastfeed on Christmas Day. It wasn’t our best feed. I was engorged and a bit sore, and spent ten minutes persuading him to suck just a little bit so I could relax and enjoy Christmas lunch!

At first, we continued to cuddle Dominic during his bottle feeds so that he did not miss out on the closeness he had experienced with breastfeeding. But he decided very quickly that he prefered to lie on his wedge pillow and hold his own bottle, in fact he insisted on it! So these days we sit with him and read a story instead. At ten months, he is a happy, healthy, well-adjusted baby. And as they say, you can’t tell whether he was breast or bottlefed – just that he is well-loved!

I’m really proud of myself for sticking with the breastfeeding for six months. I feel like I gave Dominic the best possible start in life. I managed to balance the nutritional benefits of breastmilk with the benefits of having a calm, relaxed Mum at mealtimes. When Dominic was born, I felt I’d had very little choice, and therefore very little control, about having a baby. With the support and encouragement of my friends, family and clinic nurses, I felt in control of my body and chose to stop breastfeeding when it hurt too much, and persist again when I felt ready to, while still giving my baby the best care possible.

The biggest barrier I faced was the idea that breastfeeding is ‘all or nothing’. That might be true for some, but it doesn’t have to be. If you are finding breastfeeding a struggle you often receive advice that points you to either breastfeed in agony or bottle feed exclusively. You don’t have to do that. You can mix and match, try different things, and work out your own perfect balance.

Here is a list of things we tried, which all more or less worked (and were undertaken with the supervision of a paediatrician):

* Breastfeeding
* Breastfeeding with a nipple shield
* Hand expressing
* Pump expressing
* Using Maxolon to help produce more milk
* Lanolin for cracked nipples
* Bottlefeeding expressed breast milk
* Bottlefeeding formula
* Thickening formula to reduce reflux
* Using a dummy
* Breastfeeding, with a top up of thickened formula at each feed
* Breastfeeding, and topping up once or twice a day with formula
* Having Daddy, grandparents, godparents and family do bottlefeeds
* Dreamfeeds, where you feed the baby right before you go to bed to increase your chance of a longer sleep
* Bottle handles, because Dominic insists on holding his own bottles
* A kidney shaped pillow to breastfeed on
* A wedge pillow to bottlefeed on (once Dominic decided cuddles were not happening during feeds)
* A variety of bottle and teat styles, and now a variety of sippy cups, straw cups, pop-top drink bottles, regular cups etc. In short, Dominic will take the food however it is dispensed!
* Early start on solids (Farex) to help with reflux, while continuing to breastfeed.
* Cabbage leaves while I was weaning
* Hand expressing while I was weaning
* Pleading with Dominic to please have a little bit of a drink so Mummy was less sore (didn’t work terribly well, but I gave it a try!)
* Your obstetrician and psychiatrist will probably defer backwards and forwards to each other, neither wanting to say that it’s ok or not ok to take your medication while pregnant. Get in touch with a paediatrician as soon as you can, and talk to them about it.
* For any OCD mummies out there, start out by not caring which breast the baby drank from last. It’s only going to end in tears because one night you WILL be too tired to remember and you don’t want to get yourself in a state over it! I’m not a ‘germ phobe’, I’m a counter and a worrier, so I haven’t had as many problems as I expected.
* If you have a mental illness, be extra aware of the possibility of postnatal depression. You probably already have a support network set up. Tell all the midwives and nurses about your mental illness and how it might affect you as a parent. I did, and got lots of extra help in the hospital and at the clinic.
* Only listen to family, friends, midwives, nurses and doctors who said things we liked and encouraged us to find the best solution to our feeding problems without pressuring us.