Aunties, Grandmas, Grandads and Great-grandmas arrived on saturday afternoon. The babies were about 16 hours old and very well behaved, no obvious pooping or puking :-) Good babies! Everybody had a cuddle (with the sprogs, not each other) and marvelled over how much hair the babies had between them, especially Edward. Much posing for many cameras was had, and then it was dinner time again. P returned from the last singsong before paternity leave kicked in just in time to help heave me off the bed and very very slowly crawl to the shower. Goodness me it was painful, but a necessary painful as from then on I was able to get out of bed, albeit slowly, and move around.
During a routine weigh in for the babies it was noticed that they were losing a lot of weight. Its normal for newborns to lose a little of their birthweight in the few days following birth, but these two were losing a little too much. Harriet lost 11 ounces and Edward about 8 ounces. This suggested that although they were being fed every 2 hours or so they were not getting enough food so a breast feeding support councillor was sent to see me to assess my technique. Now we return to the 'breastfeeding is the most natural thing in the world'. Everyone had an opinion on what was happening and they all went along the lines of me not attaching them correctly. 'Just try again', 'just try it this way', 'try putting baby in this position', dont do that, do this' was how many conversations started. Cue a mini breakdown which resulted in the babies spending 4 hours with a midwife while I attempted to sleep. A little dramatic perhaps but it did prompt one midwife to mention the dreaded 'f' word: formula. Did I want to give them formula? YES!!! If it meant they were getting food instead of getting increasingly frustrated and hungry then yes, give them as much formula as they will consume. All of a sudden the babies were content, with bellies full of milk which meant they were sleeping better, and in turn meant I was too. Nobody had mentioned any other ways of feeding, it was all 'breast is best' which Im sure fundamentally it is, but it doesn't work for everyone. A midwife told me they were not allowed (??) to ask mothers if they wanted to use formula as they had to promote breastfeeding which in my humble opinion is ridiculous. Surely if baby and/or mum is having problems then any other method which improves the situation is good? Apparently not. When I said I wanted to use formula all the time someone mentioned expressing. Why wasnt that mentioned before? I also found out that a caesarian section can delay milk production by several days as the body goes into some sort of shock after surgery, no-one told me that when I was struggling to feed and ended up producing more blood than milk. I felt so guilty for not breastfeeding, that somehow I was letting the babies down by not doing the best for them. I managed to express for 10 days so they did get the colostrum and first milk, and therefore all the antibodies and other goodies they should have had but I still felt awful.
In total we spent 4 days on the ward, and were released together on the tuesday evening. The babies were starting to put weight on again after losing so much, I was healing nicely so they couldnt keep us in any longer!
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