A Couple of Days at Home!

The night passed without too much trouble, baby slept quite well and fed small amounts. I had to try and hand express and syringe feed baby like they had shown me in hospital.

The midwife arrived for her new birth visit and she was very nice. She looked at Jack and made sure everything was ok. Another poke of my tummy and she was pleased with our progress. She asked about feeding and I told her I felt I was struggling with the breastfeeding, not sure that he was taking enough food & finding it difficult to latch him on! 

She said she would call the breastfeeding support team to come and see me and that she hoped they would come next day. 

In the mean time my Mum came over to see baby & had lots of cuddles. It was a nice day at home. 

2 days old in his Moses basket

The breastfeeding lady called me later that day and told me that she would come round and see us the following day. 

Throughout the evening and the night feeding became even more difficult and in desperation at 2am we opened the steriliser figured out how to use it, microwave sterilised some bottles and used our emergency bottle of formula that we had bought just in case. 

He gulped it down. At least he was fed. 

Mummy and Baby Jack

The next day the breastfeeding lady arrived bright and early and tried to help me latch baby on. After much faffing and whilst getting stressed it became clear that baby wasn't taking much milk & that breastfeeding wasn't as easy as they make out! 

Daddy and Baby Jack

She advised me to express milk and give it to baby with a syringe. My goodness hand pump expressing left me exhausted. Thank goodness for my new friend and her husband as they let me borrow an electric breast pump! So I was able to express small amounts and syringe the food into baby one millilitre at a time. It was not easy!

Syringe Feeding! 1ml at a time!

The breastfeeding support lady said she would come and check on me the next day. The night passed and we started to use formula milk as I wasn't able to get much expressed. Was starting to feel very anxious and upset that I couldn't feed my baby.

The next day the breastfeeding lady arrived and we tried again. It was the same and she mentioned that she thought Jack looked jaundiced. I didn't agree and to me he looked as he always had. 

My Mum and Nan arrived and made us lunch. By this point I was worried that baby wasn't getting enough but was fighting giving him another bottle as I was struggling enough and didn't want to blow my chances altogether! 

Later that day the breastfeeding lady phoned me and asked me to call the midwife to check Jack's colour. I did as she asked and the midwife said she would come. 

I blubbed through the afternoon and said to my family I feel that we are going to be admitted to hospital which I did not want at all. I went and started to re pack my hospital bag. 

The midwife arrived and immediately said that Jack is jaundiced and would need to go to hospital to be checked over and have a blood test. She rang the hospital and they told me to go to ward 32. The same ward I was on when I was being induced. 

I got very upset and finished packing our bags. I knew we would be staying in.

We loaded up the car and made the journey back to hospital.