I was so happy with my new family life and had so much love for my little girl but the transition to Motherhood isn’t easy.
I had tried and failed to breastfeed. After the weight loss I was really struggling to relax about it and I was constantly worrying about whether my body was working, was she getting enough milk, what if she was starving again... I also found it very painful as she struggled to latch on, this caused me to feel more anxious about the amount of milk she was getting. I know I shouldn’t have, but I worried about what other people would think, they must think I’m a useless Mum if I couldn’t feed my baby properly! I was out one day on my own and was bottle feeding her, and as people do when you have a tiny one, people came over to chat. One older man started telling me how his wife had loved breastfeeding and had done it for a good couple of years with their child. Whilst he just obviously wanted to be friendly, it wasn’t what I wanted to hear right then and it was very hard for me not to take it as a negative judgement. I also felt guilty, you hear so much about “breast is best” and I felt I was letting my little one down by struggling to provide her with the best milk. I was so lucky to have a lovely Health Visitor who was so supportive and helped me to see that the most important thing was that my baby was fed, regardless of how this was done.
One thing I did like about bottle feeding was that my husband was able to do it too. It took a lot of pressure off of me but it also gave him that lovely bonding experience. However bottle feeding wasn’t plain sailing either...We quickly found that she was struggling with wind every time we fed her. We tried so many over the counter medicines to help her but none of them seemed to help. I also attended a baby massage class and picked up some tips to help ease wind but again this didn’t seem to help. With my husband and I both being lactose intolerant we started to wonder if this was unfortunately something our daughter may have got from us. I spoke to a health visitor who told me that lactose intolerance was very rare and it was unlikely to be that, she was also very sceptical when I said my husband and I were both intolerant. She said it was more likely to be a milk allergy and to continue to monitor her and if we were still concerned to see a GP. It was a couple of evenings later that my husband was out and I was trying to feed her. It was heartbreaking. She was clearly hungry and kept trying to drink her milk but she would then push the bottle away to curl up in a ball and scream in pain. The noises coming from her stomach were horrendous. I felt hopeless. My husband came home to both of us in tears and that was when we decided enough was enough, we needed to see a doctor. We had a lovely doctor who said it seemed pretty likely that it was lactose intolerance, particularly with the family history. We switched her to lactose free formula and the difference was instant! Such a relief!
Recovering from a caesarean wasn’t easy. After a few weeks I started to feel I was becoming more mobile but then my scar became infected. This brought back pain, orders by the doctor to rest and generally slowed my recovery. It was so frustrating.
Between 6-8 weeks it was time for her first check up appointment. It was at this appointment that she was weighed and the Doctor told me she was underweight. She said this needed to be monitored and I therefore should take her to be weighed once a week at the health clinic. That was my rock bottom.
I went home in tears as I once again felt feelings of failure and worry. It was from this moment that the low mood began to creep in.
