Supporting a Formula Feeding Mum
I delivered my baby boy, Riaan, at 36 + 6 last April by planned caesarean. When I was around 5 months pregnant, they detected that he was a small baby but couldn’t work out why. This is when I was introduced to Shaheda through a relative. With her experience as a midwife and her personal experience of her own pregnancy and birth, she talked me through all the medical jargon and helped me ask all the right questions when I went for my weekly fetal medicine scans.
Riaan was born weighing just 4lbs 2oz. However, despite his low birth weight, he didn’t need to go to NICU. Because of his low weight the midwife suggested that his first feed be formula and that we build up to breastfeeding, as I was unable to hand express post caesarean and he was high risk of low blood sugars.
We had to stay in hospital for 6 nights because Riaan wouldn’t feed very well. This time in hospital was really difficult. Riaan was born at the beginning of the first lockdown which meant my husband was unable to visit and help me. Riaan was expected to finish his bottle in 30 minutes and the pressure of this took a toll on me. One midwife asked if I wanted to try breastfeeding/hand expressing and when I said yes she had me try there and then. It was midnight! A few days later, another midwife asked if I wanted to try pumping and again I had a go. To say I was exhausted was an understatement so unfortunately hand expressing and pumping wasn’t going very well, but I didn’t mind giving formula as I just wanted my son to thrive and to get home after a long stay in hospital alone.
Sadly my milk never really came in and after about 4/5 weeks of half heartedly trying to pump I gave up. Shaheda held my hand (virtually) through all of my struggles and always reassured me that I was a good mum and that I had to make the right choices for me and my baby that would allow him to thrive, which was important in his case, but also to allow me to be happy. She gave me the facts of expressing, and although I was aware it was important to express regularly roughly every 3 hours, especially at night, Shaheda respected and recognised that this was difficult for me and increased my anxiety so never made me feel bad for choosing to give formula- instead she gave me information on how to do this safely and correctly.
We had issues right from the offset with Riaan’s weight gain due to a condition he was diagnosed with and, for us, formula was the right way to go as we could monitor his intake.
Sadly we lost our baby boy in November. He was just over 7 months old. Whilst we don’t know what happened yet, we discovered shortly before he had passed that there was an underlying health issue which impacted the velocity of his growth. For me and Riaan, formula was the way forward. My supply was too low for him and with him being small and premature (and later the discovery of his health condition), we would have been unable to continue breastfeeding as measuring his intake and feeding him through an NG tube was vital for his care.
Shaheda really had a no judgement attitude and was happy to guide me and Riaan to what was best for us. Even with bottle feeding, we had our challenges but Shaheda was on hand ready to answer any questions I had.
Remembering Little King, Riaan 06.04.2020- 09.11.2020
