Supporting a NICU Mum
I have now breastfed our baby for over 6 months (it feels amazing to say that!) and we are still going strong. Shaheda was invaluable to our journey and I’ll be forever thankful to her for empowering and encouraging me to give our baby the best possible start in life, despite pretty adverse and unexpected circumstances.
Our baby was born in March 2021 at 37 weeks and was unexpectedly small at 1.5kg, he went straight to NICU. I’d always known I wanted to breastfeed but our son going to NICU and being tube fed formula was something that completely threw me off course. On top of that I’d had an unplanned category 1 caesarean section and was in shock. So far nothing had gone as I expected and I was so worried that our chance to establish breastfeeding was rapidly slipping away.
When I met Shaheda, she explained the best thing I could do was to start hand-expressing colostrum, have as much skin to skin as possible and to relax and take things one day at a time. She patiently showed me how to hand express and helped show my husband how he could support me by holding the syringe. Shaheda’s calm and gentle presence was hugely reassuring at a time when I didn’t feel my best, I was going to NICU every two hours and was utterly exhausted but Shaheda kept me on track and continued working with me to improve my hand expressing technique until my milk came in. Once my milk came in she helped me establish a steady and realistic pumping schedule and checked in regularly to see how we were.
I wish every new mother could have a midwife and breastfeeding counsellor like Shaheda. Her kindness, compassion and ability to impart meaningful and empowering knowledge at such a crucial time in a woman’s life is such blessing for all those who come across her. She is whole heartedly committed to the journey of mothers and babies and that comes across in each and every interaction with her.
