Feel like a failure as a mom, it’s only been 5 days
Had my baby via C-section on 9 April. Because she was a C-section baby, she had fluid in her lungs after birth that she couldn’t get out so she was transferred to neonatal unit. I feel like that was my fault because I chose to have an elective section.
Jump forward 5 days. I still have no milk supply despite double pumping like 4x per day. My baby is off the ventilator, but there’s talk of putting her back on because she’s not at a high enough saturation level (92% instead of 94+). She’s also not independently eating because she refuses to wake up and either put my boob in her mouth or take a bottle, so they’re tube-feeding her.
Now, she’s my first. I want to hold her all the time because she’s my first and because I want skin to skin and because skin to skin is supposed to help my milk supply (except right now I just feel like a fucking cow). My husband had skin to skin with her last night when her oxygen was low but when I took her, her oxygen level went right back to where it should be (96-100). So I come in when I’m awake and available and pick her up to hold her for those reasons. Then around meal time, I undress her to try and get her to wake up a bit. All these things make sense right?
Well, the midwife basically told my husband while I was sitting there asleep and attached to the pump that I shouldn’t hold her as much and that skin to skin is important but like, so is keeping her warm. And I’ve checked her temp. She’s hot when I take her blankets off and I put a blanket on when she’s cold and my husband even agreed with me today she was warm.
I just feel awful because I feel like I can’t do anything right. If we were at home, it would be just me and him and everything would be fine. But I’m so scrutinised here. I just feel like such a failure.
Thanks for reading.
Skin yo skin challenges
My baby is 5 weeks old and we have hardly done any skin to skin. We did it at birth, and a few times in the first week. He has problems latching, so I'm feeding him with nipple shields after advice from a lactation consultant. After the first week we have hardly done any skin to skin. If I try, he tries to latch (even if he's not hungry) but he's unsuccessful so he gets super upset. Also, he always gets upset when I undress and dress him, so I end up not doing skin to skin for both reasons. However I now regret that I've lost so much time without doing it. Do you think I can start now? And if so, have you got any tips to overcome those challenges?
Constantly overstimulated I hate it
My baby is 5m and I hate the person I’ve become since being a mum. I’m so overstimulated all the time I snap at my husband for the smallest of things, I meltdown over seemingly nothing but I just can’t help it. I’m constantly being touched, hit, scratched, vomited on, hair pulled, screamed at. My brain is going to explode. Does anyone else feel like this? How do you cope?
