"Postnatal care"

When my baby was about 3 or 4 weeks old I took them to the MCHN as they were a very unhappy baby and screaming for hours on end. I was worried something was seriously wrong and had been close to taking them to ED multiple times because of it.

I was made to feel quite uncomfortable being told to show how I settle them when they were crying (which is pretty awkward and unnatural in front of a stranger) and told to breastfeed - which I understand is necessary but I felt a quite exposed. I was told by the nurse that I saw that I was causing my baby to be stressed, I wasn’t patting them with the correct rhythm to sooth them, I wasn’t settling them correctly.

The nurse also said my baby didn’t like their car seat (I then changed it to a different one which made no difference but I basically wasted a ton of money on a capsule that was used for a couple of weeks because of this). It was also a hot day and I had got really flustered and hot as my baby had screamed all the way to the hospital, while I found parking, while I went to the wrong entrance and got lost because I was only told shenton street and not told to go through the hospital to access it.  I told the nurse my baby had screamed for 4 hours straight the previous evening, wanting milk but still not happy while I was breastfeeding and I was shut in their nursery all that time because my dogs were so distressed by it as it was all new to them. The nurse told me they were just dogs and asked if my husband wanted the baby as he hadnt been by my side the whole time (how could he when I was breastfeeding and that’s what Bub wanted).

Fortunately I know my baby was very wanted as we went through fertility treatment to get them, but this sent me into a whole new spiral where I became very paranoid and anxious that my husband didn’t want the baby anymore, and I didn’t feel like I could trust my instincts because I had been causing my baby to be stressed and didn’t even know the rhythm to pat them in. I went back again to ‘help learn to settle my baby’ (I am not a vulnerable demographic at all, I am not a young mum, I am not a single mum, I am not living in poverty and I am well educated) and at one point my baby did the hysterical screaming and the nurse patted and rocked them until my baby basically passed out from exhaustion from screaming so much (the memory of that happening in somebodies arms that wasn’t me still makes me feel unwell inside now I know what was wrong) as the nurse said my baby wasn’t hungry as they had just watched me feed him.

It wasn’t until a couple of months later that I read a book - the discontented baby book by Pamela Douglas - that I realised my baby had been hungry. There are stories in that book from her time as a doctor in which mums would be told the latch when breastfeeding was fine and they would end up using formula because their babies were never satisfied because they had transfer issues but these babies never stop feeding so do manage to put on weight so it doesn’t flag up. As soon as I read it I realised that it what had happened to me - that my baby was hungry and I was right when I initially said I either had something wrong with my milk (I didn’t get engorged or leak until about 3 months PP when it finally settled - I had a very traumatic birth which should of set off alarm bells to the nurse knowing that could affect my supply).

This then set me off from anxious and not trusting myself or my husband to do anything right in looking after our baby because I thought we caused it all like the nurse said, to sending me into a depression with so much guilt because my baby was hungry and I didn’t do the right thing and get a second opinion because I had been made to feel like I knew nothing about my own child. It took me a long time to be able to put the guilt from this behind me, and the comments like ‘am I causing my baby to be stressed’ and ‘where was my husband? did he want this baby?’ Could easily cause somebody in a vulnerable demographic to never seek out healthcare again. I have not been to developmental checks since I realised what happened was so wrong and that I was so vulnerable and tired at the time I should not of taken it