week 6- 8

My health visitor was very good, she rings me often, weighs S when I want her weighed and has co-ordinated with the lactation consultant but there were 2 things that she said that upset me greatly. She called S a failure to thrive baby- I have no doubt at all that she was/is but I really didn’t want to hear those words. Those words broke my heart and I don’t think that the professionals should bandy those terms around with Joe Public

I emailed the lactation consultant (I was seeing her the Thursday but was worried) and she told me to increase the domperidone to 20mg 3 times a day. I had pains in my side and was very windy. Saw the haematologist this week and he gave me 5mg folic acid twice a day and reassured me that the pain in my side wasn’t my appendix J

Still no proper weight gain so I started cup feeding her formula until I saw Sharon on the Thursday- this was something we’d previously discussed and I gave her 30ml in the morning and 40ml in the evening.

On the Thursday Sharon gave me a feeding supplementer to give her the formula through. This would continue to stimulate my milk production whilst ensuring that S was getting some formula- my milk still wasn’t abundant and until it was I needed to make sure that S was putting on weight. I also had a theory that perhaps she was feeding enough to sate her but not enough to give her the strength to feed and to add on the extra weight. I honestly don’t know why my milk never came in properly, neither does Sharon nor my haematologist.

Her weight gain was still slow but it was gains rather than losses. The GP and lactation consultant helped me look on the positive side of things. We upped the formula to 120 ml a day and she went to hospital to have her tongue tie cut. A very quick painless procedure carried out by the wonderful Sharon.

Went in to the clinic to have S weighed the Thursday after Christmas and we had the biggest weight gain yet- 4 ½ oz. Even though she was on annual leave Sharon had asked me to email her with the results and she told me that if there was a problem then her colleagues would ring her and she would come to the clinic to see me!!!!! That’s dedication and devotion to her job for you.

Here's a supplementer in use