Nothing can prepare you!

Firstly, thanks to all for you comments and best wishes - both JourneyMan and I are touched by your lovely words and thoughts!

Secondly, let me bring you up to date on what has been happening. We are finally home from the hospital but not without a little drama. We had a private room at the hospital which was lovely and Journeyman stayed in the hospital the whole time. He has been absolutely wonderful and has been there helping and supporting me unbelievably well.

On Thursday after the ceasar, we had a few visitors in the afternoon, my Mum, Dad and younger sister dropped by, then JourneyMan's mum and youngest sister came, my bestie dropped by and then we had my older sister and her 3 boys who were absolutely fascinated to see JBB. I thought that I would be a bit overwhelmed to have visitors but I was thrilled to show him off!! We did bundle the visitors out whenever I needed to feed JBB though, I couldn't have done that in front of everyone.

I wasn't out of bed until Friday when they took out the catheter and drip and it was pretty painful to get to the shower first up. The mid-wife helped me to the shower and then I was able to get myself washed, though she did give me some help getting dressed. It was great on Friday to start really taking care of our little bundle - honestly, I have never been so happy in my life!! My bestie dropped in again on Friday night which was wonderful.

Saturday and Sunday went by with more visitors and learning how to take care of JBB more and more. I must confess that by this point, I had not changed a nappy, JourneyMan had done them all - he is amazing! We weren't getting much sleep as we were up changing and feeding but we were still euphoric so it didn't matter how tired we were! We were really happy on Sunday night because we would be going home the next day and were really looking forward to getting home and starting our family life in our house.

Sunday night was horrible. JBB was up all night screaming. There was nothing that we could do to comfort him, he had been fed, changed, rocked, sung to - everything we could think of. I checked in my book to see if there was something we were missing. I called the mid-wife in to see if she had any ideas, she basically said that there was nothing further we could do. This frustrated the hell out of me because he really was screaming and I really thought that it must be because there was something wrong. Nothing can prepare you for a night like that. I felt so powerless because he was upset and nothing I did gave him any comfort - it was terrible.

Finally the morning rolled around and before we left, had to be weighed. This was when we found out that he had lost more than 10% of his body weight at birth. I immediately started crying - I felt like a failure, I had been starving my son, no wonder he was up screaming all night. The obstetritian came to see us and I told him about some clots that I had passed the day before (TMI but they were almost as big as my fist) and he suspected that I had an infection. He suggested that we would probably need to stay for another night because of JBB's weight and my infection.

I was devastated, I really wanted to go home and I just couldn't stop crying because I really felt that I had starved my baby. They told me to start expressing my breast milk to give JBB some top up's at each feed and when I called my mum and sobbed to her about it - she was ropable because she said that the mid-wife should have at least suggested trying out a feed of formula when JBB had not slept all night on Sunday night - she was going to come in and give her a piece of her mind but I told her not to.

I saw the lactation specialist on Monday and she told me that I definitely had enough milk coming through so JBB should be getting enough to eat but clearly that wasn't happening. By Monday afternoon, I realised through expressing that I was getting less and less milk as the day went on - I felt like I was seriously under pressure because I wasn't getting enough milk and I didn't want JBB to lose any more weight - I also didn't want to have to stay another night in the hospital which there was a very real risk of. I called in the day midwife and had a chat to her and asked if we could start a top up of formula from the next feed on - she was absolutely wonderful and came up with a great plan and really talked me down from blaming myself - it was a great relief.

JourneyMan then had to go home because he was working on Tuesday and we needed my Mum to come and pick me up so he dropped our car off (with the baby seat) to my Mum so she could come in in the morning. Journeyman rode back in on his motorbike. On Sunday night I came back to the room after being in the breastfeeding room with the lactation consultant and practically all of JourneyMan's family were there - I nearly had a heart attack - I'd had a very trying day after a night of no sleep, I didn't think I could handle it. I left JBB with them so they could visit with him and I went back to the breastfeeding room to do some milk expressing. When I came back, I felt better and had a good visit with them - though Journeyman didn't let them stay to long which was much appreciated.

On Monday night, I got up every 3 hours to feed JBB and express milk - I didn't get more than an hour to 90 mins of sleep in a row that night as I wanted JourneyMan to have a full night's sleep as he had to work the next day. Finally, 5am rolled around again and we called for JBB to get weighed - we waited with bated breath and to our great relief, he had put on 150grams - quite a big amount in one day I am told (they hope that at this point they are gaining around 200g a week!!). We were esctatic - we were going home!!!