I'm sitting here very frustrated and angry at the moment. My sister in law
gave birth to her first child on Good Friday, 3 weeks early. Mich arrived
at the hospital at 8:30 having very strong close contractions, baby was
found to be stressed and so she had an emergency caesarean section (under
general anaesthesia because of the haste). Baby was a little little girl 4
lb 1 oz and a couple of hours after she was born was flown to Sydney to a
children's hospital because she was having trouble breathing. As you can
understand everyone was very frightened and upset. Mich's partner went down
to Sydney with the baby and Mich only just got to see her when she was
drugged to her eyeballs, before she went on the helicopter. Well, Mich
wants to breastfeed her baby. On Friday night after the baby left she was
asking for someone to help her express, on Saturday morning she was asking
for someone to help her to express, to no avail.

On mid saturday when I arrived to sit with her  I went and asked for
someone to come and help. The midwife came in and told her that it didn't
matter if she didn't express for a day or so, she was tired and really
needed just to rest. Perhaps she would come and help her in the afternoon.
I am angry with myself that I didn't challenge her on that because of
course they were very busy in the afternoon and she didn't have time  to
help when asked and Mich left for Sydney 24 hrs after the baby was born
without having attempted expression. It is so hard to challenge staff when
they speak with so much authority- I knew that what she said was wrong but
I didn't speak up. The good news is that the baby is doing OK and might be
taken off the ventilator this afternoon but I haven;t been able to contact
Mich to find out what is happening with breastfeeding. I don't even know if
she has started expressing even now. I am the only woman in the family that
has breastfed for any more than a few days and my mother in law in
particular can't see that breastfeeding is anything worth worrying about.
I'm the family breastfeeding crackpot. I'm really worried that she might be
slipping through the cracks in Sydney like she did up here. Easter is a
really bad time to have a baby, understaffing is such a problem. Why does
it have to be like this? Why can't breastfeeing have a high priority?

Thanks for listening to me vent

Karleen Gribble
Australia
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PS On a brighter note I travelled to meet with the head of a university
department, interstate to talk about the possibility of doing some
breastfeeding research in their dept. It was a most profitable time and it
looks like there might be some projects that will go ahead.

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