Monday, April 22, 2013

Bullied By Nurses

My baby, who was born at 7lbs 11oz, and is 19 days old today, has not returned to her birth weight, after losing over 10% within the first couple days of life.

She eats, she sleeps, she pees, and she poops. Frequently.

She has quiet alert periods.

She has an extremely strong cry.

All of the signs point to the fact that she is doing well, except for her lack of weight gain.

The nurses we have spoken to, and seen several times now, all kept telling us that she needs to put on weight faster, and I need to supplement my breast milk with formula, because she's "not getting enough milk."

They're telling me that I'm starving my baby.

After an appointment with the nurse, at which we took another weight measurement, which was under the birth weight, and another lecture about adding formula, and another lecture about breast pumps, and the need for getting more milk into my baby, we were told to take her to the children's hospital emergency department for an assessment.

Up until this point, I, the mother of this perfect little baby, was not concerned.

But now they tell me to go to Emergency? As in, the place you go when there's an immediately life-threatening event occurring???

Now I'm a bit concerned.

After subjecting my little lady to the indecency of an I.V. in her little tiny hand, and a blood draw, and pokes and prods, and rectal thermometers, and nurses, and doctors, and tests, and bright lights... Guess what they found?

My perfect little lady is healthy. She's perfectly perfect, except for the lack of sufficient weight gain.

Aside from further, frequent, weigh-ins to check her progress, we need no further intervention at this time.

Now, you know what I want to do?

I want to yell at all the people who made me feel two feet tall, all the people who made me feel like I was starving my baby, all the people who tried to tell me I was a bad mother (without ever saying those words). I want to tell them all to piss off, and leave us alone, because we're bloody well fine, dammit.

Mother's instincts told me I was doing well, they were right (I WAS RIGHT). But I was bullied into tests, and I was bullied into feeding formula to my baby.

2 comments:

Stacey said...

I wish I had seen this earlier! I am so sorry that these nurses put you through all of this. They did the same to a friend of mine as well and her son, he wasn't gaining enough weight fast enough until just one day out of the blue he started to put weight on and is perfectly fine.
Just remember, for your entire life you have had to rely on and trust your instincts with any EDS issues, now it's time to trust your mommy instinct :)

BubbleGirl said...

I really wish I would have trusted my instincts, because now I'm in the vicious cycle of needing to feed formula, because even though my boobs are making a lot more milk, they're still not making enough, because I have been using formula.

And now she gets frustrated sometimes, because the milk comes out of my boobs slower than it comes out of a bottle.