I rang my midwife straight away and she said…

Newborns do hold their breath for a couple of seconds

What the heck! No one thought to tell me that my newborn will be holding his breath whilst asleep. I think that should be on top of the list. You’re running on a couple of hours sleep staring at this baby convinced it’s not breathing. I mean you’re not breathing because you don’t want your breath to disturb his breathing. (Did you follow?) But apparently that’s what they do, Jheez.

So that was that I guess, another 5 hours sleep after the phone call and it was the next day.

I had someone call to ask how Zachary was doing with feeding. Not very well. Nearly 48 hours and still had nothing to eat. I knew this could get serious. A midwife came in the afternoon to see us both. So nipple out and let’s try again, guess what Zac was doing? Asleep. We had to strip him down to his nappy and put our cold hands on his back (sounds horrible, was horrible) but it was the only way to wake him. The midwife stayed for at least 2 hours but nothing happened. We were told to keep trying which we did all day and night.

He was born 8lb 1oz he lost weight to 7lb 2oz. It is normal for babies to lose weight in the first few days but I just knew my baby was losing weight because he wasn’t eating. So the next day, two midwifes came in the morning and helped Zachary and me. We were feeding him my expressed milk through a syringe and a bit of formula from a cup, and god was it messy. Feeding your baby every 2 hours is some serious clock watching. I had to express at least every 3 hours because I had to keep my milk supply up, as Zac wasn’t on me all the time.

Another thing the midwifes don’t tell you is your first bit of breast milk, the colostrum is orange in colour. Yes, orange milk. But again that’s normal too and it’s the best your baby can have. Zac had all the motions to latch but just couldn’t so was left for two days with formula through a cup and expressing as much as I could. Also lots of skin to skin time to help my milk supply and help with bonding. That’s when night time got a bit real, he was feeding every 2 hours and feeding a newborn through a cup in almost pitch black is the hardest thing to do. Two days passed and still no latch so another midwife came out to try something different. I’ll leave this one with you. ‘nipple shields’. (google it) and we’ll talk about them next time.