My little girl was due Feb 14 but decided she was going to come early. She had been frank Breech the whole pregnancy and when I went into labour she was still firmly bum down, they were concerned about the nerves etc in her neck getting damaged if I delivered vaginally so we ended up having an emergency Caesarian section and she arrived at 5.34pm on the 15th of January, 4 1/2 weeks early, weighing in at 6lbs 6oz. They haven’t measured her because she was Breech, her legs are still up round her nipple level most of the time and it won’t be accurate.

She’s been very poorly since she arrived, she needed help with her breathing and had a shadow on her lungs but they weren’t sure whether it was fluid she hadn’t spat out yet or if there was a hole, there had been no change in that yet and she’s an inpatient in the Neonatal Unit.

She was fighting against her C-Pap machine and wearing herself out and also refusing to sleep so they sedated her and put in a different tube to breathe for her so she is now intubated. Her oxygen assistance has been up to 44% oxygen and down as low as 21% oxygen (which they consider to be air) and back up again as she fluctuates.

She was also having paracetamol because she’s a bit bruised from the position she was in inside but that wasn’t doing much so she’s now on morphine and she seems more settled.

I haven’t had skin to skin yet but I was allowed to hold her for ten minutes yesterday morning but unfortunately she took a turn for the worse after so I’ve not been allowed since, it could be because of the bruising and the touching that she went into a little bit of shock or something.

She had a brain scan overnight which seems to be clear so far 🤞🏼 and her jaundice is clearing up but they’re going to keep her under the lights as a preventative measure.

She’s too poorly to feed at the moment, so she’s on glucose drip for now. No idea how long she’ll be here.

If I’m honest I feel like a failure, all I can do for my baby is hand express and I’m struggling to produce much, it’s tailed off from 1ml to 0.1ml in 18 hours (per pump) . I’m expressing every 3 hours (apart from last night they said to express at 10 (didn’t get anything at all) and again at 0500 this morning (got 0.1ml) to let the good nutrients build up) I never got as far as a breastfeeding class as she came early.

She’s not well enough to be given my milk yet so any quantity too small to feed her is being used for mouth care which will help give her the antibodies and give her a taste to get used to which we hope will help with feeding when she’s well enough.

Problem is I’m now producing so little so infrequently I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to BF or even pump 😞 the midwives have been reassuring me that she’s not even 48 hours old and it can take 4 days for milk to come in, and every little bit of colostrum is important but I feel like i couldn’t keep her inside until term, I can’t hold her now she’s here, I can’t protect her and make it better for her and now I can’t even produce enough milk to feed her when she’s well enough and I’m struggling a bit. My poor husband is worried sick about me and about her so I’m trying to put on a brave face when he’s about. He’s a bit frightened of touching her incase he accidentally dislodges a wire or something (he has only got partial feeling in his hands) and has slept on the hospital floor for the last two nights so I’ve sent him home to sleep and eat properly.

The section itself wasn’t too bad, I was okay until they asked me to lie on the bed and then I panicked a bit. Once I was on the bed the spinal was a cake walk, didn’t even feel it happening. My blood pressure dropped into the 50s a couple of times so they were squeezing bags of fluids in their hands to bring it back up and I was vomiting everywhere but I felt nothing from the shoulders down of the birth.

I was in very little pain for 24 hours after so had been declining my painkillers, but regretted it last night when I was almost in tears from the pain, I’ve also been walking between my bed and the NNU which is a fair distance and won’t have helped, so I’m on wheelchairs only today and regularly taking my meds.

Thanks for reading, here’s a picture of our baby girl before they took over her breathing, she’s ginger!