From one NICU mum to another…

Hello, I’m Francesca, and my little boy is Harry-this is our NICU feeding story:

Harry was born at 28w4d whilst I was on holiday in France, weighing in at 2lb13oz. He had no sucking reflex due to his prematurity, so was enteral tube fed via his mouth on a continuous pump (standard for prems in France) for the first few weeks of his life. When we were transferred to a UK hospital, when he was transferred to a NG tube and was syringe fed every few hours.

During the tube feeding, I expressed using the hospital pumps. This was something I hadn’t really thought about, and something I had to “learn on the job” thanks to language barriers, and a slightly different approach than nurses here would have! In addition to my milk, during our time in France he was also fed on donated breastmilk. This was because the hospital would not accept milk I’d expressed outside of the hospital. Unfortunately due to Harry’s prematurity, he was in a high-dependency hospital over an hour from where I was staying, so there were points I was expressing at night whilst away from Harry, and sadly had to dispose of the milk- very demoralising!

Harry was NG fed until he was ready to be fully established on breastfeeding, which was around five weeks before his due date. We had three full days of breastfeeding at the neonatal unit, to ensure he had completely got the hang of feeding – only then was his NG tube removed. Although I was exclusively breastfeeding, our neonatal department wanted to ensure he could also take a bottle, to ensure we could administer medications that were mixed into expressed milk – we found this less stressful for Harry, rather than syringe administration of medication.

Unfortunately, due to further medical complications, Harry needed to be transferred solely onto a premature baby formula about 6 weeks after leaving neonatal, so our breastfeeding finished rather abruptly. I was quite upset by this and did worry about our bonding, but thanks to all the skin-to-skin care we’d had during our neonatal journey, this was not a problem.

Due to the traumatic birth we had, I suffered PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), and have since undergone CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and surgery, but thankfully Harry will have no recollection of his interesting start to life. But we will explain his incredible journey to him when he’s older, as we are so proud of our little fighter that we nearly lost. Harry is now a happy, healthy 18 month baby, who loves his food and is completely “normal” in his feeding.

NICU and the neonatal journey is a tough one, and phrases as “you’re lucky you got to meet your baby early” do not help! But from one Mum who has come out of the other side, please hang in there. Be kind to yourself, and make time to recharge wherever you can. You are doing a fantastic job, and you’ve got a strength that keeps you going, that you didn’t even know you possess!

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