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Mug shot Tuesday. You’ll understand my choice in a bit . I’ll continue yesterday’s story. I said I went home after a few days. I had to stay hospitalized because they wanted to monitor that my kidneys were not compromised. Everything seemed fine. I got the order that I could leave. One last check and the nurse saw that my daughter had a little fever. We had to stay.

When my daughter was born, I was asked how I wanted to feed her. I said I wanted to breast feed her and that she could stay with me at night. For the ones who don’t know, breast milk doesn’t always appear as soon as the baby is born. In some cases, it takes a few days. Those days the baby sucks and maybe nothing comes out.
I had already over 3 years of breast feeding experience and in two cases, the milk appeared on the 4th day. With my third son, I was lucky and that happened the 3rd day. Please, try to imagine the starving baby on the 4th day and the poor mother. Specially, the poor mother. Because the baby wants to be attached to the breast ALL DAY AND ALL NIGHT sucking until something comes. There is no rest those days, and you are still tired from the delivery. And in my case, also from the pregnancy.

The hospital in Cowshitland is a school hospital. That means that you rarely get graduated doctors. Or at least, I rarely got any.
The third day at the hospital, a wannabe pediatrician weighted my daughter. I’m not sure if you know but babies lose about the 10% of their weight soon after they are born, specially breast fed babies because they have to wait for the milk to come.
This dumb girl decided that my daughter was on the edge of the 10% of allowed lost weight so she gave the order to the nurse to start feeding her artificial milk.
I strongly disagreed explaining that my milk was going to be there in the morning and the 10% limit was not crossed so please wait a little bit.
She didn’t listen to me. I got very nervous and explained that if they fed my girl, then my girl would feel full and won’t want to suck on my breasts and then if there was no stimulation the milk would never come.
“But your baby is starving”
“All the new born babies who are going to be breast fed kind of starve a bit. Let me wait, I’m sure the milk will be here in the morning”.
“We can’t risk”
“Come on, I know it will happen. If I were at home, I would wait a little more. And I’m the mother and I should decide”.
“I’ll write here that you are not collaborating”.
At this point, I was crying and I could barely talk. I called the man and told him what had happened and begged him to get to the hospital and explain them himself because they were pretending they didn’t understand me or that I was dumb or that I didn’t want to feed my baby. He said he was tired and that he was going to the hospital the next day.
I hung up the phone and cried non-stop. A nurse came with a bottle and started feeding my daughter. My sobs were incontrollable. At one point, my daughter stopped drinking. The nurse marked as my daughter didn’t eat enough.
During the night the same thing happened again twice. My girl didn’t finish the bottle. So you have to imagine that she was in no mood to to suck. My breasts were going to explode and I was exhausted beyond limits.
Next day, another wannabe pediatrician had to check my daughter. This time a boy, maybe 23. I asked him if it was possible to stop the bottle feeding or to reduce the amount but he was concerned because my daughter didn’t eat enough. That a 5 days old baby should be eating twice as much.
I said: “she’s not even 4 days old”.
“But it says here she was born on the 17th”
“Yes, count the days”.
So the sucker counted the days and realized they were overfeeding my baby. Previous to that, he threatened me saying he was going to call the “doctor” because I was making problems interfering with the feeding of my baby. I was in tears saying that the only thing I wanted for MY BABY was the best, and that was MY MILK, how could they think that I didn’t want to feed my baby?!
More and more crying. The man called saying he was caught up at work. That he didn’t think he was going to the hospital that day either.
I wanted my mom but she was taking care of my other kids at home. I never felt more alone in my life.

That night, I got another nurse. A woman from The Philippines called Nieva. She heard the problem I was having. I imagined I was once more the crazy woman and that all the nurses were talking about me.
She said: “It’s useless to fight them. If you really want to go home, just let them do as they please . Hopefully in the morning your daughter won’t have any more fever and you can leave. I’ll help you”.

WTF! Why in heaven I had to feel like if I were a criminal, breaking all the rules, the bad person in the story, when what I really wanted was to feed my baby!!
I finally got the doctor to lower the amount of milk my daughter was getting so she could still feel hungry and I could get some stimulation.
In the morning Nieva came to measure the fever and told me that if it was fine, I could go home.
I think she faked the last digit.

That’s Nieva, Eilena and me a few moments before leaving the freaking hospital.

I mailed her that picture with a thank you note.
I guess she helped me because she knew how it was to be alone.

~ by DotedOn on March 24, 2015.