What Do We Do Now?

Written by Rosie Phillips for her blog, Baby Boys Rock.

You can follow her on Instagram here!

The first night at home is a shock to the system.

By the time that we had left the hospital the many, many, many drugs that I had been pumped with had worn off and, as I waddled to the car, I began to wonder who had taken a football pump to my nether region and when someone would be kind enough to deflate it for me.

You spend your whole time in hospital waiting to hear that you have been discharged and then the moment comes and, like a teenager who has been caught out as underage in a bar, you hang around wondering how long you can stay before somebody forcibly removes you from the premises. It genuinely took Jonathan and me around two and a half hours from being discharged to actually set foot in the lift and bid farewell to the safety bubble of the maternity ward.

Out of the hospital and into the car!

After the surreal and sore drive home, spent staring intently at the beautiful life we had made and willing it not to all be a dream – interspersed with multiple shouts of “mind the bump!” – we arrived home to be greeted by family, food and even a glass of prosecco. Motherhood was seeming pretty blissful, eerily peaceful. Both Jonathan’s and my family were there (not all of Jonathan’s family of course, a car nor our house will hold them all!), we were home, Harry wasn’t crying and I was still floating around in the new mother “I-just-pushed-a-baby-out” haze. At this point I was unaware of the sneaky nature of the newborn babe; placid whilst visitors are over, they cuddled him and cooed and he snuffled and slept and then, they bid us farewell, the door snapped shut and BOOM! Scream city. Suckle city. The beginning of nipplegate and the end of my life as someone who sleeps.

Never before – you will be glad to hear Mum and Dad! – have I ever had anything suck on my nipples until they were raw. Those first weeks of breastfeeding were rough! I am one of those annoying people who hates to be annoying; “Oh no, don’t call an ambulance, I don’t want to waste their time, I’ll get the bus” I would probably say, having just simultaneously been hit by a car and bitten by a dog and, so, I “didn’t want to bother” the midwives on the ward by asking them if I was feeding Harry correctly. I plodded on, naively thinking “it doesn’t hurt, I must have got it right first time – I’m a breastfeeding WIZ!” HA HA HA…ouch.

Night one at home, five hours of solid feeding later, nipples skinned, tears streaming down my face and Jonathan stood in front of me, a cup of tea in an outstretched hand, his face an amalgamation of pity and “my nipples don’t make milk, please can I sleep?!”, and I realised that breastfeeding sucks (pun intended) at first. The videos they show in antenatal class are just lies – these babies with huge open mouths that latch on perfectly and calmly are lies. Newborn babies don’t do that. Well, my newborn baby certainly didn’t. Instead, he opened his tiny mouth an even tinier amount, thrashing his head back and forth like the girl from the exorcist, whilst I tried to aim my massive, sore, skinless nipples in and did a celebratory scream in agony upon succeeding.

Pretending he was going to sleep on our first night home…

The first two nights at home were just the constant feeding to get my milk to come in.

By day five I had tears in my eyes every time that he latched and so, when we went to our checkup at the maternity unit, we met with Michelle who is their breastfeeding-guru and all round angel-woman. She asked me to show her how I had been breastfeeding; I curled my toes in anticipation, revealed my glowing red nipple and gritted my teeth as I clumsily bent my back to latch Harry… she shook her head. I looked at her with pure desperation in my eyes and she kindly took a very, very long time showing me how to latch him correctly. I was, however, mortified to discover that by doing it right the pain did not just evaporate. When you have allowed a tiny human to peel your nipples like onions it takes a few weeks, not a few seconds, of correct latching to rid you of that agony. Cue two to three more weeks of curled toes and daily texts to my sister asking her when it would get better, unsatisfied with “soon” – I need a date and time damnit!!

As we approached the end of week one I had made my peace with my new life as someone who winced when they sat down, cried when they fed their child and slept with their eyes open whilst visitors held Harry because, as well as being that person, I was everything I had ever wanted to be – I was a Mum. And if my weak pelvic floor didn’t, that thought alone was enough to make me shit my pants.
NB. Proverbial pants. Proverbial shit. I have not – yet – shit my pants. I will be sure to let you know if I do.

Ps…

I would like to add, for anyone reading this who may have just had a baby or is expecting soon and planning to breastfeed, it is incredible. It is difficult at first but it does also, quite soon, get better and becomes this wonderful and peaceful bonding time with your baby. Even in the very early days, once the toe-curling, eye-watering latch has been completed and they are feeding it doesn’t hurt anymore, and I have never been more proud of my body than I have since watching it sustain a life. Sure, my nipples now aim for the ground rather than straight ahead, but that’s a small price to pay for keeping a human being alive.