So after giving birth and breastfeeding for the first time, I had a shower while Daddy held Alfie (putting his finger in his mouth to stop him crying) and then we were taken back to our room with our little man all wrapped up in his bassinet. It was kind of surreal being back in our room with a sleeping baby.

Our little man spent most of his time in hospital sleeping. He developed jaundice by the night of day zero and all the nurses were quite concerned. He ended up having 3 blood tests while in hospital but his levels were all under the threshold so he never got any treatment. We also had a visit from the paediatrician to check on him and he said he was fine.

On that first night BaaBaa, JiiJii and Aunty Chelsea came to meet our little man. Everyone was so excited and they all had turns holding him. They came and visited everyday we were in hospital and brought supplies for me (chips, ham and juice- I was starving when I got up in the middle of the night to feed). Pop came to visit a few times too and spent some nice time having cuddles. Aunty Sarah worked in the kitchen at the hospital and saw our trays going past and was writing notes saying “hello” on our trays but we had no idea who it was from until she came to visit and explained it was her.  

We learnt how to change a nappy from the midwives and Daddy did most of the changes during our stay. We were also given a demo on how to bath our little man and had a go on our own before we left. It was quite an andventure learning how to care for a newborn. Alfie mainly lived in the hospital clothes and blankets during our stay and was very comfy.

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We struggled a lot with breastfeeding in the first couple of days and we had to call the midwives to help us every time he woke up for a feed. Each midwife had different advice and in the end I just worked out my own way that worked for me and our little man. We had to hand express the colostrum a fair few times to syringe feed him because he was struggling to latch. On day 3 my milk came in and I was soo engorged. Our little man loves his milk and had frequent short feeds from then on.

On the night of day 3 we had a horrible agency nurse who scared us both. She was going on about how Alfie was “soo yellow” and acting like he was dying. She put so much pressure on me to feed him more and more. She even got me to pump and bottle feed him to top him up. Day 3 is notorious for being the day you hit a wall, and we hit it even harder thanks to this nurse. I cried the hardest I ever have in my life that night. It turned out I have a huge milk supply and that is the reason he was only feeding for short periods but he was definitely getting enough milk.

By day 4, Daddy had had enough of sleeping on the floor on a paper thin mattress and the staff were encouraging us to leave (to make room). I was a bit nervous about leaving but we decided it was time. So we stayed in hospital for 4 nights in the end. The typical stay length is 5 nights but we left early. The day before Alfie was born, there were 14 babies born so our ward was full up. There was a shortage of staff and they had to use a lot of agency nurses and nurses from other wards. This definitely soured our experience. We had a frustrating time trying to get help with anything and always had differing advice from everyone. It was very frustrating. I was, however, very pleased with the help we got during the birth both from the midwives and the doctor.