March 1997.

There are still two weeks to go, but I'm sure Matthew will be born within the week. Karl started a new job, and managed to arrange 3 days paternity leave, which he "topped up" to a week with annual leave - and arranged to take whenever the baby arrived....
...My waters broke at about 10am that morning, Monday, but I didn't quite believe what had happened. I didn't want to bother the hospital, so I decided to wait and see, but when Karl got home from work we had supper and headed off to the labour ward. I was induced on the Tuesday because my labour had not progressed over night, and they don't like to leave the baby longer than 24 hours after the waters have broken. To be quite honest I was pleased because I was fed up of being pregnant and so much wanted to meet my baby! Matthew was born at 9:50pm Tuesday 4th March 1997. He weighed 7lbs 13oz (3.55kg). I had a perfect and beautiful baby boy!

Matthew slept for the first 24hours, mostly due to the pethadine that we had been given during labour. His blood sugar was monitored, but he had plenty of reserves to last that first day: At exactly 10pm on Wednesday night, Matthew woke up, and had his first breastfeed. It was fantastic, although he was all hands and very difficult to latch on. We stayed in hospital until Saturday, by which time I was feeling quite confident about handling Matthew. We had our first trip out on Sunday: We went to see Karl's nan to pick up the pram. Matthew was sleeping well, waking maybe two or three times in the night. We had a waterbed so Matthew could not come into it with us, but we have decided that I should sleep with Matthew, on the spare bed in his nursery. This way he is very settled and we are all getting plenty of sleep! I took Matthew to a breastfeeding workshop as a "demonstrator", I feel that breastfeeding is best and wanted to be able to help out other mothers who want to breastfeed: I had been to one of these groups before Matthew was born. I feel ecstatic - being a mum couldn't be better

Day 10: Matthew had his heel prick test done. He is doing fine, but I have got an infection and I'm feverish. I have been in touch with a breastfeeding counciller from the NCT to help with breastfeeding whilst I am ill. She has shown me how to latch Matthew on whilst I am lying down, and reassured me that there is no reason to stop feeding Matthew. Unfortunately though, the antebiotics I have been given have made me sick, and I'm finding it difficult to keep even drinks down, which is affecting my milk supply. I saw another doctor, who changed the medicine - giving me a drug not suitable for nursing mothers - some help that was! Finally I was given some anti-nausea drugs to take with the original antebiotics, which were breastfeeding-safe.

I began to feel better after a couple of days, but I hadn't realised that my nipples had got very badly damaged whilst I was feeding lying down. I found feeding painful - especially since Matthew often grabbed my nipples when I was trying to get him latched on. The NCT counciller continued to help me latch Matthew on, and my midwife was also very supportive. However I couldn't carry on, my midwife showed me how to hand-express milk, and I decided to stop for seven days to give my nipples time to heal. I hired an electric pump in order to continuing to give Matthew breastmilk, and Karl is thrilled now that he can help feed Matthew too.

I am having to top up expressed breast milk with formula and it doesn't seem to be agreeing with Matthew. He has started vomitting after his feeds, and hasn't had a dirty nappy for a few days. This makes me more determined than ever to get back to breastfeeding Matthew. With the help of my NCT counciller I began to get Matthew latching back on to me, and I started reducing the amount of formula: my confidence improved because Matthew was so much easier to latch on this time, and I found the sitting-cross-legged position fairly easy to get right.

We went down to see my parents for Easter, with the blessing of our doctor and midwife - and armed with the number of a local NCT breastfeeding counciller. Matthew has stopped being sick now that we have stopped the formula milk, but he doesn't seem to be gaining weight. He still hasn't had any dirty nappies and we are starting to get very worried about him. On Easter day, his nappies turned bright red so we were finally sure something more serious was up. We took him to casualty, but after being examined Matthew was just discharged in the early hours.