Our stay in the NICU had its ups and downs. Brooks ultimately did really great, but even with my background (labour and delivery nurse for 10 years, I have my NICU speciality and I’m an Internationally Board Certified Lactation Consultant!), I have to say I still struggled so hard with a lot of things most people struggle with in health care. Things like pressure for interventions, feelings of dismissal or feeling unheard by your healthcare team. It is such a tough system to navigate… and although I love being a nurse, I also really hate being associated with that narrative…

Ultimately, the things I didn’t love about the NICU (on top of being stuck in a tiny room with loud alarms going off 24/7), was the strict schedule that most health care facilities live by. They wanted me to feed Brooks at very specific times (i.e. Brooks must feed at 3pm, 6pm, 9pm, etc). Some nurses were fully on board with a more “on cue” feeding approach, but some were a bit more hesitant. I did what was best for us, but I can see how hard it would be to advocate for yourself if you didn’t work in the field. I also really didn’t love the lack of trust from some of the providers we had. I felt like they didn’t trust me to know what was best for Brooks.

The most traumatizing phrase I was told in the NICU (over and over again) was “your milk is not nutritionally adequate for your baby”… and by that they meant premature babies require more nutrients than breastmilk can provide, so they wanted me to supplement my breastmilk with Human Fortified Milk (HMF), which is basically formula.

Hearing that phrase really triggered me… and I recognized that, but I also did a spiral of research and really found a major lack of info for standardized care of feeding premature babies. I wish I could have trusted my gut and tried to give Brooks only my breastmilk and see if his weight gain was ok over a couple days… but, I ended up supplementing his feeds for a week and a half and I still feel the biggest guilt about it… Just goes to show you how hard it can be to advocate for your beliefs in healthcare…

While in the NICU I was also battling ongoing low blood pressure from my delivery (always so dizzy) and ended up in the Kelowna ER about 2 weeks postpartum. Turned out that I had some retained products of delivery (a.k.a some placenta was left inside) and had to take some medication to try and pass all those products. Unfortunately, the medications didn’t work and I ended up needing surgery.. just another little blip in our postpartum journey.

Going through all this was so traumatic, especially doing 90% of this all alone.. since my husband, Marcel, had to stay home to take care of our toddler. Marcel was able to do day trips up to see Brooks and I, but it was so incredibly tough not having him there with me 24/7.

However, the toughest part of all of this was being away from my daughter, Kaija, for so long. I cried almost every day when I would get off the phone with her.

The infection is what I think really set Brooks back in his breastfeeding journey. When he got his UTI, breastfeeding went downhill fast. He was discharged home (the 2nd and final time), started on antibiotics and from there we have been in a spiral of troubleshooting breastfeeding issues.

I have honestly tried ALL THE THINGS to get him back to breastfeeding and still to this day (4 months into his life now) am still trying all the things. It’s wild to say out loud, but somehow I feel incredibly guilty that I am pumping around the clock and bottle feeding him. There are big time feelings of failure in not being able to get your baby to latch, especially when he was doing it so well initially AND especially when I am a lactation consultant.

Sometimes you can do all the right things and it still doesn’t work out the way you want though.

Speaking of doing the right things…

The most recent appointments we have been to (oh man, appointment fatigue is so, so real fyi), is the dentist in Kelowna. In the last couple weeks Brooks had his lip tie released (twice) and then his cheek ties released.. and if you have ever had a baby with ties and had these procedures done via laser, it is incredibly traumatic. I ask myself every day if I am doing the right thing or just plain torturing him and as of today, I still don’t know the right answer.

We have some follow up appointments with the dentist and other providers (PT, Chiropractor, LC) to try so, so hard to get Brooks back to breastfeeding. As of right now he still hasn’t managed to get the hang of a good latch.

Life isn’t all struggles though and I am trying really hard to make the most of our summer as a family of four.

We have been on multiple camping trips and outings and Brooks is growing and changing every day. He is over 11lbs now and has been smiling for a few weeks. Just recently he has even started to giggle.

Kaija obsessed with helping and is most recently very vocal in telling you what “parts” Brooks has that make him a boy and her a girl… lol.