The Mother Baby Unit

Okay, my friends, are you ready for more? Here's the next instalment - what happened once we arrived in Hobart. It’s another long one so settle in. After a well-deserved sleep (apart from Sam’s feeds, of course), we awoke to our new life. In my old bedroom in my parents' house. Hmm. Time to start the search for a rental house. Mr PB bade us farewell as he and his father flew up to Sydney to drive our car down to Melbourne, over on the ferry and down to Hobart.

The Bass Strait ferry linking Melbourne and Devonport

I saw our friend, Sue, a lactation consultant, for help in getting rid of the nipple shield when breastfeeding Sam (the things us mothers go through for our babies!). Sue took a close look at Sam, asked how old he was, how much he weighed and how many wet nappies he was having a day. She watched me feed him with the shield. She looked inside his mouth. The next thing I knew, she was taking my hand and saying, “Jane, Sam isn’t putting on weight properly. He has a high palate which is making it hard for him to suck properly so he’s getting weaker. He isn’t getting enough milk so his nappies aren’t wet enough. It’s called a ‘failure to thrive’. We need to get you some help.”

I was dumbstruck. Tears welled in my eyes and spilled down my weary cheeks. Failure to thrive. Failure to thrive. FTT. The words kept repeating in my head, on a tape that kept respooling. They were stuck on my forehead, along with ‘failure as mother’. I wept. After all we had been through in the six weeks since Sam was born, this had happened. In front of my eyes and I hadn’t seen it. I was devastated.

Sweet Sue then arranged for us to see a GP that afternoon who then referred us to the Mother Baby Unit (MBU) at Hobart’s St Helen’s Private Hospital. We hired a breast pump from a pharmacy. We were admitted to the MBU the next day, the Friday. Dad dropped Sam and me off, carrying the clothes we had brought down on the plane. All the rest of our worldly possessions including most of Sam’s clothes and his pram were in transit, due to arrive in a fortnight’s time. A kind nurse went through the admission process with me, asking a myriad of questions. I was on auto-pilot, answering each question methodically. I was also numb. And exhausted. But no tears came.

I was showed around the Unit which was set up with 8 private rooms for mothers with bathrooms and adjacent rooms for their babies. There was a communal dining room with play area, a bath for the mums to use, a bathing area for the babies, a kitchen and a laundry. The bedrooms were well equipped but had a few modifications which I found both confronting and disconcerting. There were no rails or coathangers for clothes in the wardrobes. There were no towel rails in the bathrooms and the shower taps had been modified so they were only little stumps. I suddenly realised I was in a place where mothers might be driven to do desperate things in their distress.

I then started meeting the delightful and caring staff, a combination of registered nurses, midwives, lactation consultants and Mothercraft nurses, led by the vivacious and heart-warmingly kind Sharon. Their compassion was astonishing. They realised I was in a state of extreme distress before I even registered it myself (it took weeks for that realisation to dawn). I was staggered when they told me that was no time limit on my stay. We would stay until our problems were resolved. Even if that meant months.

I spoke to the Unit’s visiting doctor and a plan of action for Sam was devised. It involved feeding him every 3-4 hours around the clock with bottles of expressed breastmilk (EBM) and/or formula until his weight reached the normal range. Then I started the two hourly expressing of breastmilk for my tiny little boy. Hooked up to the electric double pump, I felt like a cow. Any last vestige of privacy was stripped away as people came in and out of my room while I sat there, tethered. Each precious bottle was labelled and stored in the fridge, lined up in a neat row. I had my assigned shelf in the fridge so my EBM wasn’t confused with the other babies’ bottles of EBM and formula.

The trusty Avent bottle

I was brought a cooked dinner in my room, given a set of earplugs and some sleeping tablets and told that the night shift nurses would look after Sam and that they would wake me for his night feeds. I lay there in that strange room, all alone. Mr PB was oblivious to everything. He was shocked when I phoned him up, late at night, and told him what had happened. He was very distressed but knew that I was in good hands and that his job was to return to Hobart with the car as soon as possible.

I didn’t sleep much, the sleeping tablet notwithstanding. My brain was whirling. It wouldn’t stop. The thoughts kept churning over and over in my head. How had I missed that? Why hadn’t the lactation consultants and midwives picked it up in the hospital after he was born? One of them had specifically checked his palate for me as I had had the same problem with Joshua when he was first born and she had assured me that Sam’s palate was normal. The lactation consultant who had visited us at home had also told me everything was normal. The child health nurse we had seen for his six week check the day before we left had said his weight was normal. Why had they all missed it?

The next week passed in a blur. I was numb. I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t think straight. My head felt like cotton wool. Mr PB returned on the Saturday and brought the pixies in to visit. We had a trip to Salamanca Market.

Visiting Salamanca Market with my little family

Mr PB was upset and frustrated at the situation. We hadn’t expected this start to our new life in Hobart. He brought in what little clothing he had found in the car which hadn’t been packed and sent off with the removalists. He then started work at his new job on the Monday. My parents looked after the pixies and tried to find places for a few days a week at childcare for them.

It was an extraordinarily intense time. Expressing every two hours was exhausting both physically and mentally and after a week, I found I couldn’t bring myself to do it so regularly. My milk supply started dropping. I was given medication to try to boost my supply. Sam was unsettled and colicky, screaming and making his body stiff as a board. The pixies came and went, confused as to why Mummy and Sammy were in hospital. Ian tried to settle into his new job, make flying visits to see us and then return home to my parents’ house to help look after the pixies. Everyone was under a great deal of strain. We inspected several rental properties but couldn’t find anywhere suitable.

Then I saw the resident psychiatrist, a kindly man who listened responsively to my story of what had happened in the seven weeks since Sam was born. It didn’t take long for him to diagnose that I had severe post-natal depression (PND). The diagnosis hit me between the eyes. Or like the proverbial truck. I hadn’t seen that one coming. I was filled with grief but the tears still wouldn’t fall. He prescribed a mild anti-depressant which could be taken when breastfeeding. We agreed that we would see how the feeding went before trying anything further.

Later that week, after 9 days of expressing around the clock and several unsuccessful attempts at feeding Sam both with and without the shield, I met with Sue, the lactation consultant, again. We had a lengthy discussion as I attempted yet again to feed Sam, without success. She took my hand gently and looked into my eyes. I knew what she was going to say so I pre-empted her. “It’s not going to work this time, is it? If I can’t sustain the regular expressing with around the clock care and only one child to look after, I’m not going to be able to manage it at home with three children under four, am I?” She shook her head. A tear slid down my cheek. I looked down at my darling boy and kissed him. That was our last feed together.

Time for a break, I think. That's probably a lot for you to digest! Next time, I’ll tell you about my stay at the MBU. I’d love to know if any of you have stayed there or at a similar place. It is such a haven for mothers.

Jane