So there is this one day nurse Skyler has had a few times. She is very business-like, pretty much get it done and that's it. Most of his nurses like to coo at him and call him sweetheart and they are very loving and wonderful, they take the time to explain everything to us and are overall pretty comforting and pleasant to be around. This one nurse not so much. A few days ago we went and brought him his milk late at night, I pumped while I was there as well and then we went home. We came in for his 10 o clock feeding and I had only pumped once that morning. When I handed the nurse the milk she asked "Only one?" and gave me this not so nice look. Then as I usually do after his feeding I asked if I could pump some milk while we were there. C asked her to get the large flanges because the small ones hurt me. So she said something to the effect of pumping is supposed to hurt you aren't going to produce enough milk unless you use the small ones. Basically implying I am not making enough milk and I'm a wuss who cares more about the pain than about making sure my baby is fed. Which I'd like to say is not true at all. In fact I have been keeping ahead of his feedings by at least 4 at a time. And I don't care if it hurts I will do anything for my baby, but I tried the small ones and got less milk, went back to the big ones and got more milk.
Anyway yesterday I sent C in with 3 more containers of milk at about 2pm and told him to ask and make sure he was good for the next few feedings. Well it turned out he had a lot of milk, he had about 4 more feedings than I thought, but that was before the bitchy nurse managed to dump 100mls of breastmilk on the floor. Which is more than 3 feedings worth. Apparently when she mixed the human milk fortifier with it, she shook it too hard and it went flying out of her hand and she spilled the entire thing on the floor. When C called me to tell me this I was pretty much hysterical. I don't think I stopped sobbing until much after we'd hung up the phone. I don't understand how you can be careless enough to not screw the lid on properly, and shake the damn thing so hard that you can't hold onto it.
This just felt like a huge blow after she basically chastised me for not making enough milk for him. It's one thing if it's my fault, but you make me feel like a horrible mother for not providing enough milk when in reality I am providing more than enough, and then you go and dump it on the floor. If it's so precious and you don't have enough don't you think you'd be a little more careful. And apparently her apology was basically like "oh well things happen" well yes they do, I understand mistakes can be made and we're all just human but seriously it took me at least a good 2 hours to pump that, and I was stressing out about it the whole time because she had made me feel like I didn't have enough milk for him which was probably affecting how much I pumped.
Honestly I may sound bitchy for saying this, but if she had been nice to me and my baby then I probably would find it easy to forgive her for it. But the way she's acted towards me and Skyler makes me not so happy about it. Luckily she is off for the weekend, and maybe when she gets back she will be more careful or maybe they will put her with a different baby, I'm hoping she doesn't do it again either way.
After I got off the phone with C I took a nice hot shower put on some relaxing music and pumped every hour for the rest of the night just to replace what she destroyed. Luckily I am keeping up with him so that he doesn't have to have formula. Not that I have anything against formula feeding but apparently they have been finding trace amounts of melamine in Canadian and US formulas including Nestle and all the major distributers so I am trying to avoid that as much as possible. Anyway I am past due to pump again.. so here I go.
4 comments:
Don't let that nurse bother you. Maybe she's having a tough time in life, maybe she's been in the NICU too long. Whatever. Just don't let her get to you. Not worth it. And don't respond to any of her shake downs. You've figured out how to get YOUR milk out. You are doing just fine!
It's got to be hard - but I agree, just ignore that nurse as best as you can.
And honey, I cried over spilled BM too, and my situation was no where near yours. It's okay to cry.
P.S. - Azaera, I came over here from Flotsam to let you know that I had two preemies, and my first baby was born at 31wks/6days, weighing 3lb 7oz., 4 weeks in the NICU. My daughter was 5 weeks early, 4lb 5oz, 9 days in the NICU (oxygen and other things.)
If you want to e-mail me for more support/conversation, please feel free. tvchic at comcast dot net. I've been there, honey. :)
My original comment didn't seem to take: Talk to the charge nurse and have the awful nurse removed from Skyler's bed. You can be nice and say, "It's not a personality match", but you can also just relay what she's been saying to you (information that is incorrect, btw, and mentally abusive) and, on top of the spilled bm, unless the charge nurse is also evil, they will do what they can to accomodate you. Don't be afraid to speak up about what you and the baby need, even if it's "just" a psychological need.
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