Master J is now almost 2 weeks post palate repair. These past 2 weeks have been so unbelievably hard. Seeing your baby in a morphine induced haze is heart breaking. Mr J fights sleep SO hard even morphine couldnt knock him out. A week in hospital with 2-4hrs sleep a night - not exactly a 5 star vacation. The care we received was second to none, medically speaking everything was deemed a success, now we have to wait a few weeks to see how it heals, and fingers crossed it will be perfect, and we wont have to go back for more surgery.
The hardest part of this ordeal has been not being able to breastfeed. For the past 5 months he has been exclusively breastfed. It is his only comfort, and we worked so hard to get it happening. Now it has been ripped away, for a month. 2 weeks to go. Without our breastfeeding relations hip I feel completely disconnected from him, and completely irrelevant. He feels the same. He doesnt want me, he doesnt need me, and he gets no comfort from me. I have absolutely no idea how to be his mother right now. When he cries, which is often, i feel like all i can do is pass him over to Daddy L and walk away. I cant get him to sleep, it's a struggle to get him to take a bottle, i feel completely useless. He looks at me as if to say 'why, why won't you just feed me, hold me close and let me feed?' I would if I was allowed, in a heartbeat. I can't even just hold him close and snuggle because he gets stressed out and claws at my chest. I am living in fear that in 2 weeks time he won't go back to the breast, and I don't know what I'd do then. I hate not having a relationship with him, but we can't do anything about it. Hopefully our relationship can be mended, even tho it doesn't feel at will ever have a relationship again. I expected things to be tough post op, but this is so much worse than I expected.
On a positive note, physically J is going really well, feeding and finally sleeping. He still wants to be held all the time, which is perfectly fine, but he needs me to be standing whilst I hold him. My entire body aches from standing around 18hrs a day for a week. I'm exhausted all round really.
My frame of mind, and time with my family gave me a wake up call. Social media - Facebook - was too big a part of my life. Walking around the ward at 4am checking Facebook. Why?? What was I getting out of it? As things happened with J I was composing status updates, and updates for my groups in, in my head. I should have been focused on what was happening, not how I would share it. I was failing my son all round. This was something i could do something about. So i deactivated my Facebook. No dramatic 'I'm leaving Facebook' announcements, i just left. People had my number if they wanted me. This was a week ago. And it feels good. I don't feel as judged - by myself or others. I don't feel like I have to live up to anybody else. I'll be back, but hopefully in a more limited capacity.
Until then, thank you to everyone for their well wishes, and for thinking of us, it really does mean a lot.
Xxx
Xxx
