A couple of days later came the experience I had been dreading. Samuel was very slow with one of his feeds. I tried not to worry too much but he didn't cry for his next feed and was very sleepy - too sleepy to take his milk. We called the hospital and a neonatal nurse came out to see us. She weighed Sam and we discovered that he had lost a bit of weight. She explained that he might be wearing himself out at feeding times by taking too much overloading his stomach and then not having the energy, or stomach space for his next feed. She suggested that we draw his feeds out to 4 hourly rather than demand feeding him. She said not to feed him any less than 4 hourly as he was so tiny and we ran the risk of exhausting him and overloading his stomach. A couple of days passed and his feeding hadn't really improved. He was screaming and struggling to go the full 4 hours but if we tried to respond to his cries and feed him before hand he would take a tiny amount before falling asleep from exhaustion. He then wouldn't make it anywhere near his next feed. He was nearly falling asleep from a combination of exhaustion and frustration. A very well meaning person told us the newborn babies always have difficulty feeding. I can remember, all too clearly, the frustration I felt; Sam wasn't a normal newborn baby. He fell under the category of 'very low birth weight', health professionals were concerned about his weight gain and he wasn't feeding properly. I was still keeping the charts we had been shown to keep in SCBU, showing exactly how much milk he was taking at exactly what time. I knew I was becoming obsessive but something told me that if I didn't keep the charts, if I didn't monitor his feeds, he would fail to thrive.
A couple of days later the midwife came out again. If she thought I was tired and emotional before, I dread to think what she must have made of me this time! We discussed Sam's feeding and sleeping patterns and he was weighed again. The midwife still wasn't happy with his weight gain and he was prescribed a very high calorie formula and we were given a load of premature teats that would hopefully make feeding a bit less of an effort for him. We were warned that if his feeding and weight gain didn't improve we would be looking at him going back on the naso-gastric feeding tube. Everything felt like such an effort. Although his feeding didn't improve dramatically, the high calorie milk made a huge difference and he gained 1/2 lb in the space of a week. I can remember the relief - and pride - that I felt.
Sam had been home for two weeks when I braved the world of parent and toddler groups. I had been going stir crazy at home and, due to Sam's prematurity, I hadn't been able to do any antenatal classes and as a result had only met one other person who was pregnant at the same time as me. I decided that the children's centres were probably a good place to start for meeting people. One of the first groups that I went along to was a children's centre 'Baby Club' where mums had the opportunity to sit around, chat, offload to each other and drink coffee until it came out of our ears! As I wasn't breast feeding, the caffeine seemed like a very good idea. The first time I went along I could see that the room was very clearly split into different groups of mums who all seemed to know each other. Sam's size, for once, did me a huge favour and became a hot topic of conversation drawing me into chatting with one of the groups. They all seemed lovely and had babies the same age as Sam. I found out that these ladies had met through NCT classes that they had done together before their babies were born. One of the ladies, Mary, looked vaguely familiar although I couldn't place her. As we continued to talk, mainly about our babies, Mary asked when Sam's birth date was, and on which ward I was in hospital. I explained that, although I had been on the c-section ward, Sam was in special care. Straight away, she exclaimed that she had been in the bed opposite me before her c-section and had watched me trying to assemble a breast pump! I couldn't believe that she had remembered me and was even more shocked to find out that she had been thinking of me since seeing me in such a state that day! We exchanged numbers and another of the ladies in the group, Karen, took my email address telling me that she was going to invite the NCT groups round for lunch one day and would love for me to come too. And so my group of 'mummy friends' was made. I went home and couldn't stop telling John about the other mums I had met and how I had even been invited for lunch! Finally it seemed like things were becoming more 'normal'. Over the next months and years these friends became some of my closest friends and I am so grateful for getting to know them. I don't know how I'd have survived the aftermath of Emilie's death without their support.
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