I’m Ella, and I have an 18-month-old boy. He was born on March 23rd at the Bradford Infirmary. Originally, I’d planned a home birth—it was something I really wanted—but I went 12 days over my due date and had to be induced in the end. That meant he was born in the hospital instead.
Even so, I was still able to have the birth I had hoped for in many ways. I gave birth in the birthing suite, not the main labour ward, which meant I could still have a water birth. That was really important to me, so I was genuinely happy with how it all turned out. The experience was beautiful. The staff were just amazing. I’ve said this before, but they really made me feel like I was the only person in that hospital. I’ll never be able to thank them enough for that.
Before giving birth, I didn’t know much about breastfeeding, if I’m honest. My husband and I attended one of Bradford’s online education sessions that covered feeding, and breastfeeding was a part of that, but I didn’t go into it with strong expectations. I’d seen close friends breastfeed, and my sister-in-law is very passionate about it—she’s breastfed both her children. My mother-in-law is a midwife too, so I’d been around a lot of supportive voices. I liked the idea of it: the bonding, the health benefits, even the cost-saving aspect. But I didn’t want to put pressure on myself. I just thought, “Let’s see how it goes.”
Nothing can really prepare you, though. My birth went smoothly, but shortly after he was born—just an hour later—he stopped breathing. It was terrifying. He was resuscitated and then, surprisingly, allowed to stay with us for the night. They checked him over and said everything seemed fine. We stayed together in the birthing suite, and there was even a spare room where we all slept that night.
But the next morning, during routine discharge checks, they picked up on low oxygen levels. I can’t remember if he had a temperature too. They suspected an infection—possibly something passed on from me, since I’d been quite unwell in late pregnancy and had been on various antibiotics. That’s when he was admitted to the neonatal ward.
He ended up being treated for suspected sepsis and had a pneumothorax in his lungs that showed up on an X-ray. He was in neonatal care for five days, and I stayed in the hospital too. They gave me a bed on a different ward upstairs, and I could go see him whenever I wanted. I spent most of my time down there, day and night.
My husband couldn’t stay, though—there wasn’t space for him—so he had to go home. That was the hardest part. We were all in separate places, and it felt wrong. You spend nearly ten months growing this baby inside you, and then suddenly you’re not with them. It was heartbreaking.
Even though I’d had a straightforward labour and recovered well physically, I didn’t feel like I had just given birth. I didn’t feel like a patient. I’d walk the hospital corridors, showered and dressed, going down to sit beside my son like I was a visitor. I’d see other women on my ward moving slowly in dressing gowns, clearly in pain, and I felt disconnected from that. My body had been through something massive too—but my focus was entirely on him.
In that first week, he was tube-fed with formula, which was so hard for me emotionally. But we made a very conscious decision: we asked the staff to feed him directly into his stomach so he wouldn’t taste the formula. I wanted to breastfeed. I really wanted to give that a chance. I don’t know where we got that information from—it might have been a staff member or someone in the hospital—but that choice mattered to me.
It wasn’t until day five that I could start breastfeeding him. My milk didn’t come in quickly enough, and they needed to make sure he was fed and well, so I’d try to nurse and pump and spend hours with him. Even then, in the neonatal unit, it didn’t feel like I’d just given birth. No one really acknowledged that part. I wasn’t treated like a new mum recovering—I was just there, trying to keep going.
It was surreal. I was going through this huge physical and emotional shift, but everything was focused on him—which, of course, it had to be. Still, looking back, I was processing my own birth experience almost entirely on my own. There’s so much pain, so much hormonal upheaval in those early days. I remember hearing babies crying in the night from my room, and it stung—but I also got a lot more rest than most new mums. In a strange way, that was a silver lining. When he finally came up to the ward to stay with me, I felt totally overwhelmed. I remember thinking, “I have no idea what I’m doing.”
He’s a happy, healthy toddler now, and looking at him, you’d never guess he had such a rough start. That week was just a bump in the road—but it changed me. It’s so easy to gloss over our own experiences when things turn out okay in the end. But there was real pain in that first week, and it’s okay to acknowledge it.
When we left the hospital, I remember thinking—how is this even real? You go in one person and come out another. You’ve just had this tiny human placed in your arms after the most intense, powerful, surreal experience of your life. The adrenaline rush after birth—it’s indescribable. I’d never felt so empowered in my life. But then, in what feels like the next breath, you’re exhausted. You’re holding this little person, and the reality hits: I’ve got to keep you alive now. It’s magical, yes. But also… it’s hard. Really hard. Especially when you’re carrying trauma from those early moments—when something has gone wrong or felt scary. It’s a lot to hold.
There’s this metaphor I’ve thought about since—about mountaineering. You know how climbers reach the summit and feel this huge rush, like they’ve done the impossible? But then they’ve got to get back down. And getting down can be harder. That’s what those early days felt like for me. Birth was the summit. Breastfeeding, recovery, processing—it was the way back down. No one really prepares you for that part.
We were in the neonatal unit, and while Otis was only there for a short time—just five days—it left a mark. We were in the medium-dependency zone, not the highest level, and we knew his stay would be brief. But still, I saw other babies there who had been in much longer, and that was hard. There was one little boy who’d been there five months. Some parents couldn’t be there all the time—some had other children or had to return to work. I was lucky I could be there all day, every day. I only went upstairs to sleep for a few hours at night. But there was guilt too, knowing we had an end in sight while others didn’t.
And then there was the pumping room—that tiny shared space where you’d sit side-by-side with other mums, expressing milk and exchanging nods of solidarity. It was intimate and strange and comforting, all at once. A shared ritual in the middle of chaos.
One of the hardest things for me was the inconsistency in support. The staff were on rotating shifts, so every day brought new people and new opinions. One midwife would show me a technique and say, “This is the way to do it.” Then the next would contradict her completely. It was disorienting and, honestly, demoralising. Especially when you’re so vulnerable and unsure of yourself. You trust the professionals, and when they contradict each other, you start to feel like maybe you’re the problem.
The ward midwives had a totally different vibe from the neonatal nurses. Different expectations, different language around feeding. It was amazing—and not in a good way—how wildly those perspectives could vary. In the end, I found someone I could really trust. A midwife who lived just three doors up from us, actually. She happened to be working on the ward when Otis was discharged. I give her all the credit. She spent so much time with us, helping me learn how to feed him. Her encouragement, her calm presence—it grounded me. I stopped listening to all the competing voices and just followed her lead. That made all the difference.
I think what we need—what I needed—was continuity. A mentor, a consistent figure who really knew breastfeeding and could stick with you through those first days. I kind of created that for myself by latching onto this one midwife, but imagine if that was built into the system? Instead of conflicting advice, just one solid, supportive presence.
There was tension, too, between trying to establish breastfeeding and the pressure to get Otis better, fast. The priority was getting nutrition into him, which of course makes sense. But I always felt this undercurrent of guilt—like if he wasn’t feeding well, I was failing somehow.
But I had done something that helped, something small that I think made a big difference: I’d harvested a lot of colostrum before the birth. We used that during the tube feeds. I would put some in his mouth so he could taste it, even if the actual feed went through the tube. It sounds so minor, but I think it helped. He got used to the taste, the feel of it. It was something. It helped me feel like I was still involved, like I hadn’t completely handed things over to machines and protocols.
Now, 18 months later, I’m still breastfeeding. He’s strong and thriving, and I’m proud of us both. It wasn’t an easy start, but we made it. We got down the mountain. And even now, certain smells—like Milton sterilising fluid—can transport me right back to those days. They’re always there, just under the surface. That little bubble of time when everything was raw and real and intense.
Talking about it now feels good. It’s like taking all those memories that have been stuffed in a drawer and placing them gently on a shelf. Not hidden. Just… held. Seen. Contained, but not forgotten. Because they’re part of the story. And that story deserves space.