MOTHER’S MILK: SMALL THINGS HAVE A BIG IMPACT IN THE NICU 

Life can bring the greatest joys and moments of pure delight to parents. Sadly, it can also bring the toughest moments imaginable – like when your baby arrives too early. Instead of being able to cuddle her new little miracle, a mum has to surrender her baby to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and watch on helplessly as these amazing humans work hard to keep her precious baby alive.

I had a tiny glimpse of this experience when my youngest son was born almost six weeks early and needed oxygen for a couple of days. And as a counsellor, I’ve worked with mothers who’ve had premmie babies – and who needed help to recover from the trauma they experienced. As their tiny babies recovered too, many mums struggled with irrational fears that at any moment something awful may still happen to their babies. These mums also faced profound guilt that they were unable to be the mother their baby needed – and that they’d failed in some way. 

One thing that helps mums of premmie babies feel more empowered is being able to feed their child with their own breast milk. In the NICU, this is done with hospital-grade breast pumps, which make pumping easier and more efficient than using manual pumps.

Teagan, whose son Levi arrived at 24 weeks, remembers the mixed emotions she felt when he ended up in the NICU.

“That hurt, hearing the nurse tell me she’d be caring for him, because that’s all I wanted to do,” says Teagan. “So the possibility of being able to provide milk was the only thing at the time that I felt like I was able to contribute as a mother.” 

Cath, mum to baby Griffin, could also relate to this. She arrived in the NICU at 8am and sat by Griffin’s humidicrib until 7pm each night. “The days in the NICU are long, and my own milk supply for Griffin dropped off as the days went on,” she says, “but I religiously pumped every three hours, 24/7, for eight hours straight. That double breast pump became my best friend, and I was lucky enough to be able to borrow one from the hospital for home too, which I was so grateful for.”

Pumping breast milk for her premmie twins was something mum Tara also gladly took on. “When you get to the point when you’re producing enough and can start to use a pump, you’re like, ‘Oh thank God’ – because it’s painless, it’s easy and it helps you start to naturally produce more. Plus, having twins, I needed to produce double!”

As these three mums have shared, spending your days in the NICU with an unwell baby – while recovering from birth yourself – is a really difficult and stressful situation to be in. 

And if you want your baby to be fed with your own breast milk, having access to a pump is crucial – not just for helping babies survive, but it gives you a sense of purpose, and a way to maintain a physical connection with your bub.

Teagan, who craved to physically hold her unwell baby, agrees that pumping helped. 

“There were times in the hospital when I’d feel, ‘I don’t want to be connected to a machine, I want my baby’ – but pumping was one of those things I could do for him,” she says. 

For Tara, pumping was a bridge to building a connection with her twins. “I couldn’t hold them, but I was still helping them and it did foster a connection between us.” 

And although it was a decade ago for Cath, having access to a breast pump in the NICU meant everything. “I won’t forget those heartbreaking early days of Griffin’s life. And after all that pumping, I successfully breastfed Griffin until he was two and a half! He’s ten years old now and doing so well,” she says.

The shortage of breast pumps in hospitals and neonatal clinics is putting new babies at risk. As mums watch their sick or premature babies fighting for life, isolated in humidicribs, many new mums want nothing more than to express milk so they can connect with and nurture their newborns. 

When Humpty made a callout to hospitals to ask for breast pump submissions, more than 30 public hospitals replied, requesting 88 breast pumps. Two-thirds of these requests were from regional and rural hospitals who have even less access to this much-needed equipment – which hurts my heart. We must do better for all vulnerable babies, no matter where they live. 

Collectively, we can change these statistics. It’s why I’m so happy to be part of the solution by supporting Humpty Dumpty’s efforts to help sick babies in hospitals right across the country. Together we can save lives.