It all began in the first few weeks after my baby was born. She’d lost just shy of 10% of her body weight in that first week of life. I’d never felt like such a failure.

We were battling jaundice and a delay with my milk coming in – not helped by a visit to A&E two days after giving birth because I passed a blood clot the size of an orange. (Everything was OK, but it was unnerving to say the least.)

I was determined to breastfeed, but when I saw the scales and realised our tiny baby had been losing weight, I felt wholly responsible. My body wasn’t doing what it should.

My midwife said I could spend the following 24 hours breastfeeding her every three hours to see if we could increase her weight a little bit. If I managed that, we could try again the next day and keep monitoring it.

So,

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