Emergency Appendectomy

by Apryl McLean

It was seven weeks after I gave birth to my second child. I was having such bad stomach pain I couldn't stand up, and it was the night before my wedding. The next morning still unable to straighten up my fiancee took me to the emergency room. We left our 8 year old daughter home with relatives, but took our seven week old daughter with us as I was her source of food.

The doctors said they would have to do a cat scan and that whatever they were injecting for that would make me unable to breastfeed for 24 hours! Having given birth at that very same hospital only seven weeks prior I still knew the number and name of their lactation consultant. She assured me I could continue to breastfeed after the cat scan. What a relief! I was then told that I would not be able to breastfeed for 24 hours after the surgery.

I had a supply of frozen breast milk at home, (no bottles however but we were able to borrow some from my sister-in-law). Reluctantly I said good bye to my fiancee and said good bye to my baby for the first time and prepared to go in for surgery.

When I was settled in a room I requested a dual breast pump so I could pump and dump until I got the OK to breastfeed again. At home my fiancee and sister-in-law were managing to feed bottles of breast milk to my daughter.

I pumped and dumped milk from both breasts every hour. I woke up to do so during the first night away from my daughter as well. The next morning I was determined to get her breastfeeding as soon as possible. I had 12 staples in my stomach and a drainage bag and was on a morphine drip, but I really wanted to get my baby breastfeeding again. I didn't want this unexpected surgery to mess up our breastfeeding relationship.

Thankfully, I got a hold of the lactation consultant again and she said to stop dumping out all my precious milk and to get my baby to the hospital and feed it to her myself. I called my fiancee and he brought her right away and she stayed with me in my hospital room from early in the morning until my release at 8:30 pm.

Every nurse who came to check on me was shocked that I had a baby in the room! I was on a floor with no children and the nurses kept bragging to their other patients that there was a baby on the floor! One nurse asked if she could take my baby around to show other patients. She was sleeping in her car seat so I said, yes. That night when my fiancee took us home everyone was waving goodbye to our quiet and happily breastfed 7 week old!

My daughter, Josephine is nine and a half months old now and still breastfeeds whenever she wants. In January when she was 6 months old we drove from Nebraska to California nursing her whenever she needed along the way without using bottles or formula.

It goes to show that if you really want to make it work, you can!