Laura Gorman

So from the bottles to store, from the pump, when you go home, you're given your pump to bring home.

There's pumps available in the lactation rooms that are here on the unit.

You're given your equipment.

There's sterilisers here.

It kind of gives you a purpose as well when you're in here and looking at your baby in an incubator.

You then say, oh, it's my time.

I have to go express.

You have a purpose and you have a role that's really, really important.

It's only me that can do that for Luke.

And how's baby Luke doing now?

He's doing amazing.

So we've had a really, really good weekend.

So he's now 34 weeks gestation.

He's just over six weeks old.

He has started now moving on to the breast, learning and navigating how to use his little mouth.

So at the start, we do it with an empty breast, and I've had Ivy and Ciara there from Sweet and Language watching, helping, and everything they say has happened, as it should, that he'll start with little licks, you know, little explorations, little sucks.

But it was Thursday last week when we put him on the breast for the first time, and when I felt two or three sucks, my heart just burst, and anyone I spoke to that day, I was like,

Luke latched on today he sucked you know it was just so proud to have breastfed before to know that bond and to remove the pump which is there for its purpose but for him to just be on my breast without having to use any equipment was just incredible so he's doing great so we're going to try a full feed today so this is all great timing um a full feed today um

hopefully he'll manage but we'll navigate and we'll take it day by day to get his feeding and that will be one of our last steps then to get home how are you doing i'm doing good i have my days i go on roller coasters i go up and i go down um but i'm doing really well now but it's been challenging and i i think for any new mammy coming in here i didn't know who to ask i didn't know

I don't want anyone to know this experience because it's tough.