Mowbray staff ‘failed to help me breastfeed’ – mom

A MOTHER was left fearing for her newborn’s health after she was discharged from Mowbray Maternity Hospital while unable to breastfeed her baby.

This was after hospital staff allegedly gave her and her baby a near-perfect score for feeding, despite the mother saying she had struggled immensely to feed her baby and was provided with little assistance from hospital staff.

Yasaar Hendricks had a natural birth at 1.15am on Friday, May 26. For three days her baby boy struggled to latch on to the breast. The only means of feeding him was through expressing breast milk and cup feeding.

This lead to a healthy baby boy becoming weak, malnourished and jaundiced – he lost 300gm in weight.

The baby’s father, Rafeeq Marlie, said: “I had explained to the nurse helping my wife to try to breastfeed that we had faced this problem before and it had implications on our other baby’s health.”

Even while the Ottery father was explaining, he said the nurse “disregarded” his complaints.

His wife, Yasaar Hendricks, added: “After 15 minutes of trying to help me without any success, the nurse got frustrated and told me to just keep trying on my own.”

Hendricks was left with no guidelines and continued to fail.

She was sent to the postnatal ward, where she again explained her problem.

“The nurse said she could not understand because the folder said the baby was feeding perfectly.

“The nurse said she would send someone to help me, but she never did,” Hendricks said.

Later that day, Hendricks and her son were discharged.

For two days Hendricks struggled to breastfeed her baby. On the third day, at their first postpartum check-up, Hendricks was seen by a new nurse who helped the baby latch. They were also both readmitted for observation.

Mowbray Maternity Hospital spokesperson Bianca Carls said: “…it is standard practice that patients discharged from Mowbray Maternity Hospital are informed about where they can access breastfeeding support in their communities. If this was overlooked in Ms Hendricks’ case, we apologise for this oversight.”