"Breast is best brigade frowns on our decision to bottle feed our newborn. "

This happened a little while ago now, I have only just discovered this website so I thought I would comment as we are considering where to have our second child. When we had our son at the Wesley, the actual birth was fantastic, the midwife and our obs/gyn were amazing and seemed to look after my wife so well. However when we got to the maternity ward I thought it all went downhill. As bub had latching issues, I believe the midwife was meant to be called every time he needed a feed. We had to explain the situation to every single midwife/nurse that attended over the course of 4 days, EVERY SINGLE ONE this included at 3am in the morning and a majority of them seemed to be annoyed by the fact. We never saw the same midwife/nurse twice so it was very frustrating and upsetting to my wife in having a different method/technique each and every time to the point of us actually leaving early. I think several of the midwives got a bit short with my wife during attempts to get him to latch. I do not think she received her regular pain relief and had to buzz for it, EVERY TIME, and before you ask it was not a PRN med, it was regular and our gynae confirmed it. The lactation consultation visited us just before we left even though we had requested it earlier and we discovered that the staff had been using incorrect techniques for most of our stay. Once we had decided to change to bottle feeds it was like we had signed our souls to the devil, " The breast is best mafia brigade" appeared. We were handed a couple of bottles of formula then told we needed to provide our own. I fully understand and accept this with no issue, however felt there was a negative attitude that was absolutely astounding! My wife felt like a very second class citizen for not breast feeding and they seemed to continually try to get her to keep trying. I understand the midwives are "independent practitioners" however if they are going to work in a ward environment there should be some cohesion to how they approach issues. It was overall a very disappointing stay. I felt I needed to say something because I imagine there are other mothers out there who have difficulty and should not have to suffer for it. I believe my wife still feels terrible to this day after how they made her feel.