Mamma's milk bar WENDY'S HERBAL HELPER

When she had trouble breastfeeding, she found a solution that's got mums pumped

- Kasia De Vydt-Jillings

After 48 hours of inconsolable tears from her newborn son Anderson, despite breastfeeding him around the clock, Wendy Poon instinctively knew something was wrong.

Racing into hospital, the first-time mum was horrified to learn the situation was critical as he hadn’t been getting enough breast milk and was starving.

“I felt so guilty,” recalls Wendy, 35. “I had given birth to this perfect little being, but I had low milk supply and didn’t know I wasn’t producing enough.” 

After dreaming during pregnancy of how magic and easy it was going to be to feed and cuddle her baby, the Auckland mum was distraught. 

“I used to think about those moments when you hold your child in your arms and how amazing it would be,” explains Wendy. “But I was extremely sleep-deprived and struggling. I would feed, or what I thought was feeding him, he would fall asleep, then half an hour later he would wake up crying and screaming again.”

Adding to her stress, Anderson, now seven, was a small baby, just 2.5kg at birth, after consistently being in the bottom 10th percentile for foetal growth during pregnancy.

After three days in hospital, where medical staff closely monitored him, feeding a combination of formula and breast milk, they were discharged.