Every drop counts: The back-breaking labour of breastfeeding premature babies

Every two hours, day and night, a mother sits alone with a pump. Her baby is not in the room, and may not even be in the same building she slept in the previous night. She is trying to make her body do something it is not yet ready for: produce milk for a baby born too early to breastfeed, still too fragile to hold. It is an unseen part of motherhood and a breastfeeding journey that many people never get to see. Dr Rosemary Ochieng, an anchor of the neonatal unit at Aga Khan University Hospital, has devoted her career to the smallest and most fragile patients, and sees her role as the go-between for mother and baby. Asked what she tells exhausted mothers who are wondering whether to keep going, she says: “Exhaustion is normal. A lot of it is mental, because she is worried about her baby. But one thing she needs to know is that everybody there is working for the good of her baby. And when she is tired, she should accept that she is a human being. Just rest. And when she gets up from her rest, rejuvenate herself and try again.”