Lead image for 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.
Three mothers have lived it.
Lucy Fredricks never expected to be in the labour ward at 29 weeks.
Lucy Fredrick, who gave birth to a premature baby weighing 1.2 kilogrammes.
She had first noticed swelling in her feet and face, and gone in to get checked. Doctors flagged pre-eclampsia as something to watch, though her blood pressure was only a little high, nothing alarming, and there was no protein in her urine, the usual sign of kidney trouble. So, she was sent home. She went about her pregnancy, telling herself she was fine.