A mother has hit out at hospital nurses for pressuring her to stop breastfeeding and bottle feed her newborn baby.

Bina Bhattacharya claimed doctors told her the reason why her son wasn’t gaining weight was because she wasn’t producing enough milk.

However, she later discovered that her son was having difficulty breastfeeding owing to a birth defect known as tongue-tie, after he was diagnosed by a private consultant.

Bina's son Finn Mcgee was born eight weeks prematurely in September 2015 at Homerton University Hospital.

The mother-of-one, who lives with her husband Alexander in Blackhorse Lane, Higham Hill, said she was determined to breastfeed to reduce Finn's chances of getting eczema, which she suffers from.

The 30-year-old said: “There was intense pressure for the baby to gain weight and the nurses told me to stop faffing around with breastfeeding and give him a bottle and he would be discharged within three days.

“I cannot believe that of all the doctors and nurses that saw him, no one could see that he had a tongue- tie.

“I was under constant pressure to accept that my body wasn’t producing enough milk.

“In a room full of breastfeeding mothers, the nurses in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) would come in every ten minutes and pressure us to see how much we had fed our babies.

“I am very grateful for the staff there - they saved my life and my baby’s life, but it is the health system that is wrong.

“There is intense pressure on the doctors and nurses to discharge people quickly and something like breastfeeding can take a lot of time to get right.

“I have really bad eczema and there’s no way I was going to subject my child to what I went through, so I was very determined to make it work.”

Now aged 12 months, Finn Mcgee is still being breastfed after undergoing two procedures to correct his tongue-tie.

Mrs Bhattacharya, who previously worked as a patient liaison officer for a health group in her native Australia, said mothers should not be told to quit if breastfeeding doesn’t work the first time they try it.

She said: “It is a very special set of skill to learn how to breastfeed a premature baby and it took six months to really get the hang of it.

“I am still breastfeeding today but it is because of my determination and the support of my husband, who got involved and helped.

“I don’t think women who fail to breastfeed should be told to give up so easily.

“I said I am going to prove it can be done and I did.”

A spokesman for Homerton University Hospital said: “We make every effort to provide the highest possible life-saving care for very premature and sickly babies.

“A priority is to ensure that our tiny patients gain some weight as soon as possible.

“We are sorry if this mother felt we did not provide her and her baby with a satisfactory service during their stay with us and we would invite her to contact the hospital PALs service if she wishes to raise any issues with us.”

Last week, an expert warned that social pressures on mothers to get their babies into a feeding routine and sleep through the night, was to blame for the UK having the lowest breastfeeding rate in the world.