I’ve often heard moms say that they don’t have time to breastfeed because they have older children to take care of. They don’t have time to “sit around nursing all day”. So what if you do stop breastfeeding so that you can have more time to spend with your older children? What does that teach the older children? That baby’s needs don’t matter? That if something is inconvenient then you just switch to something easier, even if the inconvenient thing was better? The truth is kids are really inconvenient (not to mention loud, messy, and demanding). Why is breastfeeding so often at the top of the list of things to be tossed? I love how this mom points out, “Some portion of ‘The Family Schedule’ belongs to you (the nursing baby).”
I was there once. I was surprised when I heard myself think it. I considered not breastfeeding because it would take too much of my time and energy to do it. How could I, of all people, consider that as an option? My situation was a little different than most because my baby was a bit of a surprise and came to us through adoption, so I had no milk. I was needing to induce lactation.
Baby came home to us in July 2009 at 18 days old. My older kids, two boys, "Scootch", 7, and "Curly", 9, were on summer break from school. However, we had decided that when school began again in August they would not be going back. From now on we would be homeschooling. Several people asked me when we got the baby, “You’re not still going to try to homeschool are you?” The truth is the thought never crossed my mind not to. We had taken a long time to make this decision to homeschool. We had decided that this was what was best for our two boys. Now that we had a new baby girl the needs of my boys did not suddenly change. It was still best for them to stay home. The reverse was true as well. This baby needed to be breastfed, regardless of the schedules and needs of other family members.
Baby sister meets big brother
When my boys were babies I took all of the time I needed to make breastfeeding work. Why should it be any different for this baby?
I had about 6 weeks of summer left and I started the process of relactating. It was so frustrating to have this baby and no milk! It took a lot of time. A few weeks into the school year and I was beginning to doubt that I could do it all. To make things even harder she was premature weighing 3 lbs 2.8 ounces at birth, and only 4 lbs 0 ounces when she came home. She had a weak suck and she could not draw milk through an at breast supplementer meaning I needed to spend even more time pumping and bottle feeding while practicing at the breast.
I confided in my good friend, “I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t have the time. How can I do a good job homeschooling the boys when I’m spending so much time with her trying to bring in a milk supply? All the time at the breast, pumping, mixing formula and preparing the bags for the Lact-Aid. Maybe I should just give up on the whole breastfeeding thing.”
My friend could see the bigger picture when I could not. “It is important to the boys too. Their sister is important to them. Let some of the school work and other things go.” That was over 3 years ago and I still remember her words. She is important to them.
Scootch and Baby sister
She was right. This tiny baby girl meant everything to the boys. They loved their little sister. This was just as good for them as it was for her. I couldn’t see it then, but three years later I can see it.
Curly and Baby sister
What did they learn by watching me work so hard to breastfeed her? First, they learned an awful lot about inducing lactation! They would watch me pump. When I first started to get drops of milk Scootch (7) walked up and saw the little bit of milk in the bottle. He started jumping up and down and called for his brother to come see, “She’s getting milk, she’s getting milk!” I had no idea they’d be so excited.
They watched me spend countless hours nursing their little sister. They watched as the bottles were replaced by the Lact-Aid, and then the formula supplements gradually went away altogether.
They learned that their little sister was important. That babies are important and that they deserve to have their needs met. They learned that nursing was important, even if you don’t make enough milk. They learned that everyone in the family is important, and that we do what we need to do to take care of each other. They’ve learned that family is more than just DNA.
We did school work while I wore baby sister in the Moby wrap. When she got bigger, they wanted to wear her in the back pack. They were learning how to love and care for a baby.
They wanted her to have the best, just like I did.
The fact that she was important to them was reason enough to spend the time and work hard for breastfeeding to work, even if it meant I had less time to spend doing certain things with them.
Letting her play with their Legos is proof of how much they love her!
One homeschool project was building a sled for little sister.
Now that she is three, she knows how to pester her big brothers, and she does! She can be the annoying little sister, but these boys love this little girl. They would do anything for her. Taking the time to bring in a milk supply and breastfeed her did not take away from them, instead it gave them, and all of us so much!
What gifts has breastfeeding given you or your family? This is the topic for the December Carnival of Breastfeeding. I’ve really had to think about this one a lot before writing about it. I think it has been a little bit different with each child I have breastfed.
Breastfeeding my first child gave me the gift of teaching me how to be a mother. I quickly developed a close relationship with my baby by figuring out his subtle cues that he was ready to nurse. Through this process I learned how to mother. I learned that nursing is not just about feeding. I think this is the biggest difference between breastfeeding and bottle feeding. I’ve heard it said before that “Bottle feeding is a feeding method, but breastfeeding is a relationship”. I don’t think that is always true for every mother who breastfeeds, for some it is just a feeding method. They develop a relationship in other ways, just like mothers who bottle feed also develop a relationship with their baby. I’ve heard it described as the difference between “breastfeeding” and “nursing”. When you are breastfeeding you are “feeding” your child. When you are “nursing” you are mothering your child at your breast. As a breastfeeding mom I could keep all of my focus on my baby. I never had to take my focus away to prepare a bottle, I could bring baby right to my breast.All I needed to do was nurse and mother my baby at the breast, and as an added benefit, that took care of him being fed as well! Breastfeeding my first child gave me that gift, the gift of showing me how to mother my child.
Shortly after the birth of my second child I became seriously ill. This made breastfeeding very challenging at times. For me, breastfeeding was never an option, in was how I was going to care for my baby. There was never the possibility that breastfeeding wouldn’t work, or that bottle feeding was an alternative. Especially after nursing my first baby. I had just learned how to mother my child at the breast. If I didn’t breastfeed then I’d have to learn all over again, a different way to mother!
Fortunately, breastfeeding was well established by the time I became ill. It turned out to be a real blessing, a gift. Nursing allowed me the ability to care for my baby even on days when I couldn’t get out of bed. If I had been bottle feeding, it would have been very easy to turn the care of my baby over to someone else. Think of the countless hours of skin to skin contact and holding between mother and baby that would have been lost if someone took over care of the baby so that I could “rest and get well”. Breastfeeding my second baby gave me the gift of staying close to my baby, and allowing me to still be a mother when I could do little else.
My third baby was adopted. I did not get to have the joy and physical connection of feeling her grow and move inside me. I didn’t have the opportunity to give birth to her, to see her come into the world and hold her warm little body. I did not know I was going to be her mommy, and meet her, until she was 17 days old. I didn’t need to breastfeed her in order to feed her. She had done well her first 17 days in the NICU on bottles of formula. With the children I gave birth to, breastfeeding was easier than formula feeding. No bottles or formula to prepare or wash. Just lift shirt and insert baby. Nighttime feedings with a full supply of milk were a breeze, I never even had to get out of bed! Now I was in a situation where I had a baby, and it was going to be more work to breastfeed. I didn’t have a milk supply, I still needed to use formula (along with some donor breastmilk). Breastfeeding this baby meant at breast supplementers, pumping, and taking a prescription medication to induce, and hopefully bring in, a milk supply. It would have been easy to bottle feed this baby.
However, the first time I put this baby to my breast, at 18 days old, weighing 4 lbs 0 ounces, I was given a gift. I laid back on some pillows on my bed. I took off my shirt, and stripped her down to only her diaper and laid her on my chest. She immediately threw herself down and latched on to my right breast. Her body completely relaxed. I felt her say, “This is my Mommy. I am so glad to be home.” She is still nursing at 17 months old. The physical and emotional bond that has formed between us is amazing. What an awesome gift!
In honor of his 9th birthday today, my story of nursing Scootch!
My second son, “Scootch”, was born prematurely at 34 weeks. He was a good size at five pounds, 11 ounces. I was happy that he made it to 34 weeks. At 29 weeks, I started leaking amniotic fluid. Assuming that delivery was imminent, I was given a shot to mature his lungs and sent by ambulance to the nearest hospital with a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) over two hours away from our home. We were lucky that I stopped leaking fluid and I was sent home and put on bed rest. I spent the next five weeks in and out of the hospital in an ongoing game to stop my labor. The hardest part of this was being away from my other baby, my 16-month-old son.
Scootch was born healthy and breathing well, but he was sleepy. He did not wake up when I delivered him. It was 24 hours before he cried. I began pumping right away so he could be fed through a tube and almost cried when I saw the few drops of colostrum in the bottle. "This would never be enough! They will insist on giving him formula!" I thought. The doctor then told me he had ordered that he be given five cc of colostrum every three hours. What I had was plenty!
It felt like one frustration after another. I asked that he be given no artificial nipples. I wanted all of his sucking to be at my breast. I was angry when I came in after a shift change to find a pacifier in his mouth. "It says in his chart no artificial nipples!" I informed the new nurse. "Oh, I thought that just meant no bottles," was her response.
I spent the next six days sitting in the bright, noisy NICU trying desperately to get Scootch to nurse, and then pumping afterward. The hospital was very busy at the time and sometimes there wasn't a pump available for me. I often had to track one down. It was almost impossible to get Scootch to wake up to latch on. He would just lie there with his eyes closed and lips shut tight. The nurses watched us. The lactation consultants watched us. "You are doing everything right. Just keep trying," they all said. I tried to hold him and give him as much skin-to-skin contact as possible. He was jaundiced and the nurses wanted him in the incubator under the lights as much as possible. At one point they gave him a special vest with the bili lights so that I could hold him more.
We were over two hours from home, staying in the Ronald McDonald House and going back and forth to the hospital. I was exhausted. There was no place for me to lie down at the hospital. I could only sit in a chair in the NICU. After a couple of days I had to give up on a few middle of the night feedings and try to get some more rest. I was able to leave enough pumped milk for them to give him through his feeding tube while I was gone.
After six days, I got to bring Scootch home. He had only nursed successfully a handful of times (I'm still a little surprised they let me take him home!). When we got home I was terrified. Would I be able to wake him and keep him alert so that I could get enough milk into him? At the same time, I knew nursing would be so much easier to do at home. I could lie on the couch or in bed with him all day and night and let him nurse whenever he wanted. I couldn't do that in the NICU.
After a couple of weeks, things got a lot easier and I no longer worried about Scootch feeding. He was nursing on demand without me having to wake him. He was thriving!
My biggest hurdle was yet to come. When Scootch was just over two months old, I got a bad stomach virus. It hit me really hard and I was taken to the emergency room (ER) by ambulance. At the hospital, the ER doctor was very concerned because I was so sick. He insisted on giving me a strong antibiotic that was not compatible with breastfeeding. I refused, asking to only have fluids and the medication to stop the vomiting. After a few hours, I decided to take the antibiotic. I checked with my local La Leche League Leader and she confirmed that this was one of the few antibiotics that are not compatible with breastfeeding. I could not nurse for 48 hours. This began 48 hours of "pumping and dumping" while Scootch was fed pumped milk from the freezer.
A few weeks later I still was not feeling 100 percent better. I went to the doctor and she ran some tests. It turned out I had clostridium dificil (C. dif). This is an intestinal bug that takes over when you have been getting too many antibiotics and have killed off too much of the "good bacteria." Looking back, I had been on IV antibiotics most of the time I was hospitalized for pre-term labor (just in case the labor was caused by an infection that they did not detect). I had also taken antibiotics when I had mastitis when Scootch was about a month old. The antibiotic from the ER was enough to push me over the edge. A "new" antibiotic, I was told, would cure me. Over the course of the next four months I took several more courses of antibiotics in an attempt to get rid of the C. dif. Every time I would feel better at first, then it would come back worse than before. I was rapidly losing weight, and I was already thin to begin with. Sometimes the diarrhea and cramping were unbearable. It was scary to be alone with my infant and toddler and not know if I was going to end up stuck in the bathroom, feeling as if I might pass out from the pain.
Sometimes I would get dehydrated, too. One time I became so dehydrated that I needed fluids by IV. When that happened, I completely lost my milk supply. I had no more milk in the freezer. "Should I give him some formula?" I wondered. I really wanted my son to only have my milk for as long as needed, but I didn't want him to go hungry either. I knew that if I gave him formula, he would be full and would not want to nurse, and right now, I needed him to nurse to tell my body to make milk. I told myself that as long as he was wetting enough diapers, and was not miserable and screaming, I wouldn't give him formula. I would get in bed with him (I was exhausted) and let him nurse continuously. It was about all that I had the strength to do. As long as he was nursing he was content, even though I was almost back to my pre-pregnancy A cup size and my breasts were soft and limp. After about 24 hours of constant nursing, my breasts were full again. My bra was no longer loose, and he was no longer eating all the time, he was back to every couple of hours. I was amazed at what my body and baby could do, even when I was so sick and weak.
I would feel my supply go up and down depending on how well I was able to stay hydrated. Normally, I had an abundant supply and Scootch would only take one breast per feeding. I could tell when my supply would drop because he would start taking two breasts per feeding. If I got really dehydrated, he would nurse constantly.
After a couple months, even my very breastfeeding supportive husband mentioned the possibility of weaning. I was so sick and weak and having such a hard time keeping any weight on. But I refused to wean.
Even though it took four months, a colonoscopy, and several doctors before I got better, I'm glad I never gave up on breastfeeding. I am so thankful I found the doctor who treated me with probiotic bacteria and special probiotic yeast that kills C. dif. It was very important to me because I knew it was best for Scootch. He went from the bottom of the growth chart as a preemie to about the 75th percent in weight during that time. At the same time, it was important to me because it was something I could do. Here I was, the mother to these two wonderful little boys, and I couldn't even care for them. I can remember my toddler asking me to push him in his swing during this time. It was out on our deck, no more than a few yards from the living room couch. It broke my heart that I was too tired to walk out there and push him in the swing. I could nurse lying down, and even in my sleep. Even if I could do nothing else as a mom, I could nurse my baby. Scootch went on to nurse for 14 months, and is now a happy, healthy nine year old.
I always knew I wanted to breastfeed my children. I couldn’t imagine doing it any differently. I was lucky enough to give birth to two beautiful boys and I enjoyed breastfeeding them both. Not that it was easy or without struggle, but it was what I wanted to do and loved doing it. In fact, I liked it so much, and felt so passionate about breastfeeding that I became a La Leche League Leader, so that I could help other breastfeeding moms. I really took to the idea of “Mothering through breastfeeding”. It wasn’t just a feeding method for me, but a relationship with my child.
My husband and I always talked about adopting a child who needed a family. We thought, if we can’t have kids of our own then we will adopt. Even if we can have kids of our own, maybe we will still adopt. After the birth of our second son it became clear that going through another pregnancy was not going to be good for me or our family. My doctor told me not to risk it, that my health was at stake. But we wanted another child. Well, here was our chance to adopt!
We chose to adopt a child out of foster care. We found an adoption agency that places foster children into adoptive homes. We went through all of the training, the homestudy, and all of the waiting. We were open to adopting one or two children (there are lots of sibling groups needing homes) between the ages of 0-5 years old. I knew that I really wanted to breastfeed another baby. I also knew that it was much more likely that we would get a toddler. There was also the issue of would it be okay to breastfeed a foster child? Would I just not tell anyone and do it anyway?
Either way I spent hours researching adoptive breastfeeding. I joined adoptive breastfeeding discussion boards like Ask Lenore and Four Friends. I read every book on the subject, includingBreastfeeding an Adopted Baby and Relactation. I read the article Foster Breastfeeding over and over. I tracked down foster moms who had breastfed their foster babies in California (some successfully, and one who described a baby being taken from her home after the baby’s doctor “turned her in”).
On Monday July 6, 2009, we drove to South Lake Tahoe (about a 2 hour drive) to meet with a social worker. We were one of a few families they were considering placing a newborn girl with. We knew that the baby was a “safe surrender” baby, and that she was born premature. They had already asked if we would be able to go stay in Reno (where she was in the hospital) so that we could have daily visits with her in the NICU until she was ready to come home. It would be a few more weeks until she was ready.
We learned at that meeting that we had been chosen to bring her home if we wanted. Also, the hospital had just called and she was ready to go home! The social worker asked if we could go out to Reno, spend the night in the hospital with the baby, and take her home the next day. Of course we said yes (and I cried, a lot!).
At one point in the meeting the social worker looked at me and asked, “Are you going to breastfeed her?” For a moment I wondered if this was a trick question. My heart skipped a beat. But it wasn’t a trick. “We were so excited to see that you are a La Leche League Leader, and were hoping that you would plan to breastfeed her.” I knew this baby needed to be breastfed and I wasn’t going to have to do it “behind closed doors” as many fost/adopt moms told me they did.
I told them that I would if I was allowed. They couldn’t think of any reason why not, but decided that we would not talk about it any more, or put it in writing anywhere. You just never know how someone might react. People can be weird about breastfeeding.
In that meeting we also learned that this little baby was a bit of a miracle. All of the doctors and nurses at the hospital could not understand why she was alive and doing so well. She was born in a campground in the mountains above Lake Tahoe. Her birth mother did not know she was pregnant. In fact she did not know she was giving birth until she heard the baby cry. The birth mother was taken to a local hospital while the baby was flown to the NICU in Reno. To this day I don’t know if the birth mom ever saw the baby, or even knows if it is a boy or a girl. She gave very little information at the hospital when she surrendered the baby (I won’t get into the paperwork mess that her in one hospital and the baby in another at the time of surrender lead to). She said that she drank alcohol about every other week and smoked a half a pack of cigarettes a day. She told them she did no illegal drugs, however she tested positive for THC (as well as alcohol) at the hospital after the birth.
The baby weighed 3 lbs 2.8 ounces at birth. She was exposed and unreachable by rescuers for 30-45 minutes after the birth. (Even a full term newborn can quickly succumb to hypothermia right after birth, not to mention a 3 lb baby.) At first they expected she whould be in the NICU for about 2 months. She surprised everyone when she needed no help breathing and was quickly eating and gaining weight.
When we went to meet her at the hospital she was 17 days old. The NICU nurses were very nice. They had all “adopted” her temporarily. It was clear that she was a very special baby to all of them.
However, she was exclusively bottle-fed formula that whole time and I was wanting to breastfeed her. I was told by the NICU nurses to “just shove it in there” when I held the bottle nipple to her mouth, waiting for her to open like she would for the breast. I was shown the “right” way to hold her and give her the bottle, with her on my lap, away from my body. She was to be fed on a strict every 3 hours schedule. We were told to not hold her too much. “You can’t hold her so much like that when you get her home. You need to put her down so that she can sleep. She really needs to rest.” I smiled and nodded, knowing that we would be leaving in a matter of hours and that when we got home this baby would not get put down for the next several months.
The NICU doctor told us that we MUST keep her on the special 22 calories per ounce formula until she was 12 months old, no matter what her pediatrician said, no matter how well she was growing. Again I smiled and nodded, knowing full well I was going to do everything in my power to get her off of this formula. I had my own “special formula” in mind for her.
We gave her a name we had picked out for a baby girl years earlier. The next morning when we took her home she weighed 4 lbs. 0.8 ounces.
When we got home I called my LLL co-leader and she drove into town and up the mountain to my house to bring me a hospital grade, Medela Symphony breast pump and a Starter SNS. I needed to get started on bringing in a milk supply! I also went on-line and ordered a Lact-Aid, the at-breast supplementer of choice of adoptive moms. On-line I also ordered domperidone (a prescription that has the side effect of increasing prolactin levels, that is not available in the US) from a pharmacy in New Zealand.
I took my baby up to my room and lay back on the pillows on my bed. I took off my shirt and put her in only a diaper. I put her warm, tiny little body on my bare chest. She wasted no time. She threw herself down and latched onto my right breast. She started sucking and her body completely relaxed. She was home. She had found her mommy. Now, I just needed to make some milk!
The first few weeks I tried to put formula in the Starter SNS and then the Lact-Aid and feed her at the breast. She could latch on great, but her suck was weak and she could not get any of the formula through the tube. I went ahead and got a full sized SNS to try as, unlike the Lact-Aid, liquid would flow out just with gravity. I bottle fed, and then tried the SNS a couple of times a day. Eventually she could get an ounce from the SNS. Gradually I increased the number of feedings at the breast. Soon she could nurse with the Lact-Aid and get formula from that as well.
After about a month I did all of the daytime feedings with the Lact-Aid. I ordered more parts so that I only needed to wash and prepare the Lact-Aid supplies once a day. Soon I fed with the Lact-Aid around the clock and completely eliminated all bottles. I stopped pumping at this point, as she was nursing very frequently. I encouraged her to nurse for comfort, or for what little milk she could get between formula feedings.
She was such a good little nurser! She would nurse for a while on one breast, then let go and move to the other side. This is what breastfed babies will do naturally after finishing one breast, but I had to move the tube over to the other side so that she could keep eating. She would nurse and nurse for hours, even when she was getting very little milk. We would often take “nursing vacation” days when Papa took her big brothers out for the day. I carefully watched her weight gain to make sure I wasn’t being too stingy with the formula. I wanted to give her the smallest amount she needed so that she would nurse more and get more from me to help stimulate my supply.
Soon I was able to nurse her first thing in the morning and satisfy her. I would just keep nursing her until it became so frequent that it was clear she needed some formula.
I was so excited when I realized I could go from about 3am until 10 am without using formula. Then I could go until 11am, then 1pm, then 3pm! Before I knew it she would get formula at about 2 am and I didn’t need to give more until about 4 in the afternoon. I could go out of the house with her all morning and not need to bring bags of formula! I was exclusively breastfeeding for more than half the day! She soon gave up her pacifier that she came home from the hospital with. Once you have the real thing, no substitutes will do!
When it got to the point that she needed two, 2-4 ounce servings of formula in the evening I stopped using the Lact-Aid. If I had to fill one more bag or clean out the tubing one more time I was going to go crazy!! She was 5 months old when she was only breastfeeding with the exception of two bottles of formula in the evening, getting a total of 4-8 ounces per day. She would nurse both before and after the bottles of formula. I really wanted to breastfeed exclusively, but this was pretty darn good!
At 6 months old I started to offer her solid foods. She LOVED them! She was on WIC and they gave her an obscene amount of jars of fruits and vegetables and boxes of baby cereal. She gobbled it all up. Within a week we had dropped one serving of formula and the next week we dropped the last one. She was now EXCLUSIVELY BREASTFED! (Well, along with some solids, but close enough!) She never had a bottle again. In fact, the one time I left her at 9 months old for a few hours, she would have nothing to do with a bottle.
I thought that when she turned one year I would stop taking the domperidone. As I tried to wean off of it my supply really dropped. Baby got pretty frustrated. So, I did some more research and decided it was safe for me to continue to take the domperidone longer and ordered another 6 month supply. Making More Milk describes a study showing no adverse effects for people taking 120 mg/day for over 10 years, and although for a while I took as much as 160 mg/day, I am down to only 90 mg/day.
At 15 months old she is still going strong. I really enjoy nursing her to sleep at nap time and bedtime. I love cuddling in bed with her early in the morning and hearing her gulp down my milk. I can’t imagine stopping any time soon.
When I breastfed my boys my goal was to nurse them for at least two years, as this is the suggested minimum by the World Health Organization. I learned about so many benefits of breastfeeding well into toddlerhood, that I really wanted to do this. Sadly, I only nursed my boys 14 months each. We ended early for different reasons with each, but both times I was disappointed that I did not make my goal. I still feel like I let them down, even though I know that I did the best I could at the time with the given circumstances. I am hopeful that I can nurse my daughter at least 2 years, and as long as she wants. I got another chance.
ETA: In February 2012 Cafemom sent out a crew to interview me about breastfeeding my adopted baby. The kids and I actually had lots of fun. The film crew was great and they really fought to get here. They needed to get new tires on their van to make it to our house due to the snow storm.
