It's Never too Late to Lactate!

Imagine this...your child is born from an un-medicated, pain free birth and the doctor puts the child on your chest. This beautiful newborn locks eyes with you, falls in love and nuzzles its way to your breast where it latches on and drinks the sweet milk you made just for him. This was exactly what my experience was going to be. It's pretty much what the breastfeeding class said was going to happen. I would then go on to exclusively breastfeed my son until he was done with it. If I came across any issues, which I wouldn't because it is so natural and easy, I was giving birth in a "pro-breastfeeding" hospital so they would help...in case the sarcasm wasn't clear, this was NOT my experience. In fact, my experience was basically nurses slamming my son onto my boob, commenting on my nipples, a nurse pulling out every artificial piece of equipment my insurance would pay for, and excuse after excuse as to why the lactation consultant couldn't see me.

I left the hospital convincing myself that Jack was doing fine with nursing and went home. The first night Jack had pink powdery urine. We googled it and were informed by the great authority of Google that he was dehydrated, that combined with no wet diaper in the last 12 hours we freaked out and gave him a bottle of some formula that we got in the mail (those sneaky formula companies). He slept and seemed fine, the next feeding I tried to nurse him and he screamed. That was it, I wasn't going to torture my newborn baby so I gave him a bottle. I called the LC at the hospital the next morning, crying hysterically about my formula fed baby. She told me to pump every 2 hours to get my milk to come in and to get nipple shields. Pumping every 2 hours when you are home alone with a newborn is near impossible. Every time I sat down to pump, he cried...I resigned myself to not breastfeeding. I cried every day about it. I think I was more emotional about this than I have been about anything in my life, even someone dear to me dying. I felt like a failure, a mutant...I questioned whether I was committed enough to my child, and whether our relationship was doomed.

About 2-3 weeks later I took my son to his doctor because he had mucus and blood in his stool. It turned out he had, still has, a milk protein allergy and needed special formula. I was crushed, I was convinced that if I breastfed, it would not have happened. I started to read online about relactating. This is something so rarely talked about that even my computer thinks that it isn't a word and marks it with a red-dotted line. This IS a word. In fact there have been cases of adoptive mothers relactating and breast feeding their adopted child.

Now that the initial overwhelming new baby chaos was dying down, I was committed to do this and saw it as a second chance. So this is what I did (this was about 3 weeks postpartum)

• I rented a hospital grade pump from Babies R Us. This cost me about $80 a month and the flange and tubing kit was about $45 (should have kept the kit from the hospital)
• I went on a dairy-free diet
• I pumped every 2 hours 24/7, this meant setting my alarm at night and getting up to pump
• I did 1 power pump a day (pumping for 10 minutes on, 10 minutes off for an entire hour)
• I took 3 pills of fenugreek and blessed thistle 3 times a day! (I smelled like honey)
• If Jack wouldn't let me put him down, I was able to hold him in the Bjorn while pumping
• I did at least 1 hour a day of skin to skin
• When I gave him a bottle I did it in cradle hold position and put the bottle near my armpit, like it was my breast
• I would try to get Jack to latch, but until I was producing more, he wasn't so interested
• Once he began to latch I did a few nursing vacations. This is where you spend the day in bed with the baby latched most of the day and nursing continually. It is great for building supply and a sweet bonding time.

The first few days I got nothing, but still pumped. After that I would get drops here and there. After a few weeks I was getting maybe an ounce total. I called a lactation consultant. She set me up with a nipple shield and an SNS. I fed Jack his formula from the SNS and got him to latch. At about 2 months old I had him latching without the SNS (with the nipple shield). He still needed formula as I was not producing enough. At my best, Jack was getting about 75% breastmilk. Not bad for not breast feeding for the first month of his life.

With a baby already suseptable to prefering the bottle, when I went back to work when he was 4 months we developed issues again. He would cry hysterically when I tried to latch him and push away. He just wanted a bottle. Between this and the fact that I didn't pump well (never more than an ounce each side), my heart broke and after long talks with the lactation consultant and a local LLL leader, I threw in the towel. I still consider this a relactating success story, and don't want wishful moms looking for hope to be disappointed. I am fully confident that if I had not gone back to work at this critical time in our nursing relationship, I would have continued to breast feed fine.

Many months and almost $500 later (lactation consultant and pump rental), what am I left with? Well I am not left with the breastfeeding experience I imagined. I am not left with a breastfed baby that I sweetly nurse to sleep every night. Honestly, I am still left with shoulda, coulda, woulda's, guilt, and sadness. However, I am also left with an amazing, healthy, intelligent, cuddly child, and a wealth of knowledge, commitment, and conviction for my next breastfeeding experience. I am glad that I had the few months of nursing that I had.

I hate the looks I get from nursing mothers when I pull out my formula and bottle. I know they think I don't care, wasn't strong enough, or gave up. Little do they know what I went through and did. I think this experience has given me an awesome new appreciation for how people provide for their children. The lessons that I have learned from this experience are innumerable. Most importantly, I learned that life doesn't have to be one way or the other, a happy medium sometimes is just right. Even if that happy medium is actually settling, and maybe not what you really wanted, the perspective of being in the middle makes the paths to both ends much more visible for next time.

This is a picture of Jack during one of our nursing vacations when he was about 2.5 months old.