Everything You (N)Ever Wanted to Know About Adoptive Breastfeeding

Disclaimer: If you're the squeamish or delicate sort, you may want to skip this post. I'm not attaching any pictures to this post or anything, but consider yourself warned...

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Anyone who has read my blog for any length of time knows that I've been taking medicine to try to induce lactation so I could breastfeed Mr. Gabriel when he arrived. (You can read all about the reasons why, and my love-hate relationship with the protocol I've been on, over under the "Adoptive Breastfeeding" heading on the left side.)

After "How is Gabriel doing?", the question I've heard most often the past week is "Is he breastfeeding???"

Up until 2.5 days ago the answer was "Ummm...that's a work-in-progress."

Now my answer is: "WOOHOO! We're doing it! It's working! Praise the Lord!"



The long version:
Last Saturday morning when we knew that we might be getting a new son, I went ahead and skipped my lactation-inducing medicine, just in case, knowing that once I stopped it for good, it would take about three days for my milk to begin coming in. Skipping the medicine turned out to be the right thing to do, because we found out at about 2:30 that afternoon that the precious baby boy born the day before was in fact going to be our Gabriel.

Saturday night we were able to "room-in" with Gabriel at the hospital. When I mentioned that I was planning to try to nurse Gabriel, the night nurse (that we adored, btw) brought me a Medela SNS kit (Supplemental Nurser System). The very first time I tried it with Gabriel, he latched right on and downed the entire 2 ounces. I thought, "Oh. my. word. This is so easy!"

That is when it stopped being easy. He wouldn't latch on at all the next feeding, so I gave him a bottle. After having to work at it quite a bit during the next two feedings, he did latch on and drink good. And then...he just wouldn't latch on at all anymore. Sunday night after we got home with him, I tried one more time...and then decided to give up on trying to get him to latch for a while, until my milk came in good.

I talked to two different lactation consultants on Sunday and Monday. I began pumping every two hours during the day, every 3 hours at night. Oh, and per my protocol, when I stopped taking that medicine on Saturday, I began taking two herbs (galactagogues), Fenugreek and Blessed Thistle (I take 7 capsules with every meal). And drinking water like it's going out of style.

So I just fed Gabriel bottles with formula for the next several days, and pumped. To be honest, I was totally afraid to even try getting him to latch on again. I was very afraid it wouldn't work, and I didn't want it confirmed that breastfeeding wasn't going to work.

BUT, anyone who knows anything about breastfeeding knows that your milk isn't going to come in as good using a pump as compared to actually having your baby latch on. And, the clock was also ticking as far as my window for getting him to switch from a bottle to me.

One lactation consultant suggested I use a nipple shield, to make things more like Gabriel was used to. AND, (this is key) to put a dab of corn syrup on it, just to sweeten the deal for Gabriel and get him interested.

I sent out a prayer request to the precious mamas in my homeschool group on Thursday morning asking for prayer about breastfeeding. I got such sweet and encouraging responses - and I know they were sending up prayers - and Thursday afternoon I got brave and tried getting him to latch on again.

Sweet success.

And since Thursday morning, Mr. Gabriel has only had two 2oz. bottles of formula...the rest has been ME! I am over. the moon. about this.

I'm feeding him every 2-3 hours, then I immediately pump also (to try to keep increasing my supply).

That is the nuts-and-bolts version. I could wax poetic about how wonderful it is and how happy I am to be able to do this for my precious baby...but I'm a little hormonal and alot sleep-deprived and I would probably just sit here at the keyboard and cry like a baby (at least they'd be happy tears)...and I don't have time for that because I need to go feed Mr. Gabriel!