Breastfeeding Perspectives- Adoptive Breastfeeding

Here are the stories of two women who were willing to share about their experiences adoptive breastfeeding.  You can find some introductory info about them here.  I hope this is informational and encouraging!

Why did you decide to try breastfeeding your adopted child?
Bryonie: I would love to say it was primarily because I wanted my son to have the best nutrition and the fastest attachment to me. That was only a part of it. I really wanted the experience!
Samantha: I have always wanted to be one of those breastfeeding, baby-wearing mamas. When my husband and I began making steps toward adoption five years after struggling with infertility, my desire to breastfeed my future children was still there. I actually had never heard of adoptive breastfeeding until the required pre-adoption training my agency held. I remember feeling shocked and really excited over the possibility.

Where did you go for help/resources?
Bryonie: I read whatever I could find online. Several of our adoption books had small sections about adoptive breastfeeding as did What to Expect. There is a lot of help available, but it’s interesting that nearly everyone qualified their advice with, “This might work, but it might not, so don’t get your heart set on it.”
Samantha: I have spent hours upon hours researching adoptive breastfeeding online. I didn’t really have anyone to talk to in person, so blogs and adoption forums were very helpful to me.

What has been the biggest benefit of breastfeeding your adopted child?
Bryonie: There is no doubt that it fostered a bond between us from the very earliest hours of Judah’s life. I know he got a good amount of breastmilk along with his formula, which is always a plus. But now that I have a second adopted baby – a little girl that I was not able to breastfeed – it makes me wonder how much of a difference the breastfeeding really made. I already have a powerful bond with this new little one, now four months old.
Samantha: When my husband and I decided to adopt from foster care, I began to research adoptive nursing for toddlers. The chances were, we would be adopting a toddler, not a newborn like I had originally thought. But I was determined to know IF it was done and then HOW it was done. What I found was a community of adoptive parents that support breastfeeding, even if the child they are welcoming home is 1, 2, 3, or even 4 years old. My daughter came home as a newly turned 4 year old. She had been in foster care since she was 6 weeks old. The biggest benefit of breastfeeding with her was the bonding we both experienced. I saw such a change in her emotional connection to me. It was wonderful.

What has been the hardest struggle?
Bryonie: The whole time I was breastfeeding Judah I was stressed out. At the beginning it was guilt that somehow if I tried harder I would be making more milk. As things progressed it was fear that he wasn’t getting enough and I was keeping him perpetually hungry. When I decided to quit it was guilt that I didn’t keep pressing forward.
Breastfeeding, as I’m sure every mom would say, is very emotional. It is so inextricably tied to your own personhood – your own motherhood – your own ability to nurture and feed and love your baby. I was never able to make enough to give him only breast milk, and as he got older and hungrier my body could manage less and less of his need. I had people tell me that I should be grateful for the breast milk he did get and the bonding time we did have. But it didn’t work like that. Living in the world of breastfeeding made me feel like I should be doing it all the way and I just wasn’t trying hard enough or working hard enough. If I had just pumped a little longer or more often. If I drank more water. If I spent more time with Judah at the breast…etc. etc. It was wearying. Now, looking back, it seems like I was so focused on being a good breastfeeding adoptive mom that I was distracted from my central job of learning how to mother my son.
Samantha: The hardest struggle has actually been with how much my daughter rejected me, emotionally and physically, prior to breastfeeding. For the first 3.5 months she was home we had snuggle time with a bottle then moved on to breastfeeding when she was ready. The amount of growth I saw in her attachment to me was so sweet and an answer to prayer. She began to allow me to hug and cuddle her, instead of always pushing me away.

What has been the reaction from friends/family/strangers that you’re choosing to breastfeed?
Bryonie: Everyone was wonderfully supportive. I had no negative feedback – only cheerleaders. I rarely did it in public since I felt self-conscious so I was never in a context when a stranger would have noticed a white mom breastfeeding a black baby.
Samantha: I chose to keep breastfeeding private and didn’t tell family or friends. Since I was only breastfeeding for the benefits of bonding and attachment, and not for nutrition, I was always able to breastfeed in the privacy of my own home.

What kind of work did you need to do to prepare your body?
Bryonie: Hard work! We were matched with our first birthmom a couple months before she was due. I went to the lactation consultants I had been referred to and they loaded me up with all kinds of herbal teas and pills and sent me home with a breastpump and a rigorous schedule of tea drinking and pill popping. The pumping was a novelty at first, but quickly became not-so-fun and a few weeks later it was miserable. And I was hardly making anything. That adoption fell through in a devastating way and I put all the breastfeeding stuff away and didn’t look at it for a while. When Judah’s birthmom came into our lives I pulled it out and started up again. This time I had about three months. I also started taking a hormone called domperidone, recommended by a friend of mine and signed off on by my OB. This made a big difference. The herbal stuff wasn’t doing anything, but the domperidone started working almost immediately. I still wasn’t making that much, but it was something to go on.
I told our birthmom that I wanted to breastfeed and she thought I was crazy, but she was very supportive. I was in the room when Judah was born and only a few minutes after all the drama of his birth she yelled across the room to the nurse that I wanted to breastfeed and would that be ok? I was mortified! I already felt awkward and out of place in the birthing room. I was holding this little baby stranger and was feeling joy, but also a lot of fear. Suddenly I had to follow through with my plan and breastfeed him. It was the best thing though – I was able to have those first moments when he was alert and he latched on right away. He knew exactly what he was doing and he gets all the credit for making the whole thing work.
Samantha: After my daughter showed signs of wanting to breastfeed and not just have a bottle, I began taking a prescription drug that induces lactation. I also took supplements to help with milk supply.

How is adoptive breastfeeding different from breastfeeding a baby you birthed? (equipment? supplements? formula?)
Bryonie: It was pretty clear after just a couple days that I was going to have to supplement. The child was just plain hungry and it was cruel to force him to suckle when there wasn’t enough for him. Formula has been a happy part of our household for a couple years now. It’s pretty amazing stuff – so much more advanced than it used to be!
I already mentioned the drug I was on – safe, by the way, for the baby and for me (in case anyone is freaking out reading this!).
I also used a supplementary nursing system – a mess of tubes that allows the baby to get formula at the same time that he suckles, which promotes both the bonding and the milk stimulation. (It is a pretty amazing thing, but not very fun to use.)
Samantha: I had to use a supplementer, since my milk supply was never enough to keep her interest. There is something called a Lact-aid that can be ordered online that worked really well.

What advice to do you have for the woman considering breastfeeding her adopted child? 
Bryonie: I would say, “Go for it!” And then quickly add, “But hold it lightly!” There are so many other ways of bonding with your baby. The most important thing is that your baby feels loved and safe. Sometimes that can be accomplished through breastfeeding and sometimes it can’t. And formula is wonderful. It really is!
I would also warn them against the rhetoric of “breast is best” and La Leche League and other similar groups. In adoption there are a lot of other factors that play into a mother’s bond with her child. Breastfeeding can potentially be a help, but sometimes it is more of a curse in which case it should be abandoned entirely.
Samantha: If you are interested in breastfeeding your adopted toddler, it is possible! There are websites that can guide you on what to do to prep your body and private forums where you can safely have your questions answered. I’m so glad I tried it!

When in the adoption process do you need to make that decision?
Bryonie: Like I mentioned before we now have a second adopted baby, a daughter. We were called about her only a few days before we brought her home. I had no time to prepare my body and she had already been on a bottle for close to two weeks. It would have been cruel to force us both into breastfeeding. You need at least a month, ideally more. Check out: http://www.fourfriends.com/abrw/ and http://kellymom.com/bf/got-milk/adoptivebf/
Samantha: For infant adoptive breastfeeding, it’s good to start prepping your body a couple to a few months before the baby’s due date, so that you can begin nursing when the baby arrives. For toddler adoptive breastfeeding, it’s best to follow your child’s lead, so it looks different for every family. I didn’t do anything to prepare my body for nursing until my daughter had been home for 3 months.

If you had it to do over again, is there anything you would do differently about your breastfeeding experience?
Bryonie: I am so grateful for those months I had breastfeeding Judah. I count them as a gift from a kind Father in Heaven. I would definitely do it again if the circumstances were right for it. And the next time around I would be much more relaxed emotionally and not feel like so much of myself and my motherhood were invested in making breastfeeding work. I guess I would let down a bit more…no pun intended. 🙂
Samantha: I actually am very happy with what I did. The result was different than I expected, but that is probably very typical! I expected to breastfeed for up to a year, but my daughter was only interested for about 3 months.
I don’t plan on breastfeeding again because I think it is only safe to plan on TRYING to breastfeed. If any child I adopt in the future has been through trauma or had to suffer the loss of his/her biological mother at a young age like my daughter, I will attempt to breastfeed if he/she is younger than 5 years old. I will likely want to offer breastfeeding to the child as an option in addition to bottlefeeding and see what happens. I believe that a child that was deprived of the bonding experience of breastfeeding or bottlefeeding with their biological mom will benefit from breastfeeding or bottlefeeding with their adoptive mom.

Are there any misconceptions out there about adoptive breastfeeding?
Bryonie: I think I was able to go into it with eyes open. I had been told by friends and my lactation consultant and others that I should not expect at all to be able to breastfeed exclusively. There is very little false hope offered, which is a good thing.
But, as a new mom and a new adoptive mom and someone very insecure in both roles it was so easy to fall into traps. It’s so easy to think that the most important thing is to breastfeed. Or the most important thing is to form a bond with your baby as fast as possible. These are both lies and they prey on us. The most important thing for a mother is to love her baby. The breastfeeding might be a happy by-product. The bond will, usually, be a happy by-product. Love is the goal and the end. Love is what we strive for. Only two years into this adventure of motherhood I see more and more clearly that I know so little of the kind of mother-love my children need. I am entrenched in learning how to lay down my life for my toddler who drives me crazy. Breastfeeding seems worlds away!
Samantha: I think more than misconceptions is the lack of any knowledge of it at all. I had never heard of adoptive breastfeeding before a couple of years ago. I was so interested in the fact that it was possible at all. But yes, as for misconceptions, I think a typical one is that for adoptive infant breastfeeding, a mom will be able to produce all the milk her baby needs, while it is much more realistic that the mom will be able to produce some milk and will have to supplement the rest.

Anybody have follow-up questions?  I think these ladies would be glad to answer if you leave them in the comments section below.