I always knew I would breastfeed because of my bad allergies and that
everything my mom feed me before 6 months i was allergic to.

Then with baby #1 reality struck, I was a gestational diabetic (who kept
passing out from low blood sugar), with pre-eclamsia, baby was delivered via
c-section 5 weeks early,  after 3 plus days of  failed pitocin induction (dr
thought baby was over 8 pounds via ultrasound -- she was barely 6 lbs).

She  & I were so fluid over loaded that she lost 14 oz in the first 24 hours
( i lost 32) -- and they were feeding her formula in the nicu on a separate
floor -- for fear that she might get hypoglycemia (she never did get or have
it).  Projectile vomited at every similac feeding they gave her.  after 10
hours  of this garbage and still no pump for me.  I started screaming for my
baby they said she was fine -- sure.   She was also tounge tied -- clipped at
age 7 years.

We had ABO blood incompatibility.  Can anyone say JAUNDICE (we were
discharged over the holiday weekend with a bili of 15 and rising -- idiots).
  for the next 2 days baby got my milk, via a nipple over my nipple with the
prescribed glucose water afterwards.

Two days after discharge baby was back at the hospital getting her bili
checked.  Pedi said breastmilk jaundice (day 5)  give 2 oz formula every 2
hours (vomited it all up).  Mom is in corner pumping with a garbage pump
crying that i was poisoning (remember this is before i became a zealot) my
baby with the formula.  Baby only got 4 & 1/2 bottles of formula before i had
enough of my own milk to give her.  To this day the pedi doesn't know that i
used my own milk to bring her bili down.

It was a frantic call to my local LLL that got us back on track -- I was her
very first call (baptisim by fire) we lived real close so she came over, and
got me a sns to help feed my little one while we undid all the bad advise i
had gotten. She is now IBCLC and working with my company (we have come full
circle)

Well --- the day she was 6 weeks old i said if she did not figure it out I
quit (1 week past her due date) -- guess what she latched on like a champ and
nursed for the next 2.5 years --- she was unable to tolerate cows milk until
she was almost 5 years old.

All this bad advice led me to start my company, because I felt then and still
do that no other mother on the face of the globe needs to go through the
garbage we did.  And the rest is History.

Baby number 2 was at the breast in less than 2 hours after my section and was
gaining 2.5 oz per day the first few weeks of life.  She nursed past her
second birthday also -- i can't tell you the exact date she weaned it was so
gradual.


Sorry that this is so long. but my buttons got pushed today, in this fine
holiday season to see that after 10 years this sort of trash is still going
on.


Best of the season to you all

Anne Norton-Krawciw, RPh, IBCLC
The LC Pharmacist
Breastfeeding Specialists Inc
Sterling Heights MI  USA