Anna, who was on LactNet a while ago, gave me permission to forward this to
you. Regards, Annelies.
==============
From: Anna <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 1997 22:06:04 +0000
Subject: Parent-l: Milk for My Baby article (very long)

Hi,
the following article has been written by myself in the vain hope that I
might get the story into some decent publication. It is coming out in my
NCT Newsletter tomorrow. Names have been changed.
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
        MILK FOR MY BABY

When she was pregnant, Jody had hoped to breastfeed. When the
breastfeeding support she needed after the birth didn't materialise, she
reluctantly decided to bottlefeed instead. Had her baby thrived on
formula, that probably would have been the end of the story, but Jody's
baby, Amy, did not thrive. This is the story of how an extraordinary
mother helped her baby.

Jody had a history of infertility, so Amy was a desperately longed-for
baby. The labour was long and difficult and did not go well, ending in
an emergency Caesarean under an epidural. Immediately Amy was delivered,
Jody was asked if she was breastfeeding.
        "I said, 'Yes', but she was not put to the breast straight away,
probably because they were cleaning me up and it was early in the
morning, about 4.30am, and they wanted me to sleep."

After the epidural and Caesaren, Jody suffered paralysis of her legs for
several hours and was in a lot of pain, so she could not sit up or get
her baby out of the crib by herself. In fact, it wasn't until 6.30am,
when Amy was screaming from hunger, that Jody finally managed to get a
nurse to help her with feeding Amy.
        "It took me about half an hour to get a nurses attention because
I couldn't sit up and reach the nurses switch," she says.

But getting the nurse's attention wasn't the end of the story. Amy was
put in bed with Jody, but she didn't know how to position her on the
breast. She had read quite a few books on breastfeeding while pregnant,
because Amy was a long awaited baby and Jody wanted the very best for
her, but none of the books she had read showed how to breastfeed lying
down, after a Caesarean. Jody was desperately tired by this point, but
too scared to fall asleep with the baby in the bed with her and her
nipple was cracking and bleeding. Looking back, she does not feel the
position was correct for Amy to get a proper feed.

By the morning, Jody was begging for help with the breastfeeding.
        "I asked on numerous occasions, but no one actually came to see
me at all and I began to get very, very tearful."
        "In the end, a nurse came over to me and said 'Are you trying to
breastfeed for your sake or the baby's?' I burst into tears. I went off
to have a bath and when I came back, the nurse was bottlefeeding my
baby."

Initially, a part of Jody was relieved because it seemed the nurse had
made the decision for her and at least her baby was at last getting a
"proper" feed. At the time, she was exhausted, in pain and her nipples
were hurting and she just wanted someone to take the baby away from her
so she could rest. She thought that this meant she had no choice but to
bottle-feed.

Unfortunately, from the beginning, Amy was violently sick after every
feed. Jody was told it was because she had swallowed mucous during the
birth and not to worry, but she noticed that Amy seemed to be
exceptionally sick and was taking in far more formula than she was
supposed to be taking.

By day three, when Jody and Amy were discharged from hospital, Amy had
broken out in eczema. Jody was told that it was due to her skin "getting
used to life outside the womb" but by the time she took the baby to her
GP a few days later, her skin was already cracking and bleeding.
        "I suppose I knew really, at the back of my mind, that something
was seriously wrong but the nurses had convinced me that this was just
her getting used to life outside and that was what I kept telling
myself. I was actually embarassed about other people seeing how bad my
baby's skin was. Babies are supposed to have lovely soft, glowing skin,
and there was my baby with cracked, bleeding skin and vomited violently
all the time. I felt ashamed."

Jody was advised to change formula which showed a slight improvement in
her eczema, but still made Amy ill. So began the endless procession of
different formulas, none of which really suited her.
        "By this time, Amy was not gaining weight at all. In fact, she
was losing weight and she looked very pathetic. She was very lethargic
but when she was awake, she screamed all the time. She suffered frequent
chest infections and her skin kept breaking out."

Amy was drinking 84oz of formula a day, and still losing weight, despite
keeping down a significant portion of this milk. The doctors seemed to
be at a loss to explain it. They recommended solids at 6 weeks old, in a
vain attempt to improve Amy's weight-gain. Jody was desperate, so she
took this advice, despite concerns over the well-known link between
early solids and allergies. She now believes this is how Amy was
sensitised to highly allergenic foods like eggs and wheat. She recalls
that Amy's face "blew up like a balloon" the first time she was exposed
to babyfood containing eggs, for instance.

Eventually, they were referred to a Paediatrician who put the baby on
soya formula. But Amy's condition remained much the same: at almost 6
months old, she weighed about 10 lbs (she was 7lbs 2oz at birth). Then
they tried the chemical "hypoallergenic" formulae, but the taste was so
disgusting, Amy refused to drink it.

Jody felt the doctors had tried everything and had no where else to go.
At the same time, Jody says she was feeling extremely guilty about not
breastfeeding.
        "I am absolutely convinced that had I breastfed, we would not
have had all these problems. Breastmilk is made for the baby, after all.
I used to feel so guilty because, as I saw it then, this had happened
simply because I had wanted to sleep and because of the temporary
problem of sore nipples. I thought I had caused my child to suffer. It
was so hard to come to terms with, especially as I then believed it was
too late."

Jody tried to put this thought out of her mind, until one day a friend
was talking about a technique to enable adoptive mothers to breastfeed,
even though they may have never been pregnant, called "induced
lactation".
        "I thought it was one of those way-out American ideas but after
we talked about it for a while, I started thinking it might be worth a
try for me."

Jody learned that for women in her situation, it was known as "re-
lactation". She learnt it could be very hard work, with no guarantee of
success, but the basic principle was that the breasts would produce milk
in response to stimulation - ideally, a suckling baby, but a breast-pump
or even manual expression could work if done often enough, at least
every couple of hours.

Knowing very little about the details, but determined to try absolutely
anything that might help her baby, Jody began using a simple manual
breastpump, every couple of hours, day and night.
        "The strange thing was that almost as soon as I knew that re-
lactation was possible, my body started to produce milk - as if it knew
that it had to do something for my baby's survival."

She vividly remembers that first drop of milk, as she snuggled her baby
in bed with her (direct skin-to-skin contact is supposed to increase the
hormone levels) whilst using the pump. It was the confirmation to her
that it could be done.

After a few days of using the manual hand-pump, Jody's hand was
beginning to tire from the constant effort. She tried a battery operated
pump, but it was becoming clear that only a large, mains electric pump
would be up to the task. Luckily, another friend came up with just the
ticket - a hospital grade electric pump that she could borrow as long as
she liked.

This pump was a great improvement, but without the help of the hormones
you have when you have just given birth, and without the baby directly
suckling, Jody's milk supply could only be maintained by constant and
frequent pumping, and even then, her yields were not great.
        "Every couple of hours I sat there. I didn't go out for weeks
and it was over Christmas as well. I felt a bit like a milk machine but
I felt the survival of my child depended on it."

Within days of getting the hospital grade pump, Jody was finally able to
give Amy a bottle with 2oz of the precious expressed breast milk.
        "She gobbled the milk down and it was the first time she wasn't
sick after a bottle."

Those 2oz were an entire days supply of breastmilk but Jody felt that it
was Amy's "medicine" and tried not to focus on the amount. Gradually
Jody's supply crept up, until she was able to produce up to 6oz a day,
pumping every couple of hours in the day and four hourly at night.

I asked if such a little amount could really do anything for Amy?
        "It was like a magic potion," recalls Jody. "Her eczema has
vanished; her feeding has improved and she has become tolerant to many
other foods she couldn't tolerate before; they said she had reflux, but
that went the day she had her first 2oz of breastmilk. She went from not
really reaching her milestones to being quite advanced for her age; her
speech and muscle tone suddenly improved and she stopped being either
lethargic or screaming, and actually started being awake and happy."

However, there was little support for Jody's belief that her breastmilk
was the cause of these sudden improvements. She told her midwife, who
was initially very skeptical and Jody says she "made sarcastic comments
about it" but over the following few weeks, she was forced to change her
tune.
        "She used to insist on Amy being weighed every week, but then
her weight-gain took off so well that such frequent weighing was no
longer necessary."

The professionals couldn't believe the improvement in Amy's general
health and were surprised that Amy didn't have any more of the chest
infections once she started on the breastmilk. She began to accept all
kinds of food she previously wouldn't touch.

Surprisingly, despite Jody being convinced that her child was ill with
food allergies, her doctors will only admit to to an egg allergy (which
Amy has now grown out of). This is despite the fact that her child was
showing clear allergy symptoms before any solids were introduced.

Jody cannot understand why, despite all the evidence, no doctor will
admit to her that formula is the cause of her baby's illness, but
suspects that it is partly due to their ignorance of breastfeeding and
of re-lactation as a possibility.
        "They think there is formula and there is breastfeeding, and
once you stop breastfeeding, there is no other choice but to formula
feed. I feel doctors should be aware of re-lactation as a possibility
and women should be offered it as a choice."

She believes that she might have been able to get her baby back to the
breast properly if she had found out about re-lactation much earlier.
        "I did try Amy on the breast for quite a while, but she just
didn't have a clue and I don't think I could have pursued that
possibility for long, psychologically, after all that had happened".

Although getting Amy properly back to the breast was her ideal, Jody
decided to continue using the pump and bottle-feeding expressed
breastmilk. To her, it was an acceptable "halfway house" that enabled
her to monitor her baby's intake, and get breastmilk into her baby.

Sadly, Jody's attempts to pump breastmilk came to a rather abrupt end,
after almost 6 months, with a sudden illness that put her in hospital
and made continuing unwise. Thankfully, Amy is now able to tolerate
goat's milk (and many other foods) and is still doing well - a fact her
mother puts down to those months of breastmilk.

Talking to Jody, I was in awe at her perseverence despite so many nay-
sayers, including her doctors. I asked her how she had kept going for
all that time, with so much discouragement, and for just a few ounces of
breastmilk a day.
        "When your child is as sick as mine was, you don't care if it's
something you have to do for 24 hours a day. You want your child well
and your maternal instincts completely take over. I felt my child was
slowly dying before my eyes. I had to do something."

I asked Jody about any future babies she may have.
        "Nothing will stop me breastfeeding. Nothing," she says with
great conviction. I believe her!

I asked Jody about the guilt feelings she says she had at the beginning
of all of this.
        "It's made me feel like I've done something for my child that
should have been done in the first place. It has definitely relieved the
guilt, although I do still feel I should have breastfed. But I know I
cannot change that. I am very angry that the professionals let me down."
        "I definitely feel I've achieved something. It was really hard
work and I do think sometimes at the back of my mind 'I must have been
mad!' But I do believe I did my absolute best for Amy and part of me
always says 'What would have happened if I hadn't of done it?' and it
makes me feel sick to think about it."

Jody believes, rightly or wrongly, that her child may have died.
        "I don't know if it's me going totally over the top, but I
cannot see how she could have survived the way she was going".

Looking at photographs of Amy when she was a few months old, it is hard
to say that Jody is exaggerating. I honestly have not seen such a thin
and sickly baby outside a hospital. [NB: the first time I met this baby,
I posted to Parent-L in tears because I was so distressed. *I* thought
she was going to die, let alone her poor mother].

Today, Amy is a different child. Typing this interview from the tape has
been a hard task because of the frequent and enthusiastic "interuptions"
from a child who is still slim, but now full of life and energy! The
change is so enormous, I tend to believe her mother has somehow pulled
off a miracle.
- --
Anna (Mummy to Emma, born 17th Jan 1995, Alice, born 11th Sept 1996,
??? due 18th April 1998)
Email: [log in to unmask]  Web Page: http://www.ratbag.demon.co.uk/anna