I believe that breastfeeding a baby who is not expected to live very long is
often very comforting to the mother.

I realized this when a close friend had a baby who was anencephalic. This
was diagnosed during her pregnancy, and she knew the baby couldn't live. In
fact, it only survived for a short time. But during that time, her little
daughter was held and loved and nursed at her mother's breast, and she died
in her mother's arms. My friend told me that none of us really know how long
we will have any of our children, and all we can do is do our best for them
while we have them.

I kept this in mind when another woman that I knew, who was pregnant with
twins, was told that one twin had a fatal heart defect and would not survive
more than a few hours. She had planned to breastfeed, and thought perhaps
she should nurse only the healthy baby, and let the other one be bottlefed
until the time it died. I encouraged her to consider breastfeeding both of
them. I don't think breastfeeding makes the loss of the baby any worse - the
mother is already attached to her baby - and I think mothers often feel
better afterwards that the baby had even a few hours or days at the breast.

The best part of this second story is that her baby did, in fact, survive.
She breastfed both her twins (although it was difficult and the one was much
smaller and had many problems) and when the one with the heart problem was
about 18 months old, she had open-heart surgery to repair the problems. Both
are doing beautifully now. She calls her "my miracle" and she truly is - and
I can't tell you how glad she is that she decided to breastfeed both twins.

Teresa Pitman
LLL Leader, Guelph, Ontario

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