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