Anh:

My heart goes out to you.  I was so perplexed with the situation when reading
your post, and then so moved (almost to tears) to hear you say it was your
own baby.  I send my love and support to you over the Internet-waves!!  :-)

The first thing that struck me is that the docs seem not to be observing the
most obvious point here--the baby was having developmental issues BEFORE
birth and BEFORE breast.  It so frustrates me to hear a supposedly
"breastfeeding supportive" doc attack breastfeeding before looking at
anything else.  Over and over I see that we have such a distrust of the
breast in our culture today.  CLEARLY (to me anyway), the baby is having some
other kind of physical issue that is unrelated to "breastmilk synthesis."

Some questions you might consider--Is your baby nursing enough?  Could you
get more feeds in during a 24 hour period somehow?  Are you co-sleeping with
unlimited nighttime nursing?  Doing this might increase the amount of milk
consumed in a 24 hour period quite easily.  Increasing your breastfeeds might
allow your baby to intake enough to thrive again while other extemperaneous
physical issues are being explored.  What about using an appetite stimulant
(maybe herbal or in the vitamin realm) that might help baby be more
interested in nursing more often?  Also, is there another doctor who is
willing to look at the real culprit (some kind of physical issue that is
blocking the baby from absorbing somehow the appropriate nutrition from your
milk)?

I so want to clarify that I do believe something else is going on here beside
not enough feeds.  I don't want to blanketly and naively say, "Just nurse
more often and that will solve all the problems."  However, I do think it
prudent to increase feeds at breast whenever possible to get baby to a level
where he/she can be sustained at breast while other physical factors are
being looked into.  IMHO I think something else is going on here that first
reared its head in utero.  It is beyond me how that can't be obvious to the
docs.

Jessica Harrison Carlyon, MBA, CD, CLE

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