Rachel, thanks for sharing the additional information about this baby!  I
had assumed that, with the infrequent, traumatic nursings and projectile
vomiting, the baby would have been supplemented with bottles and taking them
better than the breast, in order to have doubled his birth weight in six
months, especially since you said the mother had been pumping.  Do you know
what kind of bottle nipples were tried with him?  That could provide a few
clues into what, specifically, is causing the problem, too.

This is sounding more like the aversion to breastfeeding that we have seen
with babies adopted at an older age.  These can be very serious and
challenging to deal with, especially in babies who have experienced an
exceptional amount of trauma (like painful surgical procedures or battering
by parents), prior to being placed for adoption.  To start with, the
aversion is to being held in a position where latching on to the breast is
possible, but it can easily progress into a specific aversion to
breastfeeding, when there is any trauma, as the adoptive mother tries to get
her breast into the baby's mouth, hoping that, once he gets a taste of milk,
he will learn to like it.  Julia had an aversion to bottles (which she would
take to some extent, but took no comfort in and would not suck on for more
than a couple minutes) when I got her, and soon developed one to the breast,
with my initial attempts at nursing her.  I succeeded in taking her from
screaming, gagging and vomiting (followed by fainting and an hour or so of
being hypoxic) when I tried to get her to take my breast, to spending hours
nursing happily and peacefully, by doing alot of detective work to try to
figure out specifically what she was reacting to, and working to gradually
eliminate everything that was upsetting her and replace it with something
that she could accept.

The specifics of this baby's case are not the same as Julia's, but I think
the basic principle is the same.  The broken bones could sure have created a
situation where this baby learned that feeding was something painful, but I
would bet that this is only part of the equation.  Do you know if there are
any things that this baby IS comfortable sucking on? With Julia, I had to
digress to finding a way that she could suck comfortably, and learn to take
pleasure from it, before I could get anywhere on nursing her.  Finding some
way that this baby can suck peacefully on something, and letting him spend
as much time as he wanted doing it, while being held however he is most
comfortable, could help get at the foundation of the problem, and provide a
basis for helping him start to see breastfeeding in a positive light.  Mom's
finger would be the ideal thing to do this with, for several reasons.
Finger feeding could be attempted, (with great control on when and how much
milk he got) but also, a finger avoids having the baby become attached to an
inanimate object, which could create other problems that would interfere
with breastfeeding and the mother/infant bond.  If an inanimate object is
the only thing that can be found that he will be content and relaxed,
sucking on, I would really avoid letting him have it when he is not in his
mother's arms. Of course, lots of skin to skin would be important too.

Anyway, Rachel, I certainly agree that this mother deserves much praise for
hanging in there with nursing, and that she deserves to have the experience
of peaceful, comforting feeding, as much as her baby does.  It would be nice
if she could see you, in person, but I think the fact that she has managed
to keep going this long, and have her baby growing and developing normally,
suggests that she has the commitment and resourcefulness needed to figure
out how to accomplish her goal.  I am copying the URL for my article on
Julia on LLLI's site, just in case it might help the mother, or you, come up
with some ideas.  One of the things that helped me break the stalemate I was
in with Julia was hearing about a baby whose mother was gone for a few days,
whose exhausted and frustrated father finally found would take a bottle, if
he took his shirt off and put the bottle under his arm.  The situation was
very different from mine and Julia's, but helped me get the creative juices
flowing and finding what we needed to do.  I also have a German article,
from Stillnachrichten.

I would also suggest consulting a chiropractor or osteopath, and also
experimenting with finger foods, which could help the baby learn to see
feeding in general in a more positive light.

Best Wishes!
http://www.lalecheleague.org/NB/NBSepOct93p135.html




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