Breastfeeding

Nursing Through Pregnancy: First Trimester

Published January 25, 2012

Until fairly recently, I had never considered the idea of a pregnant woman nursing. Then, I learned that it could be, and was done, but I had no idea how, if at all, it might differ from nursing while not pregnant. In more recent months, a slew of bloggers seem to have both done it and written about the experience. Knowing what they dealt with has proven to be far more valuable than I ever dreamed. These women made it possible for me to shrug my shoulders at the challenges and tell myself, “don’t worry, it’s normal.” So, in hopes of benefiting others who may find themselves with a nursling and a growing belly, I wanted to write a bit about how the experience has gone for us, starting with the first trimester. Continue reading →

Posted in Breastfeeding, Pregnancy | 8 Comments

Gently Night Weaning a Toddler

Published December 29, 2011

Otherwise unrelated photos of the toddler in question.

As usual, Annabelle has done many new things this week, but the biggest change for all of us has been an end to nighttime nursing. Something about this pregnancy seems to have made Annabelle¹ want to nurse all the more, and many nights she was nursing all night long, which made for lousy sleep and an aching back for me. While I know that some women manage not only to tandem nurse, but to nighttime nurse two children, I also know that such an arrangement would make me personally a pretty grouchy mama. Continue reading →

Age 21 months, for those who aren’t aware. ↩

Posted in Balance, Breastfeeding, Parenting, Sleep, Toddlers | 14 Comments

Mammals and Their Mammary Glands, a Post About Breastfeeding

Published November 18, 2011

I have no recent nursing photos of my own, so I borrowed this one from Hobo Mama, via Flickr.

I have written before about the fact that in all my days of nursing anytime and anywhere, I have never once received a rude comment. For the most part, I have seen nothing but support for breastfeeding. Unfortunately, last week I received a reminder of the fact that some people are still hung up, confused, or ill informed when it comes to breastfeeding. I was on the phone with a nurse who called me for a telephone consult. I prefaced my question with a bit of background information on Annabelle, which included the fact that much of her nutrition comes from breastmilk. This nurse stopped me mid-sentence and asked, incredulously, “She’s still nursing? At 19 months!?” Of course this could be interpreted as positive or negative, but her tone said it all. She was far from supportive, and it really upset me. This slightly (okay, very) snarky post has been bouncing around in my head ever since. Continue reading →

Posted in Attachment Parenting, Breastfeeding, Food, Health, Infant Feeding, It takes a village to raise a child, Lactivism, Letters, Motherhood, Mothering | 16 Comments

Connection and Milksharing: A Lesson Learned

Published September 27, 2011

The idea of whether or not to nurse never really occurred to me, since I had been given plenty of opportunities to see babies fed in this natural way. As far as I was concerned, breastfeeding was the norm and there was no reason to consider another option. It also never occurred to me that it might actually be a difficult thing to do. A few weeks before my daughter’s birth, I realized that if I tried, I could hand express a bit of colostrum. Fantastic! We were all set!

After my daughter’s birth, she began nursing easily and there was never a single issue on her end of the deal. For me, however, there was. Due to a very strong suck, poor positioning, or some combination, I ended up in severe pain in the first days of my daughter’s life, and it lasted well beyond the first weeks. I dreaded nursing her because every feeding meant my wounds were reopened. One side was worse than the other, but both hurt awfully. I searched far and wide for a lactation consultant to help me figure out what we had been doing wrong and how to fix it, but our island does not have one. The nearest, it seemed, was Japan, which really is not near at all. I managed to push through thanks to some fabulous online support, but I was frustrated by the lack of local resources for women with breastfeeding issues. Even as late as my six week postpartum appointment, my nipples were so damaged that my OB encouraged me to begin nursing from one side only. She compared my wounds to a C-section scar, and asked me to return for a follow-up a month later so that she could make sure they were healing properly.

Going Strong at 18 Months

My daughter grew, and our nursing relationship continued. Eventually I did heal properly, and the pain of those first few months has become a distant memory. That experience, however, made me keenly aware of just how difficult breastfeeding can be in some cases. It also made me passionate about helping other nursing mothers – especially here on Guam where informed breastfeeding support is hard to come by. So, when a friend approached me about Eats on Feets, I was immediately interested in helping. Because of my daughter’s love of frequent nursing, I had enough milk for her and then some. I posted my offer of donor milk on my local chapter page, but the word about EOF was slow to get out in this part of the world and some time passed before anyone came forward with a need.

When my daughter was just under a year old, a mom who needed milk for her son posted on our local Eats on Feets page and I connected with her online. We made arrangements for our families to get together for dinner. I learned that she had needed a medical procedure immediately following her son’s birth that made it impossible for her to nurse right away. She struggled with supply from the start, but fortunately had a family friend with milk to share and this milk had been feeding her son since his birth. Her friend’s supply had begun to dwindle, however, and the mom was finding that she sometimes needed to supplement with formula. I was not pumping yet, but we all felt comfortable and I offered to start expressing and storing my milk for this mama’s sweet boy. She had found another donor through EOF, so I would be their third. The father, an MD, explained that, “It’s awesome! I mean, he gets three different sets of antibodies!”

Because I stay home with my daughter, I had never needed to pump my milk. I considered buying a pump, but I started out hand expressing and this worked so well that I decided pumping was unnecessary. I was able to express and freeze as anywhere from three or four to twelve ounces each evening, depending on how well hydrated I was and how much Annabelle had nursed that day. I kept in touch with my recipient family over the phone and on facebook, and when I had a good amount stocked up, they would come and pick it up.

Now, here’s the part where I need to be really honest. I was more than happy to share my abundance of milk for the benefit of any baby, and I think doing so is the most natural thing this side of a mama nursing her own baby at the breast. I would donate again in a heartbeat, but I was relieved when my recipient family moved off island, bringing the donor relationship to a natural end. My problem was that I failed to build a connection with the family I was donating to. This would be fine for a one time donation of milk I had stored away for no one in particular, but I was sitting down for fifteen or twenty minutes each and every day to express milk for a baby I had never even held. Our meetings to exchange milk were quick and easy, with only one parent getting out of the car.

Yesterday, Amy at Anktangle re posted her Milksharing How-To, and one of the suggestions she gave for mothers thinking about sharing their milk was to, “regularly check in with yourself on an emotional level, so you’re aware of how you’re feeling about donating your milk.” I didn’t do this, and I think it really would have helped. I didn’t understand at first why I was feeling so disappointed. After all, I was doing something that I really believed in: Helping a baby get species specific nutrition, and sticking it to those sleazy formula companies, all at the same time. Why didn’t I feel awesome? Eventually it occurred to me that the missing piece was connection.

My offer of donor milk still stands, and I’ll gladly start expressing again if someone comes forth with an ongoing need, but next time I’ll make a point of checking in with myself more often. I’ll make a point of building a friendship with my recipient family so that I can more freely give from the heart, of both my time and my milk, because that connection is important to me.

Have you ever donated your own milk, or received donor milk? What suggestions would you have for families considering the same?

Posted in Activism, Balance, Breastfeeding, Eats on Feets, World Milksharing Week | 13 Comments

World Milksharing Week

Published September 27, 2011

September 24th-30th is World Milksharing Week, celebrated to help raise awareness of donor milk as a viable option for babies who need something in addition to or in place of their own mother’s milk. To start off the celebration here, I’m sharing an updated version of an article I wrote at this time last year. Be sure to check tomorrow to read my personal milk sharing story.

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In recent history, the cultural norm for infant feeding has been pretty simple: some women nurse or express breast milk for their babies, while others feed their babies formula from a bottle. Until recently, I had never met, in person, a mom who did anything else. It seems that when there are breastfeeding problems, or a mother cannot or does not wish to nurse, the natural solution is infant formula. I’m sure that formula companies are quite pleased that their products are the immediate go-to for the vast majority of moms when breastfeeding is difficult, or is not an option for one reason or another, but this is an unfortunate scenario for infants.

The following excerpt is taken from the World Health Organizations’s Global Strategy for Infant Feeding

“The vast majority of mothers can and should breastfeed, just as the vast majority of infants can and should be breastfed. Only under exceptional circumstances can a mother’s milk be considered unsuitable for her infant. For those few health situations where infants cannot, or should not, be breastfed, the choice of the best alternative – expressed breast milk from an infant’s own mother, breast milk from a healthy wet-nurse or a human-milk bank, or a breast-milk substitute fed with a cup, which is a safer method than a feeding bottle and teat – depends on individual circumstances…Infants who are not breastfed, for whatever reason, should receive special attention from the health and social welfare system since they constitute a risk group.”

In other words, most every mother can breastfeed and doing so provides the greatest benefit to her offspring. In the rare circumstances when she cannot, the best alternatives, in order are:

Expressed milk from the mother
Milk from another healthy mother, at the breast, or expressed and fed using another method such as an SNS, cup, or bottle
Infant formula

In terms of what is healthiest for our children, infant formula should be the LAST resort, and as stated above, actually puts children who consume it at risk. It’s no surprise, however, that women tend to go straight for it when breastfeeding is not possible, or is not quite enough. The idea of using donor milk is almost unheard of, and is sometimes even treated as something completely wacky and counter-culture. Cross nursing (a woman nursing a child other than her own) is even worse – I mean who does that, right!? It’s a sad state of affairs when society fails to empower women to make the best possible choices for their children’s health. Once again, though, I’m sure Nestle and other formula companies are quite content with the way things are!

Fortunately, there are milk banks in a growing number of locations, but these generally serve NICU babies first and if they do have milk available for healthy babies, a prescription is required and at roughly three dollars an ounce or more, it can be cost-prohibitive. This milk is also pasteurized, which is good, of course, in that it helps to destroy any potential pathogens, but it also has a negative effect on some of the beneficial substances in human milk. So, while it is certainly superior to infant formula, human milk from a milk bank is not always easy to obtain and loses some of its nutritional and immunological value in the pasteurization process.

When one looks at the evidence, it becomes clear that cross-nursing, or donor milk directly from a healthy mother is actually quite a sensible choice, and the apparent taboo surrounding it is an unfortunate hurdle for mothers who have trouble breastfeeding. Women who realize this are speaking up, however. Milk Share, formed in 2004, is an informational resource and connection point for families in need of human milk and others who are willing and able to provide it – free of charge. Eats on Feets, a global milk sharing network launched last year, is another connection point whereby families in need can find mothers willing to donate milk. They have new chapters springing up all the time – we even have one here on Guam! This year saw the birth of yet another such network in Human Milk 4 Human Babies. Whether it is talked about or not – there are mothers virtually everywhere in the world who are more than willing to provide milk for babies other than their own – out of the kindness of their hearts.

I’m also celebrating by linking this post up with the lovely Anktangle and many other bloggers who will be sharing their World Milksharing Week posts. Do stop in and visit them!