You might be wondering - how can a woman who's barely hanging on to breastfeeding by a thread can so loudly proclaim herself a Dairy Diva. Well, here's my story.
In May of 2010 I married the man of my dreams on the happiest day of my life. We knew we wanted children, and within a year we had conceived a precious baby boy who was born in October 2011. During my pregnancy I spent allot of time reading about babies and thinking about what motherhood meant to me. I made the decision that I wanted to breastfeed my baby, for a variety of reasons. I'll get into those reasons somewhere else.
Suffice it to say, breastfeeding was very important to me. Unfortunately I had a breast reduction surgery in my early 20s and I knew that it had jeopardized my chances at breastfeeding. At the time my surgeon had wisely ignored my pleas to completely remove the offensive mammaries and instead kept my girlish figure intact, and tried his best to do the same for my ability to nurse future children. I started to research what it meant to breastfeed after a reduction (BFAR) and found a couple of resources - mostly bfar.org
I wasn't sure what would happen when my baby was born, but I knew I had to give it a try. Unfortunately, in hindsight there is so much more I could have done to prepare, but that's a story for a different day.
Matters were only complicated when I began to have trouble in my pregnancy. In the end I had such low amniotic fluid labor had to be induced when my baby was just over 34 weeks gestation. I was lucky that he didn't spend long in the NICU and was returned to me really quickly. Unfortunately he was early enough that it impacted our nursing relationship right off the bat.
I tried too hard to do things on my own, and I didn't find the right help (an awesome IBCLC!) until my little cutiebug was about 5 weeks along. By that time my milk production was about 1 ounce a day (not a session, a whole day) and the baby was entirely refusing to nurse.
I am lucky I found help when I did because I was very close to giving up completely. My LC happened to lead a support group that meets on most Tuesdays, sponsored by the hospital where I gave birth. It's no cost to the participants and I joined up immediately. With the help of those moms, the LC, and a ton of research I was able to figure out what I needed to do to have a happy and healthy nursing relationship with my baby on our own terms.
Half of my son's milk comes from me. The rest has to be supplemented.
Some of his supplement is formula, but very little due to some of the
wonderful angel-donors I have found.
I have been told that I would never be able to nurse. I've been told to give up. I've also been pulled along, pushed along, and carried through by many supportive moms who understood and admired my drive to provide this for my son. I've used several kinds of supplement, different methods of supplementing, nipple shields, nipple shells, nipple extractors, every galacatgogue known to man, every lactogenic food I can find, and more. I have spent hours a day working on maintaining what little supply I can coax out of myself for my son.
My baby and I have survived against the odds - low supply, breast surgery, nipple damage, internal scarring, a preemie baby who couldn't latch, early supplementation, early bottle exposure, and more. We have not only survived it, we have thrived in the face of it. I've worked hard and I am proud of it. I am a dairy diva!
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