Breastfeeding After Reduction: One Year In

The sum­mer before 10th grade in high school, I got a breast reduc­tion. The thought of how the surgery would affect my abil­ity to breast­feed at some point in the prob­a­bly dis­tant future did not even cross my mind.  At 15, I was a 44E, after the surgery, I was down to a 38B (and by the time I grad­u­ated high school, I had increased to a 38C).  I was happy to be rid of back pain, and of bra straps dig­ging into my shoul­ders.  I could run the bases in soft­ball with­out feel­ing ridiculous.

All went well for the next 17 years, and then I became preg­nant. I read sev­eral preg­nancy books and most said the same thing, sup­ple­ment­ing with for­mula is often nec­es­sary because BFAR (Breast­Feed­ing After Reduc­tion) moms usu­ally don’t have full milk sup­plies. I decided that I would try, since that’s what’s best for the baby, but that it would be okay if it didn’t work. I men­tally pre­pared for any even­tu­al­ity and even bought a set of bot­tles, fig­ur­ing it likely that I’d need to supplement.

The big day came and Oliver was born. The birth was so dif­fi­cult, that when they put him on my chest imme­di­ately after­wards, I just pat­ted him and told them to take him to get cleaned up. After his bath, I got my sec­ond wind and felt up to breast­feed­ing and that seemed to go well. We went home two days later and for the first week, things seemed to be super. Oliver was a sleepy baby, but he’d latch on and nurse for a few min­utes before drift­ing off to sleep while still hap­pily attached to the breast. He’d wake up after half an hour, nurse a lit­tle more, then drift back off to sleep. I’d sit on the sofa for much of the day and night, nurs­ing him and watch­ing DVDs of Sex and The City. Then the mid­wife came.

After she weighed Oliver, we found out that he’d lost weight. Babies often lose some weight after they’re born, but regain it within the first week. At a week old, Oliver was at 10% under his birth weight. My hus­band was dis­patched imme­di­ately to the near­est drug store to pick up for­mula. I stood in the kitchen cry­ing while var­i­ous emo­tions washed over me. Con­fu­sion, guilt, sad­ness. I remem­ber hug­ging Oliver to me and feel­ing like I had let him down. I had thought things were going well and I had been wrong.

Thus began the dif­fi­cult part of our breast­feed­ing rela­tion­ship. Going in, I had been pre­pared to fail, but since he was there, some super strong mommy instincts had kicked in and I knew I had to make this breast­feed­ing thing work. I was a mom on a mis­sion. The mid­wife said that Oliver’s lazy suck­ing was not stim­u­lat­ing my milk sup­ply to increase. She seemed uncon­cerned about the reduc­tion surgery, she just told me to keep him awake, keep his nurs­ing ses­sions to under 20 min­utes per breast, and drink nurs­ing tea. I read on the inter­net about using a breast pump to build milk sup­ply, so we rented a Medela Sym­phony. Feed­ing would start with Oliver on my breast, 20 min­utes per side, then my hus­band would give him a bot­tle of for­mula, while I pumped for another 20 min­utes per breast. I’d have about an hour break, and this would start over again.

Keep­ing him awake was impos­si­ble. I tried all the tricks, BFing him in his dia­per, tick­ling his feet or neck, blow­ing in his face, etc. Those things all work now, but as a new­born, noth­ing would wake him when he was tired. We kept going with BFing, bot­tle­feed­ing, then pump­ing for the first six weeks, and things slowly improved. I seemed to be pro­vid­ing about 60% of the liq­uid he needed, we’d sup­ple­ment with two bot­tles of 90mL each dur­ing the day.

At first I had thought that I wouldn’t need a book on breast­feed­ing, I’d just know what to do and if I didn’t, the mid­wife was there. But now I was at my wit’s end. I made a sob­bing phone call to the near­est English-speaking LLL Leader, and she tried, but was any­thing but help­ful. I got on Ama­zon and read through the reviews, picked the breast­feed­ing book that sounded best for me, Breast­feed­ing Made Sim­ple: Seven Nat­ural Laws for Nurs­ing Moth­ers. This book was a god­send! First, it gave me the courage to lis­ten to my heart. It said the advice to limit him to 20 min­utes per breast was baloney, and we went back to what my instincts had told me to do, allow him to feed as long as he wanted. Sec­ond, it sug­gested the book Defin­ing Your Own Suc­cess: Breast­feed­ing After Reduc­tion Surgery, which I order imme­di­ately. From this book, I learned of BFAR.org. There was a whole orga­ni­za­tion for moth­ers like me!

I started tak­ing the herb Fenu­greek (Bock­shorn­klee in Ger­man) and got some Shatavari pow­der, both are herbal galac­t­a­gogues (sub­stances known to increase milk pro­duc­tion). I imme­di­ately dis­cov­ered that Shatavari pow­der tastes dis­gust­ing (imag­ine drink­ing beach sand). I tried and tried, but ended up throw­ing my expen­sive 500 gram con­tainer away and order­ing cap­sules. When I went to the US in Decem­ber, I ordered a 6 month sup­ply of Motherlove’s More Milk Spe­cial Blend, and took that instead of the Fenu­greek cap­sules since it con­tains Fenu­greek (Moth­erlove offers world­wide ship­ping — the web­site says to email for quotes).

I had also planned to wait until Oliver was 6 months old before start­ing solids, but he was grab­bing food off our plates at 4 months, and I fig­ured that solids would just be replac­ing for­mula, so why not try. He gob­bled down baby food like it was going out of style. As his appetite increased, we decreased the for­mula feed­ings down to one bot­tle of 90mL, which he didn’t always finish.

After a few weeks on the Shatavari and More Milk Spe­cial Blend, we were able to do away com­pletely with for­mula and it has been pretty smooth sail­ing ever since. He bites every once in a while, and one of those bites once led to a clogged duct. I hand-expressed to help clear the block­age, since it hurt too much for him to nurse, and was sur­prised at the quan­tity of milk I pro­duced (about 100mL). It was so much greater than those days in the begin­ning when I strug­gled to pump 30mL from both breasts combined.

We have no plans to stop nurs­ing any­time soon. The lit­tle guy loves the boo­bies too much, and I worked too hard to build up my sup­ply. As soon as my sup­ply was built up, he com­pletely rejected bot­tles. He also stopped tak­ing a paci­fier around 6 months and stopped suck­ing his thumb around 9 months. I allow him to com­fort nurse because I know it will help my sup­ply. When he was sick recently and wouldn’t eat solids, the sound of him drink­ing gulp after gulp after gulp from my breast would some­times bring me to tears. I worked so hard and really feel I’ve accom­plished some­thing good. I know not every­one could do what I’ve done and I’m proud of that.

You may also be interested in reading:

• Breastfeeding After Reduction Surgery - 19 months and counting (5)
• Breastfeeding after reduction surgery - the second time around (0)
• Our Weaning Story (3)
• Cultural Differences in Parenting (15)
• Breastfeeding after reduction - 2 years and still going strong (3)

Tagged as: bfar, Books, Breastfeeding, Fenugreek. LLL, galactagogues, Motherlove, Shatavari, Websites