Breastfeeding after reduction surgery - the second time around

I wrote pre­vi­ously about breast­feed­ing my first child after hav­ing had breast reduc­tion surgery as a teenager.  We suc­cess­fully breast­fed for 27 months, until I stopped pro­duc­ing milk due to hyper­eme­sis dur­ing my sec­ond preg­nancy.  Because I had to pump and sup­ple­ment dur­ing the first six months of Oliver’s life, until he started eat­ing solids and I didn’t need to sup­ple­ment any­more, I was pre­pared to have to do the same with my sec­ond son, Leo.  If my milk hadn’t dried up, and Oliver had wanted to con­tinue nurs­ing, I had planned to tan­dem nurse.  Pump­ing to increase my sup­ply in the begin­ning with Oliver was such a pain. I knew tod­dlers are much bet­ter at increas­ing sup­ply than a breast pump, but that didn’t work out due to my illness.

I ordered the herbal sup­ple­ments to increase milk sup­ply that I had used pre­vi­ously, Shatavari cap­sules from Ayurceu­tics and Moth­erlove More Milk Spe­cial Blend, and I brought them with me to the hos­pi­tal when I went in to labor.  As soon as I was back in my room after the birth, I started tak­ing the supplements.

Breast­feed­ing didn’t get off to the best start, because Leo was on the new­born sta­tion and wasn’t released to me until 3 days after the birth.  I went up from my room in the mater­nity ward every few hours to try and nurse, but he wasn’t inter­ested in latch­ing on.  I pumped colostrum for him which the nurses man­aged to get in to him with a drop­per, but I was very dis­heart­ened at the time.  He had already lost 10% of his birth weight.

When he was released and came to join me in my room, he latched on imme­di­ately and I didn’t have to pump again.  By the time we left the hos­pi­tal, he had gained some weight, and when the mid­wife came to check on him a few days later, he was grow­ing well.

I haven’t had to sup­ple­ment at all and he wasn’t inter­ested in solids at all until shortly before turn­ing six months old.

It was a great feel­ing to be able to pro­vide every­thing Leo needed this time around.  If I have another child, I think I may even try it with­out the herbal sup­ple­ments in the begin­ning to see if I can do it com­pletely on my own.  Each preg­nancy builds your abil­ity to pro­duce milk, as does extended breastfeeding.

For more infor­ma­tion about breast­feed­ing after reduc­tion (BFAR), I strongly rec­om­mend pick­ing up a copy of Defin­ing your Own Suc­cess: Breast­feed­ing After Breast Reduc­tion Surgery and vis­it­ing BFAR.org.

You may also be interested in reading:

• Breastfeeding After Reduction: One Year In (13)
• Breastfeeding After Reduction Surgery - 19 months and counting (5)
• Our Weaning Story (3)
• Separation while extended nursing (5)
• Pumping (3)

Tagged as: bfar, Breastfeeding, Motherlove, Pregnancy, pumping, Shatavari, toddlers