[babybutterflymomma]

Hello ladies,
New here...looking for your stories and insights.

My story - My hubby and I were just matched - baby is due in July. This winter we lost our second baby who I had begun pumping for, hoping for a long but successful NICU stay. After she died, I decided to continue pumping just to see how far I would get...knowing adopting was our next step...hoping that at the very least I could store my colostrum. Things have gone better than I ever could have dreamed and I now have gallons and gallons stored (Fenugreek since 2 weeks postpartum and pumping 7-9x/day all along - I can't begin to describe how much this has benefited my grieving). Now I am hoping for the ideal and would love to maintain my current full milk supply, store what I have in hopes of donating once I'm sure I'll have maintained a full supply until we have our July baby.

Now that we are matched, I am wondering what your experiences were like with your birth moms for those of you who had/have any kind of relationships with them as far as breastfeeding. Did you discuss it before baby was born? After? Never? How did things occur in the hospital if you were there for delivery or after baby was born?

[nurse_reedle]

I keep checking in to see if anyone ahs responded to this. I am sorry, but I have not been in this situation yet. I know what we are planning on doing, and I can answer you by PM if you would like to know. I hope someone that has been there done that will chime in soon.

[babybutterflymomma]

I would love to hear what your plan is for approaching this topic. I am not sure what we will do yet. Baby is due in July and we hope to get to meet our birth mother in May. Maybe I'll have a better idea of what to do once we've met. I plan on calling the lactation consultant at the hospital where the baby will be born just to get her perspective and info about hospital policy. I am hoping that, at the very least, I will feel comfortable presenting the idea of using stored colostrum via bottle in the hospital to our birth mom. Thoughts?

[christy22]

I am an adoptive mother of 2 kids and I induced lactation and breast fed my oldest for 2 weeks. (I had milk supply issues, that's why I stopped. Congrats that you don't have those issues!) We had a good relationship with her birthmother and we were in the hospital when she was born and brought her home. I know that I would have felt really weird not telling her birthmom of my breastfeeding plans. And, in the hospital, they push the baby to start eating right away. If you start with a bottle, it may be harder to get the baby to go to the breast when you get home.
In our case, her birthmom was really supportive and actually helped me with our latching on issues. I think you should tell the birthmom as soon as you can. You certainly don't want any new issues coming up in the hospital-its such an emotional time as it is. I'm sure your birthmom will be happy that you are making such a healthy choice for her baby.

[tem0627]

We have also been matched and our baby is due in July as well. We just met the birthmother the other day and our social worker asked us to bring up the discussion of adoptive breastfeeding to her since it has been something we've considered doing. Our SW felt that something so personal (and controversial) needed to be discussed with the expectant mom to get her okay on it. For some expectant mom's this would be a show stopper and before we went through all the preparation, we needed to know she was okay with it. Had she said no, it would not have been a show stopper for us, but she had no problem with it and thought it was awesome that we'd do it!

[babybutterflymomma]

Update:
We were expecting our daughter to be born in late July. However, she decided she wanted to meet us a few weeks early...nine weeks earlier than we were expecting. I had labored over how to ask her bio mom what she thought of me breastfeeding Tahlia. My plan was, after much discussion with many people wiser than myself, to tell her that I was planning on nursing Tahlia and asking her how she felt about the idea of me breastfeeding. I was going to talk to her about it as a nurse first and as a mom second...keeping it "educational" and "the benefits!" first and "bonding" and "nurturing" second.
Tahlia's early arrival put me on the spot with discussing it with her bio mom.
What ended up happening is that we met Tahlia's bio mom for the first time an hour AFTER her emergency c-section at 31 weeks gestation, weighing 3 lbs, 9 oz. Later that morning in the NICU my husband and I were getting an update from the NICU doc who said at one point, "We will start feedings sometime this afternoon through a feeding tube. And since you're adopting, I assume it's okay if we go ahead and use formula?"
And so the games began...I told her my brief story and shared that I had - in the middle of all the madness of getting THE CALL and driving 8 hours through the night to the hospital several states away - brought my pumped colostrum along with me and that I still had a complete supply and was planning to nurse Tahlia. She was certainly surprised - hard to disguise it I guess, but put the legal ball in motion. After that, Tahlia's bio mom and I visited the NICU together and I simply said to her..."the doctor was telling us that they will probably start feedings through a tube today. I wanted to talk to you about that when we met BEFORE Tahlia was born, but since she's already here, I guess now's the time. I was hoping to breastfeed Tahlia. I have had a lot of milk since our first daughter was born. What do you think about that?" She simply responded, "oh, that sounds good." Knowing our story...being 17...being on the spot...being shell shocked along with me...I don't know what all went in to her response, but she didn't bat an eyelash. A few hours later, after I had met with the social worker and lactation consultant, they - along with the NICU doc went and talked with the bio mom to get "consent" (verbal, documented in the doc's progress note).
That night, at about 15 hours of age, my little girl nursed for the first time...I nursed for the first time, despite having had a complete milk supply for over 4 months. It was so completely amazing. In fact, Tahlia did so well that they changed her estimated gestational age, thinking she had to be at least a couple weeks older than everyone thought.
She was in the NICU for 15 days and was discharged at 3lbs 13oz exclusively breastfeeding! In fact...one of the most wonderful parts of our NICU stay was that while her bio mom was still in patient as well, we would go to the NICU together, she would change Tahlia's diaper, I would nurse her, and then she would burp her...I couldn't have asked for more...what an incredibly AWESOME bio mom!

[christy22]

What a happy ending to a great story! You're right--that sounds like an AWESOME birthmom. Thanks so much for updating all of us. Congratulations!

[nurse_reedle]

What an AWESOME, AWESOME story!!!