I Never Planned To Breastfeed My Adopted Baby. I Ended Up Going To Extreme Lengths To Do So.

We got The Call at 6 a.m. on New Year’s Day. A birth mom had chosen us. Our son was waiting for us to pick him up — how fast could we get to the hospital?
My husband and I had been searching for a baby to adopt for eight months, and in that time, I’d read every adoption book, article and how-to guide I could find. When I learned that you could induce lactation to breastfeed your adopted baby, I rolled my eyes thinking to myself, “Good Lord, just give the kid a bottle.”
I wasn’t one of those moms who thought of breastfeeding as The Correct Choice. I knew formula was a good option and had used it to supplement breast milk with my older biological kids — Jack and Kate, then 5 and 3.
But one evening, during Henry’s first week home, I sat in the rocker in our bedroom to give him his bottle and snuggle him, and I felt disconnected. When you nurse a baby, you’re skin-to-skin — obviously mouth-to-breast, but also tummy-to-torso. Feeding him from a bottle, something was missing. I realized in the rocking chair that, for me, breastfeeding was part of mothering. Just as I was loyal to our bedtime routine and a specific swaddling style with all of my babies, breastfeeding was part of how I took care. How I bonded. How I loved.
I breastfed Jack and Kate until they were 6 months old. It was time-consuming, inconvenient and sometimes painful. At one point I had a case of mastitis that made me sick enough to be scared. The dates I circled on the calendar as my breastfeeding finish lines with them were days of unapologetic relief.
And yet.
Breastfeeding was also one of the most gratifying things I’d ever done. Knowing my body supplied everything my baby needed felt both powerful and exquisitely tender. Breastfeedingland was a milky, dreamy destination where my babies and I happily dwelled, to the exclusion of all others.
I wanted to experience that intimacy with Henry, too.
Getting your body to produce milk when you haven’t been pregnant isn’t easy, but it’s doable with a combination of prescription medication, teas, herbs and pumping.
Domperidone was being used to help cancer patients with nausea when it was discovered that one of the side effects was lactation. It wasn’t (and still isn’t) approved by the Food and Drug Administration, so I had to go to a specific women’s clinic to get a prescription. The doctor there said she felt it was safe, and it was approved in Canada for some other uses. I consulted Henry’s pediatrician, and she was all for it. All together, that was more than good enough for me.
Every day, I took the herb fenugreek, ate a few “boob cookies” ― chocolate chip, with a hearty dose of brewer’s yeast baked in — and drank about a gallon of “boob tea” brewed from fennel, coriander and anise. Along with medicine and herbs, there was a staggering amount of pumping. I hired a lactation consultant named Diane to get me started. During our initial phone call, she told me she’d bring over a hospital-grade pump.
“You’ve never used a pump like this one,” she said.
“Oh, yeah, no, I pumped and froze with my first two,” I assured her. “I’m very familiar with pumping.”
Thirty minutes later, I was shirtless, sitting on the bench in my bedroom while Diane attached the pump to my breasts.
I’d never used a pump like that one.
The suction on a hospital-grade pump is so strong that not only your nipple, but the 3 to 4 inches around your nipple get sucked into the skinny part of the funnel; those inches of breast morph into the length and shape of a cow’s udder, and it hurts. You look at your nipples and understand instantly that the elasticity of your breast is never coming back.
For at least the first week, I sat in the TV room with my super pump and my udder nipples as I watched Nicole Curtis flip Detroit’s Victorians on “Rehab Addict” and pumped absolutely nothing from my breasts. And then, one morning, there were a few drops of water. And a few days later, milk.
At about the one-month mark, I was feeding Henry exclusively with breast milk. I loved the act of breastfeeding him, the closeness of it; there was an extra poignancy, too, knowing that he was our last baby. I nursed him until he was 6 months old and then happily switched to formula full time, just as I had with Jack and Kate.
Henry’s 10 now. He’s independent, but he’ll still grab and swing my hand as we head into Costco. We talk. He clings to me in the ocean when the waves get too big. Did breastfeeding bond us? Some estimate that in the first six months of a baby’s life, a mother spends 900 hours breastfeeding. So, yeah, of course it did. But I also know it’s just one of thousands of everyday ways I’ve bonded with my son.
I expect that for some readers, my having breastfed my adopted baby will give them the ick. The reactions I received from friends and family were positive, but nearly all of them said, “I didn’t even know that was a thing!” At a family get-together, an older uncle saw me breastfeeding Henry and asked, “Now, how does this whole thing work?” His curiosity was sincere, and he was genuinely interested when I told him about the regimen I’ve shared with you.
Inducing lactation is a concept that’s new to most people and still feels a little “out-there.” When I first read about it, I was judgy, too. I couldn’t have known until my son was in my arms that I’d long for that connection.
As moms, we’re judged by our parenting choices — epidural vs. natural birth, co-sleeping vs. crib, almond mom vs. Kraft Mac & Cheese mom. I’m glad I trusted my maternal instincts enough to step off the beaten path, to feel my way along an unmarked trail. For us, the journey was perfect.
Denise Massar is a writer, a mom via birth and adoption, and an adoptee. She writes about parenting, relationships, racism, caregiving and anything else she can’t stop thinking about. Her essays have appeared in HuffPost, Writer’s Digest, Today Parenting, Mutha Magazine and Raise Magazine. You can purchase her debut memoir, “Matched,” anywhere you buy books.
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