In Debra Stewart Peterson’s book, Breastfeeding the Adopted Baby, she discusses anything you could possibly want to know about adoptive breastfeeding. If you follow the link to amazon.com, you can see excerpts from the book. This was my “bible” in learning how to breastfeed an adopted baby.

Breast Pumps

Many women are able to lactate by using a breast pump every 2 to 3 hours for several weeks before the baby arrives. The breast pump stimulates the same hormones in an adoptive mother that a suckling baby stimulates in a new mother. Stimulating those hormones causes the woman to begin lactating. Most adoptive mothers are not able to produce enough milk to supply 100% of the baby’s nutritional needs. However, supplementation from breast milk produced by an adoptive mother is still very healthy for a baby.

I, personally, chose not to purchase and use a breast pump. I feared that if the placing mother chose to parent, I would be left lactating with no baby. I did not think that I could handle that emotionally. “Losing” the baby that I thought I would parent would have been hard enough; I feared that going through that experience while also lactating might just put me over the edge.

Supplemental Nursing Systems

Since most adoptive mothers will not produce enough breast milk to feed the baby, you will need to look into some sort of supplementation system. I chose to use the Lact-Aid Nurser Training System. The system comes with disposable plastic bags to hold the formula. A tube runs from the bag to your breast. (I had to tape the tube in place. I am not sure if there is a better way to do it, but that worked for me.) The baby breastfeeds around the tube. The baby must use the same suckling techniques as any other breastfed baby when using a Lact-Aid system. An alternative system is called a Supplemental Nursing System. I cannot remember how I chose one over the other. From what I understand, the functionality of both is the same.

Commitment

In order to succeed in lactating, you need to either nurse the baby or use a breast pump around every two hours until your milk supply comes in. I chose not to do this, so I never did succeed in lactating. Breastfeeding has advantages in addition to the breast milk itself, and those were the reasons I chose to do this. I will discuss these advantages in the next post. Adoptive breastfeeding is challenging, so you need to be committed to this decision to do it. Unfortunately, adoptive breastfeeding does not have the built in perks like having the baby’s “lunch” available at a moment’s notice, so you need to be sold on the other benefits to make it worth the work.