This article was re-published with permission in the Le Leche League's magazine 'New Beginnings' - Issue 3 - 2008 - under the title "A Second Chance"
Kath's Relactation Story
My son William was born on 3rd March 2003, after a five hour labour with gas & air and a little help from a ventouse. He was 6.5lb and very healthy but a little tired after the rigours of being born.
I had been looking forward to feeding William, I have two other children aged 10 and 8 at his birth and had breastfed them with no problems. As soon as William suckled I noticed it was very painful.
We spent two days in the ward because William was jaundiced, tired, and not very eager to feed. A nurse spent a lot of time trying to get him to latch on with me, but in the end I had to give him a bottle of donated expressed milk to give him a feed. I had to get him to feed properly before I was allowed to leave the hospital, and I spent a lot of time with the nurse trying to get him to latch on by squeezing my nipple and trying to get him to suckle.
Once we got home Will was feeding every hour or so, and it was still painful, but it did not alarm me as I remembered my nipples hurting for a little while when I had my first child, so I carried on. However, I began to notice a white “pinched” look to my nipples, followed by cracking and bleeding. The pain was excruciating and there was not enough time in between feeds to heal. After about a week my nipples were very damaged and blood began to flow out instead of milk – the pain was indescribable and I would often cry when he was feeding, my toes would curl and I would sweat. My midwife checked the latch and said that it was ok but that I should bring his shoulders in more.
I persevered but after 10 days of feeding I felt a very bad pain in my nipple and when William let it go, blood was flowing out. The other nipple was already so badly damaged I could not use it, so Will went on the bottle. I used Jelanet patches on my nipples to try to get them to heal more quickly and not stick to my bra, but they just wouldn't heal quickly enough. My husband encouraged me to try to feed him, but I was worried that the huge scabs would come off and choke him. I tried to express but no milk would come past the scabs.
Weeks of tears and depression followed. I could not get over the loss and sense of failure I had. I asked my health visitor for help and all she could offer was a shoulder to cry on. I felt that there had to be someone who could help me with the grieving process. I telephoned Sally Inch at our local breastfeeding clinic; Sally's work on childbirth and breastfeeding is respected all over the world. Her response to me was very unexpected – she said if I felt that badly about it and determined enough why didn't I try to relactate? I didn't think it was possible since 7 weeks had passed and my milk had dried up. She referred me on to someone at La Leche League to explore my expectations and to see whether my goals were realistic. The LLL leader Kerry explained to me that it took a lot of work and that I would need a lot of support from my family because of the time and effort involved. I felt that I needed to try this before I finally threw in the towel.
I started taking domperidone tablets four times a day and expressing each breast for 15 minutes with a pump, getting up in the night where possible for a pump, aiming for between 8 and 12 pumps a day. With a young baby and two other children to care for this was no small task.
I saved as much as I could expressed and got a lot of satisfaction from feeding William at least some of my milk from a bottle. I tried to get him to latch on but he would scream at the sight of my breasts. We spent a lot of time getting skin-to-skin contact, getting him to love the smell of my skin. I tried using a supplementer, which is a bag of milk you hang from your neck with two fine rubber tubes running down to your nipples. It was so fiddly and he hated it. I tried using special nipple shields with a notch missing so that he could taste my skin, but he would not latch onto them. I painted my nipples with sugar (not a great idea), I tried everything to get him to latch on but he would not. In the end I resigned myself to expressing as much as I could and giving him EBM.
One day when he was 5.5 months old I noticed he was licking my t-shirt. I offered him the breast, he latched on and fed like a complete natural from that day until the day he weaned. I was able to fully breastfeed him! He became a much more contented child and much closer to me, I felt a much closer bond though it was hard to imagine the bond could be much closer.
It was a hard and very emotional battle, but worth every bit of effort. I look at him now and feel very proud of what we achieved, and part of the credit goes to the women at ivillage who encouraged me every step of the way.