After asking a few people and reading a lot of webpages about it, I decided to try and induce lactation. This is something that I had been considering for some time. I talked with a woman at a training who was getting small bits of milk and I knew that I wanted to try it.  So, I had started asking around about breast pumps. I couldn’t get my hands on a free one at the time.

Then, I asked our friend who is a social worker with A- county about breastfeeding foster kids.  Apparently, it requires a court order. At that time, we were still pretty far off from entering the matching process, so I let go of it.  We finished our PRIDE classes  and I had a renewed motivation to start pumping (but are still a few months from entering matching).  I figured, I would never regret trying to see if I can produce milk, even if we don’t have a kid that will breastfeed.  And the way that we are talking about setting our criteria, there is a good possibility that we would be able to get the court order to allow breastfeeding.

A lactation consultant had told me that if you produce milk once, it is always easier the second time.  Starting now would be an initial indicator of what I would be capable of later and would help me determine whether I would need to use drugs to lactate.

So, I began to pump on a regular schedule, every 2-3 hours.  My nipples hurt and cracked, but I was producing drops from the very beginning. I came down with a case of the swine flu a few days after I started pumping and I just couldn’t handle it anymore. First I cut down on how often I was pumping and as my symptoms got worse, I had to cut it out entirely. At the peak of my pumping, which may have been on the 2nd or third day, I got about 7 drops from my left breast (which seems to be slightly larger and more productive.

About a month later, I started again and immediately had an even bigger production, about 11 drops.  Part of what I had read was that pumping never works as good as a baby and looking at photos of babies and fantasizing about them may help stimulate the oxytocin required for let down.  I bought Sleeping Beauties which was filled with large, glossy photos of sleeping newborns.  I would spend the 20 minutes pumping starting at that.  But over the course of a few days, pumping regularly, I got less and less until I wasn’t producing anything. Had it been saving up over the month that I had stopped? Why did it get to be less and not more?

Although it seems that some people are able to induce lactation without meds (the primary being domperidone), the vast majority are only able to produce miniscule amounts. It may be in part the difference of those who have lactated previously.  One thing is agreed at the forums at adoption.com, it is much easier and much more likely to work with meds.

So again, I have put this process on temporary hold.  I will likely wait until we are matched then pursue meds if it makes sense at that time.