Is it possible to nurse an adopted baby

The researchers found a correlation between breastfeeding and a positive mood immediately after breastfeeding, but the same effect was not apparent for bottle-feeding. The researchers suggested that the higher levels of the hormone oxytocin released by breastfeeding may have contributed to the positive mood Mezzacappa and Katkin Bonding is a crucial aspect of adoption, and the hormones released during breastfeeding can facilitate that process.

When studying the various methods for inducing lactation, keep in mind that it is equally important to learn as much as you can about how the body is stimulated to make milk by the removal of milk from the breasts. Knowing the natural process of lactation can help you as you work to increase your milk production.

To prepare you can stimulate your breasts by hand or by pump for several weeks or months before your baby arrives.

Hand expression requires no equipment and can be used to stimulate milk production. If you use a breast pump it is recommended that you use the highest quality pump available to you when inducing lactation. The first choice would be a rental-grade pump, which you can find in your local area by contacting your birthing facility and asking what rental pumps are available near you and where.

These pumps are often available for rent through hospitals, medical supply stores, WIC, private-practice lactation consultants, online vendors, and even some popular baby stores. Whether you are using a pump, hand expression , or both, this method is most effective when done as many times a day as a baby would be breastfeeding, at least eight to ten times a day. Many women begin to notice breast changes in the first 6 weeks of expression. Mothers may notice breasts that feel larger and firmer, breast tenderness, protruding nipples, and drops of milk.

One method is called the Goldfarb-Newman Protocol. It involves first taking birth control pills to simulate pregnancy hormone changes and then both expressing and taking medication that increases hormonal levels. Herbal remedies such as fenugreek are available over the counter.

You should discuss prescription medications and over the counter galactagogues with your health care provider. Variations in treatment may be appropriate according to the needs of an individual woman.

If you choose to use herbal or prescription galactagogues or hormones to facilitate lactation, it is important that you work with your health care provider. All of these substances have potential side effects and may be contraindicated for persons with certain medical conditions. Your health care provider can help you weigh any risks and benefits and decide what will work best in your situation.

If you have questions about the safety of medications and herbs while breastfeeding or inducing lactation, contact the InfantRisk Center. The InfantRisk Center is dedicated to providing up-to-date, evidence-based information on the use of medications during pregnancy and breastfeeding. If you do not prepare before your baby arrives, you can still begin breastfeeding and expressing milk right away.

You can also discuss the use of a galactagogue with your health care provider. Some moms use an at-breast supplementer so that their babies can receive supplemental milk through a small tube at the breast. Both products work by allowing your baby to get supplemental milk while breastfeeding, but there are some differences in how they work. The SNS allows milk to flow by gravity, and comes with a variety of sizes of tubing for faster and slower flow.

The Lact-Aid does not allow milk to flow unless baby is sucking. It is worthwhile to do some research on the pros and cons of these products before investing in one. A supplementer has dual benefits: the baby gets nourishment, while the mother's breasts get the stimulation needed to begin producing milk. If your baby needs a supplement of expressed milk or formula you might want to consider using a nursing supplementer. Doing this can give your baby that extra milk while they are nursing.

Supplementers can help parents have an at-breast or at-chest relationship with their baby whether or not they are able to produce milk. You might find this post on supplementers useful. The image at the top of this post shows a mother encouraging her adopted baby to latch on by holding her familiar bottle next to her breast. The baby went on to breastfeed successfully. Skin-to-skin contact is beneficial for babies and parents; it simply means holding your naked baby on your bare chest.

You can drape a blanket over you both for warmth. Within minutes, you will see the benefits of skin-to-skin as you and your baby relax. Babies often latch on and nurse more efficiently during and after skin-to-skin contact. Human milk banks provide pasteurised, screened donor milk. There are documented benefits and risks to informal milk sharing. In light of this discussion, I thought you might find interesting this excerpt from an interview between Dr. Marcy Axness, an adoption therapist and adult adoptee, and Nancy Verrier, author of The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child , and a mother by birth and adoption.

Marcy Axness: This brings up a subject that I find I have some feelings about, which is adoptive mothers breastfeeding. Nancy Verrier: Yes. There are some babies who will look right in the eye of their adoptive mom, and they will have a lot of eye contact, and there are some babies who will not look at their adoptive mom.

So I think it probably would be the same thing with breastfeeding—some would and some would not. But coming from my adoptee perspective, I feel like the bottle is more honest. Less invasive of that primary relationship that you mentioned, that the baby may feel she needs to protect.

And there is still plenty of closeness and comfort and eye contact that can be done while bottle-feeding. This also relates to the issue of accepting that this baby did have another mother, another primary bond that needs to be respected and honored. And they get so much more out of their kids, I mean their kids will open right up and talk and talk and talk. NV: Oh, like adolescence.

NV: Yes, you have to acknowledge that from the beginning. They do not feel comfortable with us. They do not feel mirrored by us. We cannot mirror them, we cannot. Because how does a baby gain self-esteem? He was a swan living in a family of ducks. What are the upside and downside of adoptive breastfeeding?

Is it perpetuating a lie or is it beneficial to both the baby and the adoptive mom? Categories: Adoption Adoption Blog Blog. Tag: Breastfeeding.

Your email address will not be published. I have all bio children and breastfeed them…but I cannot imagine being so selfish and narcissistic to give up my baby and then seek to deprive them of the bonding and nourishment from the woman who became their mother by MY choice to abdicate??!!

What even is that mindset. If you want to hold the place as the nourishing mother then keep and raise your baby. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and opinions on this topic. For example, many birth mothers object to adoptive parents trying to breastfeed because it might feel like the adoptive mother is trying to replicate pregnancy even though that is not how the child came to her.

Others have indicated their objection on the grounds that choosing to breastfeed even for a short while in the hospital is one uniquely personal thing they can offer their child before that child is placed and their relationship changes forever. Regardless, we are reluctant to label any of the members of the conversation — adoptive parent or birth parent — as selfish and narcissistic over this topic. I found it very informative, but one line in particular stood out for me….

While I find this sentiment a wonderfully affirming one, I think a point needs to be made in light of the discussion that the issue of adoptive mothers breastfeeding the children who become theirs before adoption. In the eyes of some of our more childish members of the universal adoption community, an adoptive parent will never be as good or healthy for a child as their biological parents. It seems like these individuals are determined to selfishly hoard any and all means of bonding for themselves, never for one moment thinking how that might sabotage any potential connection that could exist between an adoptive parent and her child-perhaps they do so because they are secretly rooting for the relationship to fail, so that they as biological parents will always appear to be superior by comparison.

Only a selfish, petty person who seriously needed to grow up or at the very least get over herself would do that. Ultimate illustration of the deification of biological parents, and how any other kind of family configuration is seen as being inferior to a point of being blasphemous. While I hope this will not happen this time, I know that such a reaction will prove the points I have tried to make here better than this single comment ever could.

Thank you. I wonder if you have read the comments of Dell, Justin S, and Robyn on this article, though. They expressed comments that are almost a carbon copy of what I said in my comment. Perhaps they expressed themselves better-they definitely were able to express the same views in a more succinct way.

I admire them for that. In making your comment, I hope that you are not trying to say that you disagree with our outrage at the views expressed in this article. As an AP who has found a way to work around the breastfeeding issue in your own experience formula feeding your child while still maintaining skin to skin contact , I sense that you agree that some reasonable facsimile of contact between parent and child through adoption is necessary.

I am a believer in open adoption, but I draw the line at birthmothers who seek through their objections to any and all methods of bonding that might be undertaken by the adoptive parents to cross the line into co-parenting.

Double standard much? Not sure if you are familiar with it, but please Google it if you are not familiar with it. To summarize-a man and his son are trying to take their donkey into town, and they keep encountering people who criticize them for how they are travelling, until they find it impossible to keep moving forward at all. This cannot be healthy, for adopted children or anyone else. Select personalised content.

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List of Partners vendors. You are about to adopt a baby and you want to breastfeed him? It is not only possible, it is fairly easy and the chances are you will produce a significant amount of milk. It is not complicated, but it is different from breastfeeding a baby with whom you have been pregnant for 9 months.

There are really two objectives involved in nursing an adopted baby. One is getting your baby to breastfeed.