Finding Strength, Love, and the Power to Trust My Instincts - Brooke and Carter's Breastfeeding Journey

I met Brooke when she was pregnant with Carter. I followed them from pregnancy through weaning. I try to create space for mothers to share some pretty intimate details with me so that I can better help them in their journey. My intention is to help mothers identify and meet their own personal breastfeeding and parenting goals. As you'll read in her story, she confided in me that she never had any intention of becoming a mother. Her husband wanted to have children. She also had every intention to go back to work. But guess what.....the baby came! Everything changed when the baby came! Instead of going back to work, Brooke, Carter, and the famous Boppy Pillow showed up at my office every week for Mother's Morning Out! Brooke's transformation was amazing. Brooke and Carter were breastfeeding champs! He ate well, slept well, gained well...but Brooke knew something wasn't quite right. The amount of spit up that came out of this child was pretty amazing. He wasn't upset about it, and he gained weight just fine and slept fine. He wasn't in pain like some reflux babies experience. Carter was experiencing many red flags for allergy or intolerance; excessive spit up, green stools, mucous in stools, eczema (yes eczema). Brooke began working with health care providers searching for some answers and started a diet elimination. Cutting out the top offenders didn't help much. In the end....Carter had some extensive and unusual food allergies that took months and months to pin-point. In cases like this, its not unusual for the mother to be told to wean and put baby on hypoallergenic formula. If this is what the family decides is best, then I will help in this process. When any family decides to wean, regardless of the reason, I always recommend maintaining breast milk supply by pumping, while testing out formula. Many babies transition to formula easily, many babies do not. The family may have to try many different types of formula until they find one that the baby will tolerate. Some mothers decide to continue breastfeeding or pumping for the baby in some cases. I've gotten many calls over the years from women that weaned, dried up, then had a baby screaming all night while drinking formula, then call me about re-lactating. While some articles may make it seem easy to re-lactate, its a long process. It can be hard enough after birth to establish milk supply...letting it dry up and then trying to get it back is not easy. Brooke tried to wean and formula feed twice. Carter was not able to tolerate any type of formula well and feeding became even more stressful for the family. Brooke decided to continue breastfeeding because of this. Her diet elimination was extreme and she had a team of health care providers for both herself and Carter. I was there to offer continued support and guidance throughout the process. She made it through and Carter is doing really well and has a wide variety of food in his diet. Here is Brooke and Carter's Breastfeeding Journey.....


When I think back on how I felt coming into motherhood, my feelings on the subject are probably not ones that most women would admit to. I was resolute that I did not want to be pregnant nor a parent, let alone have a small alien taking up residence within my body for 9 months. Frankly it was all my husband’s idea, and to say that his biological clock was tick, tick, ticking as hard as Marissa Tomei’s in My Cousin Vinny, is an understatement.

First and foremost, I was going back to work.  The only baby I could ever picture loving more than our dog was my career, and I intended it to stay that way. In my true Type-A over planning fashion, I decided if I was going to do this whole motherhood gig (as clearly at this point there was no turning back) I was going to go all or nothing.  So, I did my research, made some firm decisions on my “plan”, had my daycare booked, and started checking of my list of to-do’s one by one.

In addition to going back to work, there were two things I was adamant I wanted to do – the first was have “natural” child birth without pain meds.  That’s right, I said it. I was certain I did not want an epidural. This was thanks to my mother constantly reminding me that “she did it natural” and “it was what was best for you”… insert my first experience with mommy guilt. Spoiler Alert: I absolutely had an epidural. The second thing that I really had hoped for was breastfeeding – enter Dana.  Thinking back, I am so thankful every day that I was obsessive enough to meet with her BEFORE Carter was born. She provided such great clarity and visual examples that it helped to set my expectations and made things so easy and seamless from the first moment he joined us.

 

Now, what I failed to read during all my hours of planning and research is that with kids there is no such thing as a “plan” (but you try telling that to a pregnant control freak who needs things organized and set). Not only did I go for the epidural, I didn’t go back to work. I did breastfeed however, so I suppose 1 out of 3 isn’t so bad! I will also admit that my husband has never been so right. Having my son was the best decision that we could have ever made as a couple and a family. The love I have for him is like nothing I had ever thought was possible.

Thanksgiving Day comes (my due date) and just like his father, Carter was right on time for dinner, with a 6:03 PM delivery time. We had a little scare during birth, Carter aspirated, but otherwise we were off to the races. He was completely content camping out and suckling and within his first 48 hours my milk was in – I was full and flowing. We of course were learning together – me how to hold and him how to latch, but he had an incredibly healthy appetite and he was such a great sleeper. Most parents would have been singing and dancing at this point, and I assure you we were, and it seemed that no sooner did I breathe that sigh of relief that my world started to turn upside down. 

As we moved through our first weeks, we noticed that Carter’s typical baby spit up gradually turned into full on projectile vomiting coupled with diapers that were constantly green and mucousy, and at one-point he was covered in full body eczema. It seemed like all we did was go from pediatrician, to specialist, to Dana, and back again. I read and researched like crazy and kept asking doctors about the possibility of it being something I was eating, and one by one I kept getting told that it either wasn’t possible or was highly unlikely, yet no one could figure out what was wrong. Dana and I tried different nursing strategies while we waited for answers from one specialist to the next, and in the meantime, he wasn’t bothered by all the vomiting and chaos, but I certainly was. We kept getting told that he was gaining weight and growing, hitting milestones, thriving… that we had nothing to be worried about and needed to “just relax” and be assured he would “grow out of” whatever this was.  He was sleeping great, incredibly content, he was ours and he was perfect… and yet in the back of my mind the “he will grow out of it” never quite sat right. So, I kept trying to piece through what was happening and find an answer, and the one answer that kept creeping into my thoughts was FOOD.  Somehow, in my gut, I knew it had to be related to what I was eating.

To fast forward through all of the months of anxiety, frustration, fear, confusion, and of course love and joy, what we ended up confirming was that our son did indeed have food allergies. All of which were being triggered by what I was eating and those proteins passing through my breastmilk. The allergist we saw recommended that we transition him to a super hypoallergenic prescription formula that honestly tasted horrific. Dana urged that I “protect my milk supply” when trying because it would be so hard to get it back if things didn’t work out. We attempted the transition twice with me pumping to maintain supply and my husband giving bottles of formula – he would refuse to eat unless forced and it caused so much stress for us all. At one point we made it nearly 4 days and I just broke when I saw him cry when we took out a bottle to feed him – there was no way I wanted my son growing up hating to eat and not enjoying what should be one of the simplest of human pleasures. Thankfully, Dana had shared those pearls of wisdom, because after the second attempt I knew that nursing was the only way I could do this. I started eliminating foods from my diet one by one. I kept a log and watched his reactions to what I ate and foods either stayed or they went. It didn’t matter what I ate, as long as it calorically was enough to keep my milk going (hello tons of olive oil and lamb).  The only thing that mattered was Carter - his diapers cleared up, his eczema gradually went away, and the vomiting finally stopped. 

By the time Carter self-weaned, he ended up having had 13 months of my milk – whether nursed, bottled, sippy cupped, or popsicled. It didn’t come without its range of emotions, and at the end of those 13 months my diet had been stripped of pretty much everything but a handful of foods. There is no question that what I did is not for everyone, especially when support for that choice is not always understood by the people closest to you, but there is no question I would do it again in a heartbeat.  Incredibly enough, not only did I feed Carter, but I ended up helping to feed 3 other babies with food sensitives by donating over 500 oz of frozen milk. 

My learning, of course, continues as it does for all parents, but that first year taught me so much about myself.  About strength I never knew I had, about unconditional and unwavering love, but most importantly I learned that as a parent I am the only one who will truly advocate for my child and that I must always trust my instincts as a mother.

MotherBorn

When a Child is Born, a Mother is Born