Breastfeeding Your Adopted Baby

C. Pumping. If you can manage it, rent an electric pump with a double setup. Pumping both breasts at the same time takes half the time, obviously, and also results in better milk production. Start pumping when you stop the birth control pill. Do what is possible. If twice a day is possible at first, do it twice a day. If once a day during the week, but 6 times during the weekend can be done, fine. Partners can help with nipple stimulation as well (See the information sheet Expressing Milk)

But will I produce all the milk the baby needs?

Maybe, maybe not. If you do not, breastfeed your baby anyhow, and allow yourself and him to enjoy the special relationship that it brings. In any case, some breastmilk is better than none.

Very Important: If you decide to take the medications (the hormones and/or the domperidone), your family doctor must be aware of what you are taking and why. It is very important to have a physical and have your blood pressure checked before starting the protocols. Significant side effects have been rare, but that does not mean they cannot happen. Your doctor needs to be following you, and once the baby is with you, your baby's doctor needs to know that you are breastfeeding him and needs to follow the baby's progress just as s/he would any other baby.

Questions? Get Dr. Jack Newman's book The Ultimate Breastfeeding Book of Answers.

Jack Newman graduated from the University of Toronto medical school as a pediatrician in 1970. He started the first hospital-based breastfeeding clinic in Canada in 1984 at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children. He has been a consultant with UNICEF for the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative in Africa, and has published articles on the subject of breastfeeding in Scientific American and several medical journals. Dr. Newman has practiced as a physician in Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa.

Breastfeeding Your Adopted Baby or Baby Born by Surrogate, 2009©
Written & revised (under other names) by Jack Newman, MD, FRCPC, 1995-2005©
Revised by Jack Newman MD, FRCPC, IBCLC & Edith Kernerman, IBCLC, 2008, 2009©