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(Warning:  exceedingly long, exceedingly detailed)

In the fall of 1997, when we decided to adopt a baby from Korea, our four birth children ranged in age from three to nine years old. As we filled out mountains of paperwork and I prepared our home for another baby, I realized that I’d really love to nurse this baby, if I could.  In May of 1998, we were assigned a little boy who was only two months old.  With him being so young, I was really hopeful he’d be willing to nurse.  I began using an electric breast pump in hopes of producing milk before he arrived.  I’d weaned our previous child less than a year ago, and expected it would be easy to get milk production going again.  I figured that even if the baby was unwilling to nurse, he could have breast milk in his bottles.  And I’d also heard a gadget called a Lact-aid that made it possible to feed a baby formula while he was nursing.

Two weeks went by with me pumping four times a day for 10 minutes at a time, and I couldn’t even see so much as a mist in the bottles. I wondered if this was going to work. A lactation consultant told me that 100 minutes a day of pumping was the standard rule for moms who are separated from their babies. One hundred minutes?!? How was I, with four kids under age 10, supposed to find that much time?  I reminded myself that I would be spending that time nursing in a few weeks — and I found the time.   But still I saw no signs of milk.

Thanks to the wonders of the internet– it was in its early days back then!!– I found an adoptive breastfeeding forum where I could ask questions of moms who’d nursed adopted babies.  One mom who’d nursed 5 babies successfully reassured me that there’s nothing like a real baby to build milk supply.  By the time we went to get our baby in July of 1998, I was propducing just a few drops of milk at a time, which was encouraging.  But I reminded myself that nursing was only part of being a mommy, and not an essential part at that.

Meeting our baby for the first time was amazing.  He was gorgeous, and I drank in the sight and feel of him. Later his foster mom took him back and fed him a bottle. When she turned his body in towards her and cradled him tummy to tummy in the perfect nursing position, I was thrilled. That part, at least, would not be new to him.

We didn’t get to keep him with us until we were ready to fly back home the next day. On the plane, not wanting to rush him, I gave him a bottle. It was obvious he was a very sucky baby. He nuzzled at the back of my hand. I planned to wait a couple days after getting home to try to nurse him, but I was so eager that within an hour or so of walking in the door, I was in the bedroom trying. No dice. He wailed and stiffened in frustration — and who could blame him — he didn’t know I was his mommy!

All the next day I bottle-fed him in the nursing position. He was content, but I found it so awkward! I’d never realized that bottle-feeding takes both hands! The next day I began to gradually get him used to the coziness of nursing. My first step was to thread the tiny tube of the nursing supplementer through a bottle nipple. Then I placed the bottle nipple (without the collar) over my breast. This way Joshua got used to being against my skin, while still sucking on his familiar bottle nipple. His formula now flowed from the supplementer rather than the bottle, and to all outward appearances, he was breastfeeding.

He accepted this step quite easily. The next day I tried a nipple shield over my breast, with the Lactaid threaded through the shield. He hated it — it was a softer, different kind of rubber and it felt too unfamiliar. So we went back to the bottle nipple threaded with the supplementer, which calmed him right down.

In the wee hours of the next morning, while fighting jet lag and getting acclimated to his strange new world, he got really fussy. I walked him, fed him, jiggled him and gave him the pacifier. But he still cried. Finally around 4am, I tried what had always calmed the other kids. I put him to my breast the normal way.  No tubes, no nothing. And he sucked! A minute or two at the first attempt, longer at the next try. I was so thrilled that I forgot how jet-lagged I was.

And so it began. I didn’t have much milk at first, and so I used the supplementer each time he nursed.  At the beginning he resisted changing sides in the middle of feedings — he’d cry and the feeding would be abruptly cut short. But once he settled in and got used to taking both sides at a feeding (after about two or three weeks), my milk supply really increased. I also took some herbs that seemed to help with supply.

By September, by doing a calculation involving my baby’s weight and the amount of formula he was taking, I figured that I was producing about half of his total daily requirement.  Many adoptive moms who are thinking of breastfeeding expect to be able to supply their baby with all the nourishment the baby needs via the breast. But about 90 percent of adoptive moms will need to supplement; some a little, some a lot — especially with an older baby who arrives already needing a large quantity of milk.

I used the Lact-aid with most nursing sessions until he was about a year old.  By then he was eating lots of food and mostly nursing for coziness.  We continued to nurse without tubes until he was just over 2.  In fact, I was still nursing him when our second Korean son arrived in January of 2000.

Our second little guy was 20 months on homecoming– so much older than our first adopted son that I honestly didn’t think it was possible to nurse him.  I remember once when I was nursing our other little guy,  he did ask to nurse, and I let him.  He tried just for a second, then pulled away laughing, like it was the silliest thing ever.  And that is as far as nursing ever got for him.  I was fine with him not nursing at the time.  Now looking back– and given the experience I had later with his little sister– I do wonder if he’d have truly nursed if I’d tried a little harder, and I feel a little sad that I didn’t.

But I was thrilled with the success I had nursing our other baby.  He loved it and so did I.  It was just amazing to be rocking him and have him reach up to pat my face, or to see him smile up at me right in the midst of nursing.  Those are the types of moments mommas always treasure, and I feel incredibly blessed to have shared them with him.

Coming soon:  Adoptive breastfeeding:  our little girls

Additional links

FAQ’s about nursing adopted babies

Building attachment through breastfeeding