Mother’s Milk: Breastfeeding and Birth Defects-The Breastmilk Challenge
My son was born with a congenital heart defect, which presented a challenge when it came to nursing. For my daughter, breastfeeding happened instantly and naturally; she knew what to do. I was one of those judgmental women who thought that breastfeeding was easy; that women who struggled were just too uptight. My second child changed these false opinions. For my son, he was too weak to nurse and slept through his first night out of the womb.
After our home birth, we took my son to see the pediatrician. He told us he had a loud heart murmur, and that he needed to nurse for a total of 15 minutes over the next 12 hours, or he would have to be hospitalized. Fortunately, my son complied, but only after much insistance and persistance on my part, as well as many unusual nursing positions. Once my milk came in three days later, he took more readily to the breast, but it was only after his heart was repaired surgically, that I realized how much his birth defect impacted his nursing.
After my son’s open heart surgery, the drainage began to take on a cloudy appearance. The doctors through he might have had Chylothorax, which meant he would not be able to breastfeed for six weeks, as his body could not handle the fat content of breastmilk. I was heartbroken, but I knew that I wanted to nurse until he was at least two years old, so I committed myself to pumping until he could nurse again.
