Fancy this; I have a nine (almost ten) month old, and am 6 months pregnant! I never bled after giving birth, so this pregnancy was a super suprise, and I missed nearly the entire first trimester! By the time I realized I was pregnant, my milk supply had apparently been declining for some time, little to my knowledge. I'd been drinking Mother's Milk tea, but not as frequently or as potently as I could have been. I stepped that up, but didn't begin aggressive pursuit of herbal assistance until after a tragicly blind moment in my mothering, when my then seven-month-old spent a few weeks hungry, which I thought was just stranger anxiety and seven month old clinginess (plus a little bit of denial). By the time I clued in, he'd lost significant weight, though I don't know numbers. Embarassingly, he'd become listless and somewhat emaciated, though I was blinded by justifications of adequate hydration and his continued disinterested in mashed-up baby food, and terrified of my inadequacy and limited options.
Things were clearly rather dire at that point, and we were forced to begin supplementation at that juncture. At that point, there was absolutely no appropriate use of formula in my mind-- I found myself such a lactivist that I'd been caught in a spiral of judgement of those who use formula or even ever bottle feed, and found it a large hurdle to providing my son with what he needed.
Since, I've become much more serious about herbally inducing my milk supply, being careful to balance that priority with the demands of my growing, unborn baby. I make a nettle, red raspberry leaf, fenugreek, fennel, blessed thissle, borage infusion and drink it, nearly in place of water, throughout every day and night. We have maintained our nursing relationship, though I only have enough milk to overcome traumatic nine-month-old flips, flops, and falls, fall asleep, deal with car trips and famished moments while the bottle's being fixed. He drinks it warm, from a glass bottle (which are HARD to find!), and we use Earth's Best Iron Enriched Dairy Based Infant Formula, which is GMO and Hormone free... we looked into making our own formula, and are supplementing the supplement with raw goat milk (when avaliable), but just found the daunting recipies for making homemade formula to be too much in the face of my son's immediate needs. Perhaps we should be reconsidering...
I just wanted to raise the face of formula's appropriate role, because I was positive no such thing existed, at least with a biological mother...
Things were clearly rather dire at that point, and we were forced to begin supplementation at that juncture. At that point, there was absolutely no appropriate use of formula in my mind-- I found myself such a lactivist that I'd been caught in a spiral of judgement of those who use formula or even ever bottle feed, and found it a large hurdle to providing my son with what he needed.
Since, I've become much more serious about herbally inducing my milk supply, being careful to balance that priority with the demands of my growing, unborn baby. I make a nettle, red raspberry leaf, fenugreek, fennel, blessed thissle, borage infusion and drink it, nearly in place of water, throughout every day and night. We have maintained our nursing relationship, though I only have enough milk to overcome traumatic nine-month-old flips, flops, and falls, fall asleep, deal with car trips and famished moments while the bottle's being fixed. He drinks it warm, from a glass bottle (which are HARD to find!), and we use Earth's Best Iron Enriched Dairy Based Infant Formula, which is GMO and Hormone free... we looked into making our own formula, and are supplementing the supplement with raw goat milk (when avaliable), but just found the daunting recipies for making homemade formula to be too much in the face of my son's immediate needs. Perhaps we should be reconsidering...
I just wanted to raise the face of formula's appropriate role, because I was positive no such thing existed, at least with a biological mother...
