Am I going crazy?? Relactation 4 month old son

[user1493581567]

I'm a FTM and have carried a heavy heart since the birth of my beautiful son. he is completely perfect and I love him dearly. However, I've struggled hugely that I wasn't successful at breastfeeding him.

I've wrote before with my story but long story short is this. 12 days late, an intense induction!! he never Latched....lots of midwifes forcing him on and both of us distressed and my experience of feeding him was short lived - I got hooked to the haunting double yellow medala pump and expressed for 2 weeks. I felt in my emotional, fragile new mum state that I simply couldn't cope when hubby returned to work. There was also shields but many stuggles with positions and them falling on the floor and two visits to LC's.

Since then I've been hugely upset. Cried daily - been getting counselling to try and deal with it and realise I have a bit of ptsd.
He's 4 months now and thriving - a nice routine and happy.
Me however...I'm still so hurt- I just wish so badly to be feeding him and terrible for not trying hard and giving up. Hindsight is amazing for that but with some sleep I actually don't know how I could have done this and not fought harder. I never expected this to happen and feel very naive.

My dilemma - I've asked two LCs about relactation and they tell me it's very possible. I just don't know if I'm creating more distress for my family and I? If I did manage it it would be amazing but can't see him ever taking to the breast so it would probably back to expressing butit makes me happy knowing he would be getting more mama milk. What would do?? Am I just opening up that wound again and adding more stress and upset or should I just close the door and try heal in time and enjoy this time with my baby even though I feel horrific over the failure and guilt for not feeding him directly myself.

first of all, congratulations on your ds!

it's a tricky one. what does your counsellor say?

i had a similar experience early on but am pretty sure that i am physically unable to breastfeed (lactation consultant agreed) so relactation is not an option for me.

tbh, although i still cry about this quite a lot (my baby is 6 months now), reading your post makes me realise that i should just accept things and try to find closure and move on.

but you are in a different position, still feeling like you are in limbo over bf. so i'd ask yourself some questions. how is your ds getting on? is it affecting your relationship with him? how does your dh feel about things? what do good and bad outcomes look like, either from attempting relactation or from continuing as you are now? you have feelings of failure and guilt - what exactly is at the root of those feelings and would relactation make them go away?

i found this issue particularly hard at about your stage, as i was starting to get used to my baby and my peers were having fewer problems with bf. but we start weaning next week and now all anyone can talk about is food food food!

good luck with your decision. your ds has a strong mother!

Do you feel you are getting all the support you need with regard to the emotional aspects of where you are at the moment? it sounds like you may be in a pretty tough place - that is so hard. - Help from your GP with referral to appropriate services might be something to consider if you have not gone to that route yet.
With regard to relactation, if it were me I would want to know some kind of rough information on how likely this would be to work. Is it an outside chance, or a decent possibility of success. As may involve quite a lot of effort from your side. The last time I looked for some of the scientific research on this, there was very little to inform likely outcomes on it. (from a mum's perspective, being told "it is possible" is not that helpful, you want to know "is it likely"). All sorts of things are humanly possible, but if there's only a 1 in 100 chance of it working then that's very different from say, 60% or 80% chance. When I looked at the literature, most of the papers were basically "case reports", that is individual descriptions of situations where lactation had worked - but no information about how many times other mothers might have tried it, but it didn't work - or what approaches are most likely to ensure success with relactation. As far as I know there is really very little data on those sorts of aspects. Anecdotally I had been told that relactation was most likely to "work" in situations where a mum had BF before (either a previous child or the current one, eg with a gap), ideally exclusively breast fed for a reasonable period of time, ie to the point where BF is considered "established" (basically, making a full milk supply). This was to do with the hormonal physiology etc, and you are basically "kick starting" again something that has fully worked in the past.
I guess, if it were me, I would want someone who knew the data to talk me through it and give me answers to the above before I made my mind up to embark on the attempt. Basically, what is the "protocol" that is most likely to succeed (and evidence this is most likely to succeed) and some kind of data on % successful outcome. Then I could think about it pragmatically and weigh up how I felt about going that route vs my feelings around the importance of BF and the possibility of uncertain outcome or success/lack of success with it.

There is no data - I don't think there is anything at all beyond case reports and knowledge of how bf works.

In your situation, how about just getting in a bath with your baby, holding him downwards on your torso, and just seeing if he gets on? No pressure, no forcing, just enjoying the physical closeness. Or lie back on the sofa skin to skin.

My guess is that you will both enjoy this, whether or not your ds actually latches productively.

You can certainly bring milk back with regular expressing - there is no doubt about that. A full supply would mean repeated expressing round the clock - it's absolutely your choice whether this is doable or whether you want to do other things with your baby.

But nothing to stop you giving the skin to skin thing a go....and feeding the bottle skin to skin, as well :)

I feel for you op as I was in the same situation. I considered relactation but in the end decided not to. What I did find helped though was using a sling and cosleeping. I found that helped to give us a closeness I felt we were missing out on and he was much more settled with those two things. That helped to heal the hurt a bit for me.

And please don't feel guilty and like a failure. You made the best decision for your family at the time - that is all any of us as parents can do. Be gentle with yourself.