Yup, It’s Possible to Breastfeed a Baby You Have via Surrogacy or Adoption
Kim Kardashian just welcomed her third child (this time, via surrogacy), and the Keeping Up with the Kardashians star recently went on Snapchat to show off all the breastfeeding and baby swag she’s gotten in preparation for her new daughter’s arrival. “You guys, I’m in baby heaven here. I got so many amazing things,” she said before showing off her gear.
Among other things, Kardashian raved about My Brest Friend, a nursing pillow that, it seems, she plans to use. “It is the best nursing pillow on the planet,” she said in the video, adding that it’s “the most necessary thing of life” and that she’s “obsessed” with it.
But, given that the reality star didn’t give birth, some people are confused about whether or not this means she plans to nurse her new daughter—and how that would actually work. “I’m curious. You’re going to breastfeed your new baby? Your milk production is coming how??? Won’t the surrogate be the one that will produce the milk???” one person wrote on Instagram.
Of course, we don’t know if Kardashian is planning to actually breastfeed the baby herself. (The pillow could be a gift or used for bottle feeding.) But it turns out there is a way for some people to breastfeed even if they haven’t given birth.
It may be surprising, but it’s true: There is a way to breastfeed without being pregnant first.
The production of milk relies on the interaction of several hormones and physical changes throughout pregnancy, according to the Mayo Clinic. When you’re pregnant, your body usually prepares for breastfeeding by enlarging your breasts to make room for the milk that will eventually fill them to nurse the baby. In the last few months before delivery, your levels of estrogen and progesterone are also increasing. When the baby is born, the levels of estrogen and progesterone in your body quickly decrease. And when the baby starts sucking on your breast, that signals the release of prolactin and oxytocin, which increase milk production and deliver it to your breast.
That all usually happens automatically. But there’s also a process called “induced lactation” (or “relactation”) that stimulates many of the same bodily signals. “It’s real and it’s safe,” Leigh Anne O’Connor, board-certified lactation consultant and La Leche League leader, tells SELF. Women typically choose to pursue induced lactation when they welcome a baby via surrogate or adoption, O’Connor says.
Inducing lactation isn’t exactly easy, and it doesn't work for everyone. But there are a few things you can do to make it more likely to work for you.
Induced lactation “is challenging to establish, however not impossible with patience, support, and dedication,” Julie Lamppa, A.P.R.N., C.N.M., a certified nurse midwife at Mayo Clinic, tells SELF. Both the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American Academy of Pediatrics support adoptive parents in their quest to breastfeed and suggest the use of physical stimulation and medication to help with that, but they don’t offer much in the way of strict protocols.
It turns out there are a few different strategies to go about inducing lactation (most of them relying on anecdotal evidence), and the right one for you depends on your specific set of circumstances. According to the Mayo Clinic, one factor is the amount of time you have. If you have at least six months to prepare, your doctor may prescribe hormone therapy to increase your estrogen and progesterone levels.
One popular protocol for inducing lactation (developed by Jack Newman, M.D., and Lenore Goldfarb, Ph.D.), recommends that this come in the form of a daily hormonal birth control pill as well as domperidone, a type of galactagogue drug that stimulates the production of prolactin. If you’re following this protocol, you’ll be on the birth control until six weeks before the baby is born, and you’ll be on the domperidone until after the baby is born and your milk supply has come in.
However, domperidone isn’t approved for this use in the U.S., and the FDA has specifically recommended against using it to induce lactation because it may come with serious side effects, such as cardiac arrhythmias and cardiac arrest. And, of course, taking hormonal birth control comes with its own set of side effects. There are other galactagogue drugs that you may be able take, such as metoclopramide, but all of them have the potential for side effects. So this isn’t a decision you should make on your own; definitely consult your doctor first.
Aside from medication, basically every protocol out there recommends that you start pumping about two months before your baby’s arrival to increase the production and release of prolactin in your body. “Milk production works on supply and demand. The more you pump, the more milk you make,” Lamppa explains. The Mayo Clinic specifically recommends pumping for five minutes, three times a day at first, working up to pumping for 10 minutes every four hours (and once at night), and then eventually building up to 15 to 20 minutes every two to three hours, continuing the whole thing until the baby arrives.
Once the baby arrives, if you’ve done some or all of the above, putting him or her to your breast and nursing can help encourage your milk to come in and establish a good milk supply, O’Connor says. Still, it can take time to establish your milk supply, and you’ll almost certainly need to supplement with formula, pasteurized donor milk, or milk from your surrogate if it’s available, Lamppa says.
But the fact that it’s at all possible to nurse a baby that you didn’t physically carry is pretty amazing.
Of course, taking care of a newborn is stressful enough. So even if this is something you’d love to do, it’s important not to stress about it if it just isn’t happening.
There aren’t a ton of statistics about induced lactation, but we know it doesn’t work in every case. O’Connor says that having breastfed in the past increases the chances that this will work for you. But even among those who do induce lactation, most aren’t able to establish a full milk supply and need to supplement it anyway.
Plus, there are plenty of loving parents who aren’t able to breastfeed even if they did give birth. So it’s crucial to remember that it’s just not going to happen for everyone, and that’s totally fine. Formula feeding is a great alternative. Feeding your baby is the best outcome, no matter how that ends up happening.
But if you are interested in induced lactation, talk to your doctor. He or she should be able to answer any questions as well as provide resources and support.
Update: This post has been updated to include additional information on the recommended protocols and potential risks associated with induced lactation.
Related:
