Induced Lactation: Adoptive Mothers Can Breastfeed Too!

Approximately 18,000 newborns are adopted each year in the United States.While adoption is generally a happy time for most parents, it sometimes comes on the heels of grief. From the difficulty of a long and arduous adoption process to the pain of infertility, most adoptive parents understand loss. One such loss that some adoptive parents experience is the inability to carry a pregnancy and the subsequent biological processes that follow, such as breastfeeding. However, more and more adoptive mothers are choosing to induce lactation to breastfeed their new baby. In fact, breastfeeding an adopted baby is recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. What Is Induced Lactation?.As a general rule, a woman must be pregnant to produce milk. However, this is not always the case.Induced Lactation, previously referred to as adoptive breastfeeding, is a term given to describe a mother who breastfeeds a baby that she did not give birth to herself. It is typically practiced by women who adopt a baby or for those who have had a baby via a gestational carrier. Why Would Someone Decide to Induce Lactation?.The health benefits of breast milk are innumerable and well-documented. As such, many mothers choose to breastfeed their new babies so that they are provided with the essential nutrients that are simply not available in formula. Additionally, there are many psychological benefits of breastfeeding.Studies have shown that breastfeeding enhances the mother-child bond. As adoptive mothers are unable to experience a pregnancy with their new baby, many express feeling a loss over not being able to carry the baby in their womb. Breastfeeding, for some, eases that sense of loss by enhancing their bond through physical skin-to-skin contact. Some adoptive parents express that they feel that their baby has experienced a loss or trauma in being separated from their biological mother. For these new mothers, breastfeeding is one tool to comfort and help their babies to heal. What Does the Process of Induced Breastfeeding Look Like?.During pregnancy, a women’s body experiences several hormonal shifts that help to prepare her breasts for lactation. As a pregnancy progresses, women increase their production of progesterone, estrogen, and prolactin. However, once the infant is born, a drastic decrease in progesterone and estrogen, and an increase in prolactin, causes the body to make milk. As baby nurses at the breast, the suckling and skin-to-skin contact cause the release of oxytocin, which helps the milk to “let down. ”.Various techniques have been used to induce lactation induction.Choosing a method will depend on several factors such as how much time the woman has before the child is born, if she has breastfed before, and what choices she wants to make around medications. The primary way that women induce lactation is to physically stimulate the nipple and areola of the breast on a regular basis, as often as eight to ten times a day. There are many suggested mechanis