Thankful for mother's who donate what an adoptive mama usually can't give...

So today, I met up with a woman named Jen who I had found this summer.  She was willing to donate breastmilk to our baby...In our process I have decided I would like our baby to have breastmilk and had begun the search for women who are so amazing to donate/share what is so precious for their babies to others who can't (usually) produce it for theirs.

I have been amazed at how many women have had such compassion for us and our adoption process.  I still met with Jen (even though our placement has recently failed - FYI it will keep for a year in the deep freeze) because, you see, now she is moving out of state and I said I could pass it along to a dear friend of mine whose baby is about to be born and Jen didn't want it to go to waste in their move...She was so amazing to say the least.  I felt like I knew her and she did with me due to our blog. She recognized me right away go figure...

I will say what she had to give me is the liquid GOLD of the breastmilk community...colostrum.  She had recently had her third child and was hoping to be able to nurse her and began to pump and did for the first week or so of her baby's life but unfortunately her daughter has some restrictions in her diet and would never be able to nurse due to this but they didn't know right away thus she pumped.  I was soooo thankful that she was willing to give this to me and she has graciously held it during the summer for me since I have been in KC.

I am still so amazed at how connected people feel to me when they read our blog...even when I am getting something off craigslist!  I have my blog address in my email signature even on my phone (of course I omit it at first when I first ask someone about something on craigslist but once I feel ok I let it stay in my responses to them).  So many people have read it this way and they always have compassion and want to help.  I am so thankful for all these wonderful people I have met (due to breastmilk inquiry, an adoption topic, or something even like craigslist) who otherwise I would have never known in a million years! 

p.s. if you are interested in finding breastmilk donors for your baby there are links on the lower left column to help you

Breast Milk For My Baby - Part 3

Sawyer and I with his primary milk donors : )

Our story got out there and I started getting contacted more and more by people telling me how they never considered donating to adopted babies. It reached a pediatrician from California! She had a sister that worked with Brett and had also just adopted a baby. The pediatrician had just had a baby herself and decided to start pumping for her sisters adopted baby that lived in Texas. By the time that milk got to Texas, the adopted baby had already gotten used to formula so the baby refused the milk. So instead of it going bad, they offered it to us. We willingly took it! (It was also milk bank approved.) When Sawyer was about 11 months old, he was still going strong on the breast milk. We were getting low again and I wasn’t scheduled to see the out of state donor for a few more days. I again thought to my self, this is it isn’t it. At his doctor check-up I asked the doctor if it was ok to start him on cows milk early instead of switching him to formula for a few weeks then moving to cows milk. He told me no. The Minimum age to start Sawyer completely on cows milk was at 1 year old. We were almost out of all the donor milk with no more scheduled visits to the out of state donor. I had been mixing cows milk and donor milk to spread it out as much as I could. The Dr. did approve that ; ) We made it to 11 and 1/2 months and we were down to about one more bottles worth of milk. Again, I thought, “this is the end isn’t it.” Nope, I was wrong again!

Meet Erin!

She didn’t even know if we were still giving Sawyer breast milk but she still felt impressed to ask. I am so glad she did! We planned a time to meet and Brett and I picked up a weeks worth of milk. She said she will pump more milk and we could come back in a week to pick it up. A week later we picked up more milk and that lasted till 1 day before his birthday. WOW! We made it 364 days on breast milk! 1 day shy of a year!

The last bottle from the out of state donor....

Sawyer’s first birthday party was 2 days before his actual birthday. All of Sawyer’s families were there, (our family & both sides of his birth families) and then we got a surprise visitor! His out of state donor and her son (Sawyer’s lunch buddy) completely surprised us at his party! When I saw them I just started crying! I couldn’t believe they flew all the way here to be here. “I just couldn’t miss it”, she said.

We spent the next couple of days with them as well as some other friends. She pumped for him those last few days and on his actual birthday, she fed him his very last bottle. It was perfect!

We made it! An ENTIRE YEAR!

Sawyer and his buddies that shared their lunch with him every day.

All of us together!

I can’t express enough how much that meant to me. How much it meant to Sawyer! People who I once thought of as strangers, kept my child alive, healthy and full. They answered so many of my prayers. From one Mom to another, they were there when I wanted to be and I couldn’t. They didn’t have to do it. They never charged me a dime for the milk. They sacrificed hundreds of hours during the day and night for us. I am so grateful Heavenly Father heard my prayers and led me to them. To this day, I still get people telling me how they never even thought to donate to other babies until they heard about our story. If you are in the process of adopting and breast milk means as much to you as it did to me, there is a way. It doesn’t hurt to ask someone. Some women would even feel honored to do it. I never thought we would make it an entire year but I am so glad we did.

If you would like more info on finding donors, I have a lot of sources! Feel free to ask me anything you like. Good luck!