In Babies and more We have spoken on multiple occasions of the losses, of those that occur during pregnancy, at the time of delivery or shortly thereafter, and we do it because it is a topic silenced for a long time that should stop being taboo because it happens, on more occasions of the ones we would want, and they leave a mark that is never deleted, although the environment of those who suffer from it feels more comfortable ignoring the loss, showing that it must already be forgotten ('I don't remember it so you don't have a bad time') and almost asking you to overcome it.
Today we wanted to talk a little more about the subject commenting empty breastfeeding, the one that happens without a baby to breastfeed, when the body does not know that the baby has passed away and prepares the food, when the breasts are loaded with love and affection and have no recipient. And we do it by contributing an idea: donate milk, because it sure can help many mothers feel a little better, so that breastfeeding is not so empty.
The woman who donated 348 liters of milk after losing her baby
It is not the only case, nor the first, but these days they are talking in the media of Amy Anderson, a woman who lost her baby at 20 weeks gestation, who had the rise of milk and who decided that that milk, that it was going to be for your baby, I was going to make sense to her.
He chose to remove it and, knowing that for many premature babies and newborns, it can make the difference between being healthy or sick, he decided to donate it. They were eight months of extraction in which he had to deal with his boss, who did not give him permission during the work to get the milk because "he did not have a son who would receive it." Eight months in which 348 liters of breast milk were extracted, which are calculated as about 30 thousand shots for newborns.
Take out milk if your baby has died? Isn't that prolonging the agony?
That is what people who don't go through it think, the episode, the suffering, the agony is getting longer. You get pregnant, you lose the baby and the protocols state that women should take "Cabergoline", the treatment that inhibits milk production, precisely to end that process.
That way it ends with everything and to continue living. But I wish everything was so easy. It is not exceeded. Never. A loss is not forgotten. You learn to live with it, but it accompanies you until the last of your days. The memory of what happened. The memory of what could have been and was not.
That is why more and more women are reluctant to close the episode and opt for not take the pill. They do not want to forget everything, they do not want to fight against the nature that causes the breasts to start to sprout milk, and they see themselves without baby, producing milk, and without knowing what to do with it. Given the risk of engorgement and mastitis, they should be extracted, but what to do with that milk? They can do nothing, and they can give it a meaning, by donating it to the milk banks so that other babies that were born and might need to take advantage of it.
But it must be her, it must be the woman who wants to do it and the one who feels it. At SINA blog, a Breastfeeding and Breeding Association of Valencia, we can read in a post some answers of women who lost a baby to a survey in which they were asked about the possibility of donating milk. This is what they said:
- It would have helped me to feel useful, in a moment that I felt was useless.
- GREAT, especially if the baby is born alive and the mother has been much stimulated to produce milk. It was my case, I had the stock. I had to open the freezer and throw the milk in the trash, it was especially hard, I would have loved to donate it.
- It would seem great, it would help the mother to feel that all is not lost. That milk can help other children. It is a very big gesture to give that milk. I would give the leftover, it wouldn't stimulate me ... just to inhibit milk naturally, gradually ...
- With my loss of 15 weeks, my milk went up! For me, it was a nature lesson. I didn't like being "forced" to cut with drugs, I wanted a natural way. I think I would have liked to donate it.
- I hadn't thought about it, but it would be an option I would contemplate (several similar answers)
- Valid option, but I could not emotionally. It would be to benefit other children.
- If a mother saw herself with strength, it would be wonderful. I would have had no strength, no desire or encouragement.
- Too hard, I didn't want to take it out. I prefer to cut it, but if it doesn't work and goes up the same, maybe I would donate it. When yours dies, others don't care, honestly ...
- Perhaps I would have agreed with a good accompaniment, a speech worked and with much love, making me see the real usefulness of that action.
It is to give a bit of meaning to something that doesn't have it at all
A father I would never have to bury a son. It is cruel, it is unfair and it goes against the natural order of things. But since it is not something we can control, and life is really like that, endless happy moments and unhappy moments, sometimes these things happen. They happen and obviously they affect us, they hurt us, they hurt us, and the loss of a baby hurts as the strongest slapping can hurt. What can a woman feel like she was creating a life when she finds out she has lost it? Anger, pain, helplessness, GUILT... It is inevitable, they feel guilty. They feel that their body is not well, that they are not well, that they are broken, and that is why their baby has not come forward. How to face any challenge of life if you are not able to push a baby forward? How, if all the others are mothers?
That it is not real, it is not true, not all of them are, and many of those that are have suffered losses as well, but as this of abortion and perinatal deaths has been silenced for a long time, as women are asked to overcome it and do not talk about it, it seems that you are the only one who suffers, without being true.
Well, letting milk emanate, and doing something good with it, is trying to give a bit of sense to that loss which, in reality, makes no sense. One meaning, "this love was for you, but since you have not been able to receive it, at least other babies who need it will have it."
In the same SINA blog post we read some opinions about this:
- It seems very good, I even thought about it, but I was ashamed to propose it to the medical staff. When the idea came to me, they had already given me Cabergoline (without informed consent, by protocol).
- It is ambiguous. Cutting relieved me at the moment ... But in the long run, there was a void. My body looked for what the medications had suddenly cut off and the milk also rose after several days. The effects of pharmacological inhibition and possible alternatives were not explained to me. After the tiredness of my dead baby's delivery I said YES to everything.
- When you lose a child, society covers what it does not want to see ... And if in confidence you say that you need to pump your milk with the same confidence, you are told that how long will you continue with that suffering you are creating? That was not precisely my suffering, but the escape route to my pain. I remember getting up early in the morning, with chest pain, getting up to pump milk and crying… Those tears that flowed down my face and my chest, that full chest and my empty arms.
- Some time passed and little by little and without wanting to, I needed to extract less times, less quantity ... Little by little like everything, I was weakened. The moments in which I took care of my chest, I carefully pampered the scar of my caesarean section… It was those few common moments that moms had “really” and I… It would not have been fair to take them from me too, I needed to feel my stolen puerperium.
- I tried to donate the milk by hospital, but being unfeasible, I made personal donations ... I felt useful for the first time in quite some time, my body, which had failed me so much, was useful for something.
Can you really donate this milk? Do you accept it in milk banks?
Good question. I'm not sure. In U.S.A. It seems so, because the mother I have spoken of donated up to five different banks, but here in Spain, receiving milk from a woman who does not breastfeed is debated. According to the indications of the milk banks, one of the requirements to donate milk is "Be breastfeeding your baby and have enough milk", so if in doubt I contacted the Spanish Association of Human Milk Banks a few months ago and asked them if They contemplated that possibility. They answered the following:
The truth is that the subject is debated in the milk banks themselves. Generally we encounter two somewhat different situations. It may happen that the child dies after a few days / weeks of birth and that the mother has been collecting milk stored in the freezer. In this situation, having to throw this milk can be very hard for the mother who comes to live as a second death. That is why in these circumstances being able to donate it to a bank represents for mothers an important consolation, something similar to organ donation, and that helps them in the grieving process. Other situations arise when the child dies at the time of birth. In this case, the mother can collect the milk after the ascent and donate it, but in this case you have to be careful that the mother wants to extend the donation beyond what is reasonable. There is a risk that it will be more difficult for you to continue to express milk and start the grieving process and assume that your child has passed away. As you can see, they are complex situations that need to be treated individually but taking into account the considerations we have commented.
As the phrase "beyond reasonable" was a bit ambiguous, I decided to ask what they meant, if there was a psychologist who would advise them and determine how much time is appropriate, or even when it is "reasonable", and they answered this:
We would understand it reasonable for women to express milk only at postpartum trips to relieve chest tension and until the rise in milk is pharmacologically withdrawn. I don't know if in the hospitals where these donations take place, they have psychologists who attend to these cases.
From what it follows that they do not see it very clearly and that they themselves are limiting that possibility, because they only allow it to be done a few days, when in reality a woman may require much more time to feel good about herself. They are not days, they are months.
This is probably the case because it happens rarely (that women try to donate) and consequently they have not met on enough occasions in the dilemma of having to think about how long they can be positive or of seeking advice from an expert psychologist in perinatal grief.
Once again, it will be women, by force of insistence, struggle and tears, who are able to tear down that barrier, that of "beyond reasonableness", to show the world that losing a baby is unreasonable and that, in consequence, measures considered "unreasonable" may be necessary for other people.
Photos | iStock
In Babies and more | A picture for hope: "rainbow" babies are those who arrive after an abortion or a baby born without life, miscarriage: you are not to blame, "The environment denies the pain of abortion." Interview with the psychologist Mónica Álvarez (I)
