Induced Lactation

My wife and I started fertility treatment a couple of years ago and after trying reciprocal IVF (so my frozen eggs were transferred to my wife) we fell pregnant. At our booking in appointment I was curious to find out if when our child is born, I could also breastfeed. The midwife wasn’t sure but said she would refer us to a lactation consultant.

We both thought it would be great in many ways if both of us could breastfeed. There’s the bond while feeding, knowing how good breast milk is for babies and it means we can really share out the feeds. For me, although I wasn’t able to carry our child I really want to be able to breastfeed.

In January we saw two fabulous lactation consultants who were really excited that we had asked about whether I could also breastfeed. From the consultation we found out that induced lactation has been done before and they had read some research from Canada about it. After having an ECG to check my QT wave wasn’t prolonged, I began taking the pill and domperidone tablets in February. I was advised by the lactation consultants to take the combined pill continuously and the domperidone was gradually increased to 4 x 20 mg a day to hopefully help me be able to breastfeed when our baby arrives.

We are now 7 weeks from the due date, next week I have to stop taking the pill and start massaging my breasts and eventually manually expressing. Hopefully, I will continue to take domperidone tablets until my supply comes in and then will be gradually reduced off the tablets. I mentioned to the lactation consultants that if I did produce more milk than what we needed I’d really like to donate it for other babies.

I’m really grateful that I’ve been able to give induced lactation a go and I really hope I can spread the awareness of it!

Wouldn’t it be great to see in the near future, more same sex parents, foster mums or adoptive mums or carers being able to breastfeed their children!

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LCGB were pleased to welcome IBCLC Alyssa Schnell from the USA at last year’s conference, to speak on relactation and induced lactation.

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