When we were waiting for the referral of our first Chinese daughter, I had a dream that was profound on two levels. First, I saw our baby. She was tiny, with wispy black hair and dressed in a blue sleeper. She looked much younger than I was expecting – maybe 6 months instead of the 10-11 months we were expecting based on referral trends at the time. The second profound thing was that I was breastfeeding her – something that had never before crossed my mind. This planted a seed that would later blossom into something wonderful for my daughter and me. :) (The photo accompanying this entry is of me and my daughter while still in China , and although it's a modest one, I blurred it a bit to protect the innocent!)

As the weeks went on and the time of our referral drew nearer, I started to wonder if really was possible for me to breastfeed our new baby. I had a vague knowledge that some adoptive mothers of newborns could breastfeed, but I wasn’t sure how it could all work with an older baby. I had nursed our four biological children, so I certainly had the experience, but I’d also had biological processes on my side that would be absent with this particular method of adding to our family.

I did a little research and discovered that lots of adoptive moms of older babies had been able to breastfeed successfully. I was a little overwhelmed at first at the variety of choices available for helping to bring in milk and teaching a baby to nurse, but I finally decided on what seemed doable and safe and decided to do what I could to prepare my body.

Based on the research of Canadian physician, Dr. Jack Newman (see link at the end of part 3), I began taking Domperidone, which sadly, is no longer available to women in the U.S. It can still be purchased in Canada and other countries, but the U.S. FDA has warned against its use for the purposes of milk production because it is excreted in the breast milk. (In my case, I used it to bring in my milk before I ever got anywhere near our daughter, so this was not a concern, although the FDA site mentions the potential for cardiac problems in users. I also took the medication under the care of my OB/GYN, who prescribed it for me.)

The other step I took was to purchase a supplemental nursing system. One of my biological twins had been a poor feeder, and I had relied on the SNS system before to make sure he got adequate caloric intake while allowing me to continue to nurse him. I’m not a militant breastfeeder, but it was important for me to do everything I could to keep the nursing going before I resorted to the bottle feedings the pediatrician was hinting I should consider.

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