My story started about 24 hours after my baby girl was born. My midwife, who I had seen throughout my pregnancy, came into my postpartum room for my daily check-up. During her visit she told me that in her experience, people with breasts that look like mine often have something called IGT, so if in the following weeks breastfeeding wasn't working, that might be the culprit. Honestly, I was so exhausted from birth that I barely registered this statement, and we continued nursing as usual. I wish more than anything that she had told me of her concerns before I gave birth, but alas, that's not our story.

Later that night, our nurses came in to tell us that our baby had high bilirubin levels, or jaundice, and needed to go under the lights. They also highly recommended that we should start supplementing with formula, or we might be in danger of not being able to go home. We felt a little forced, but we decided to go ahead with supplementing, starting at 10ml of formula after each feed throughout the night. The next day we were allowed to go home, and stopped supplementing at that point, but were told to follow up with our pediatrician.

Throughout the next week our pediatrician and his nurse were very concerned that baby wasn't getting enough milk, even though she hadn't dropped below a 7 percent loss of her body weight after birth. We did not appreciate the way they were working with us on this issue so we reached out to an IBCLC to get some more help, and decided to switch pediatricians.

When we met with the lactation consultant, she told me that baby was not transferring enough from the breast, and she set me up with modified triple feeding using an SNS. She also pointed me towards the IGT and Low Milk Supply group on Facebook. While we weren't sure why baby wasn't able to transfer enough milk, my IBCLC recommended getting our baby checked for tongue ties, as there were a number of other signs that this might be an issue. We found a pediatric dentist who said she did have a posterior tongue tie and slight lip tie, which she advised getting treated. We called our IBCLC, and she recommended that before the frenectomy, we get some body work done. We then met with an osteopath, who worked on our daughter a couple of times. She seemed to get a lot of benefit from the work, so we felt confident moving forward with her tie revision. It wasn't a fun experience, and we all left in tears, but I am so thankful that we had it done.

Baby girl didn’t get better right away, but with stretches and a few weeks of time, she started getting much better at removing milk from the breast, as well as taking in less air during her feeds. However, at this point it had been nearly 12 weeks since she was born, and it felt like our window was closed. While triple feeding and pumping did help to slowly increase my supply, I still only made about one-third to half of what my baby ate every day. It was then that I reached out to my PCP and decided to do the recommended blood work to understand if there was an underlying hormonal issue.

There were a few small things that stood out in my blood work, but nothing glaringly obvious. Further, with the amount I was able to pump after my longest stretch at night, I was able to determine that IGT was unlikely. After incredible amounts of anxiety that baby wasn't getting enough to eat, I slowly dropped the SNS feedings, and moved toward a routine of pumping, bottle feeding and supplementing. Slowly, my baby weaned from the breast began to prefer bottles. I cried and mourned and decided that our journey would be exclusively pumping. I lasted until about 9 months, and I was very surprised that it took over a month to wean from the pump.

After a lot of tinkering, supplements, power pumping sessions, etc. I'm still not sure where my low supply truly stems from, but armed with a ton of knowledge, I am hopeful that I'll have more success next time.