Hi Ann,
Here is my story. I want you to know I appreciate your help so much! You will see why in the story. We were pretty desperate by the time we came to you, but you helped us and we are still nursing at almost 13 months. 🙂
Samuel just turned 1 on May 20th, and we are still nursing! I had a rough start with him. He wasn’t gaining weight and we couldn’t keep him awake when he was nursing. We knew even before we left the hospital that something wasn’t right, but none of the half dozen lactation consultants we saw in the hospital could help. After a week and a half, our pediatrician was discouraging us from continuing to try to breastfeed. (She has since been replaced!) It was obvious something was wrong, but we didn’t know what. I was determined not to give up until I absolutely knew there was no way. We researched and decided to rent a Symphony from you to attempt to increase my supply, and when we came and explained what was going on, you helped us so much! You referred us to a breastfeeding doctor in Chapel Hill to help me determine how my health might be affecting him and an excellent ENT to determine whether he needed a frenulum clipped, and we got Golacta and More Milk supplements from you. The breastfeeding doctor talked with me about a lot of factors and assessed what I was doing. She realized my thyroid medication was too high, which was affecting let down, and got that fixed. The ENT did a great job with my little guy and determined he needed the frenulum under his tongue and the one in front of his top teeth clipped. My baby was already 3 weeks old then, and we had been pumping and pumping and using an SNS and doing everything we could find to try, to the point of exhaustion. This was not normal we-have-a-newborn exhaustion–he was nursing every 2-3 hours for an hour, and then I was pumping 15 minutes after every feeding. Things started turning around when we saw the doctors you sent us to and did what you said about pumping and supplementing, though, and around the beginning of July, we didn’t need to supplement with formula anymore and I froze my first bag of EXTRA milk. I didn’t need to take supplements anymore and even was able to pump a large stash of milk to freeze. We have been nursing over a year now and are still going strong! I am so grateful for your help. We couldn’t have done it without you.
These pictures are from his birthday. You can see he has gained plenty of weight. 🙂 If you want more pictures, just let me know. I don’t know if you have a certain age or setting in mind, but I have tons of pictures.