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Parenting

01st Mar 2017

This grieving mother shares her tragic story as to why breast isn’t ALWAYS best

Trine Jensen-Burke

There is no arguing that when it comes to feeding babies, nothing can ever come close to breastmilk – so perfectly tailored to your infant it even changes depending on what time a day it is and takes on super-powers of your baby is sick or under the weather.

However, this mum also wants to share a warning to breastfeeding mamas about what happened to her son – to prevent having others face the same tragedy to happened to her.

In February 2012, American mum Jillian Johnson gave birth to her healthy baby boy Landon via emergency C-section at a “baby-friendly hospital, which was geared towards breastfeeding,” Johnson wrote in a post for The Fed Is Best Foundation’s website.

In fact, the hospital was so pro-breastfeeding, it only allowed formula to be given to newborns if a paediatrician wrote a prescription for it. And so Johnson started feeding her son, with lactation consultants, nurses, and physicians told Jillian that Landon’s latch was great.

One of the medical staff at the hospital warned the young mum that she might have some trouble producing milk due to the polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) she endured, but despite this red flag, the experts told her she should ‘only breastfeed.’

During the first 24 hours at the hospital, Johnson explains that Landon wouldn’t stop breastfeeding. “He nursed for more than nine hours, but produced zero wet diapers and only four dirty diapers.” The hospital staff told the worried mother that he was just cluster-feeding, when really, Johnson knows now, there was something wrong with her milk production.

“I trusted my doctors and nurses to help me through this—even more so since I was pretty heavily medicated from my emergency C-section and this was my first baby,” she wrote.

In his first 52 hours, Landon lost 9.72 percent of his birth weight, which isn’t terribly uncommon (but then babies normally start to gain the weight back). Baby Landon was discharged from the hospital on his third day while doctors told Johnson to keep breastfeeding.

“Did you know that newborns aren’t supposed to cry all the time,” Johnson wrote. “They’re supposed to eat and sleep and dirty their diapers. I had no idea that he was inconsolable because he was starving—literally.” The first-time mum didn’t realize her baby simply wasn’t getting enough milk when he was on her breast.

The first night Jill and her husband were back home from hospital, Landon fell asleep while cluster-feeding. He then went into cardiac arrest – caused by dehydration and was sent to the hospital. After 15 days in the NICU, Landon was taken off life support and passed away.

When her son was on life-support, Johnson says one of his doctors told her that if you are worried about your baby not getting enough milk, especially if he has dry nappies, following up with a bottle is a clever way to know he is at least getting enough.

“If only I could go back in time.”

Dr. Christie del Castillo-Hegyi, a GP with a background in newborn brain injury research at Brown University, explained as part of Jillian’s post that Landon experienced two signs of newborn starvation that her doctors should have noticed.<

“If a child is receiving a fraction of their caloric requirement through early exclusive breastfeeding, they can experience severe hunger and thirst,” Castillo-Hegyi wrote. “Which is why they will cry inconsolably and breastfeed continuously when it is the only source of calories and fluid they are offered.”

Tragically, Johnson or her husband never knew something like this could happen to a newborn, and now the bereaved mum wants to make sure other parents know the warning signs. “We took all of the classes, bought and read all of the books. We were ready! Or so we thought,” she wrote. “I’ve learned I have to be my child’s number one advocate.”