Expert: Sally Wendkos Olds - 9/6/2007

Question
I diligently tried to breastfeed my baby for the first 2 weeks after giving birth.  
I also used a hospital-grade pump and was only able to get about 3-5 drops
of clear fluid from each breast after 20 minutes of pumping.  My breasts
never got engorged and they didn't hurt like everyone had warned me would
happen.  I saw a lactation consultant who suggested that I have insufficient
glandular tissue.  But she said that my breasts look normal.  They do not have
the typical characteristics of someone with glandular insufficiency.  Also, I
want to mention that I had a rough labor.  I was induced and I labored for 22
hours and only dilated to 6 cm, and then I had to have a C-section.  I was in
the hospital for 5 days.  My body was beaten up pretty bad from labor and
delivery.  Could the labor and delivery experience cause me to not produce
milk?  Is there any way to know for sure what caused my breast to not
produce milk?  How can I know for certain if I have insufficient glandular
tissue?

Answer
Dear Misty,

You are really to be commended for all your efforts to nurse your baby. I'm so sorry to hear about all the problems you have had. There are, as your lactation consultant said, a very small percentage of women (maybe 2 percent) whose milk-producing cells and ducts did not develop properly and cannot work well. You may be in this category. Women who have this "primary lactation failure" usually did not notice a change in size or shape while they were pregnant, never felt their milk coming in after the baby was born, and have never felt engorged.

I really don't think that your difficult labor (sorry about that too) would have caused this. Sometimes glandular insufficiency can be detected by a prenatal breast examination, but apparently your doctor did not detect anything. I don't know offhand of any test that you could take to determine why your breast did not produce milk, but I will do a little research and get back to you if I find anything.

Meanwhile, I have to send you an excerpt from my book (see below). Please read these words and know that your baby can grow and prosper, no matter how you feed him or her.

Best regards,

Sally

Sally Wendkos Olds
Author, THE COMPLETE BOOK OF BREASTFEEDING: Eiger & Olds, 3rd edition 1999, published by Workman Publishing & Bantam Books, and available in most public libraries, bookstores & La Leche League chapters.
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"A baby raised in a loving home can grow up to be healthy and psychologically secure no matter how she or he receives nourishment. Although nursing is usually a beautiful, happy experience for both mother and child, the woman who nurses grudgingly, tight-lipped, and stiff-armed, because she feels she should may do more harm to her baby by communicating her feelings of resentment and unhappiness than she would if she were a relaxed, loving, bottle-feeding mother.
  "Ultimately, how you feel about your children is more important than how you feed them. When psychologists from Harvard University followed up 78 people in their thirties whose mothers had been interviewed 25 years earlier, they found that neither the fact nor the duration of breastfeeding, like many other specific child rearing practices, had any discernible effect on the way these people turned out as adults. The only thing that did matter was whether the parents had truly loved their children -- and had shown their children that love."



Meantime, I want to emphasize that