One Breast is Enough

By Patricia G. Blomme
Issue 129 March/April 2005

I have been blessed in my lifetime—I have had the pleasure of placing five children to my breast. That singular term, breast, is very accurate. Four of my children have benefited from my having nursed them to the best of my abilities as long as I could. 

My breastfeeding tale is fairly unremarkable compared to those of other breastfeeding mothers, who have tried and, with difficulty and lack of knowledge, eventually succeeded in fully nourishing their babies at their breasts. My situation is different—I am a unilateral nursing mother.

My story began 33 years ago, on a chilly November morning. I was six years old and had just finished letting the cat out. I turned around and saw that the stove was on. As I attempted to turn the stove off, my pajamas caught fire. I received third-degree burns that covered 30 percent of my body, including half of the front of my torso, and obliterated my right nipple.

When I was 25, I began looking into what I would have to do to be able to breastfeed. My plastic surgeon had told me that I could, but that I would have great pain and pressure in my right, burned breast, and that he had heard of no procedure by which that breast’s milk ducts could be opened to relieve the pressure.

A few years later, I saw another surgeon. She told me that the ducts could be surgically opened (no small feat!) when I began lactation. I would then have to keep expressing milk to keep the ducts open until the healing was complete. I would endure some pain, but I was elated to have found someone who would go the extra distance and at least try.

I continued my inquiries but found nothing about my particular situation in the medical and nursing texts I read over the years. Even during my initial training as a diploma nurse, education in lactation was greatly lacking. I was under the impression that a woman’s breasts worked together—the one friend I had who was a mother leaked from one breast when using the other. In my case, there was no place for this leak to go. But I badly wanted to nurse and decided to further investigate the milk-duct surgery. My baby, yet to be conceived, was worth it.

Before I could make an appointment with the plastic surgeon, I became pregnant with my first child and was directed to the lactation consultant who worked with my family physician’s medical group. Linda was great—right off the mark, she explained that there should be no problem with my ability to breastfeed; that it was only a matter of my desire to do so. I couldn’t believe my ears. I was told about all the changes my breasts would go through, and how they worked independently of each other. Then she talked about how fresh cabbage leaves could suppress lactation in my nonnursing right breast while I lactated with my left. Little did I know at that point how much help they would be. I left the appointment feeling confident that
I would be able to breastfeed my child.

I gave birth in the hospital, unmedicated, to a healthy 7-pound, 8-ounce baby boy. I received little support for breastfeeding from the nurses while in the hospital, but my new son, Paul, and I managed. We decided to go home the same day I gave birth. On my third day postpartum, I awoke to all the joys of having a pair of red-hot rockets sitting on my chest. I was glorified. Linda and another lactation consultant, Dr. Janette Hurley, helped me with their knowledge and encouragement during my first postpartum visit. By day seven, I was feeling less engorgement in my right breast. Because I was not using the breast and was applying cabbage leaves, that breast’s milk production was suppressed—and baby was happily nursing at the left one. One hot afternoon, I fell asleep with some nice cold cabbage leaves on my right breast, only to wake with the whole room smelling of cooked cabbage. Yuck.

I fed Paul for four and a half months. But I was always fearful of him not getting enough, and between breastfeeding, using expressed breastmilk, and infant-formula supplementation, he weaned from my breast to the easier method of feeding, the bottle. I was devastated and didn’t know how to get him back on the breast. Even going to my doctor didn’t help—she didn’t ask if I wanted to continue breastfeeding or tell me how to resume breastfeeding, nor did she ask if I wanted to talk with the lactation consultants. She simply assumed I didn’t want to breastfeed anymore. Little did she know that I would have jumped at the offer of speaking with the lactation consultant again and resuming breastfeeding. I felt like a complete failure, and I felt tremendous guilt. I continued to bottle-feed with formula and was pregnant again six weeks later. This second pregnancy filled a void and rekindled my desire to breastfeed.

The birth of my second child, Matthew, was completely different. It took place at home, with midwives, and this time I had a great deal of support. Having used a midwife for the homebirth, I had consistent help in the first hours to ensure that babe and I got off to a good start. And experience can be almost everything. I had even found a book that discussed exclusive unilateral feeding: The Nursing Mother’s Companion, by Kathleen Huggins (Harvard Common Press, 1999). Everything went well until I woke from my first postnatal nap. Matthew and I had fallen asleep while nursing, and I now had two small blisters on the tip of my nipple. From that point on I learned a new definition of pain.