Everyone knows...la leche has been very successful. getting the message out. Breast is better.
Well, my breasts don't have any milk in them. I barely had enough with Stella and this time, there's no chance. Kailash does have milk in her breasts and I want it. Camilla is just 4 lbs. She needs it. Oliver, well, he'll just have to make do with Similac. Part of the surrogacy contract requires Kailash to provide breast milk for 15 days. After that, we can have more, but we need to negotiate the details.
The first days in NICU, before we got here, I'm not sure what was happening on the breast milk front. I think nothing. Then I asked for it and Kailash started pumping. She was transferred 2 blocks to the hospital where the NICU was located for ease. I asked her to come down to NICU to pump every 2 hours, but somehow something was lost in the Gujarati-English translation. She did come, but only when my bossy nurse Sandiya called her down for feeding time. Love Sandiya! This was the easiest time for milk collection, yet somehow we were still just hitting maybe 4-5 pumping sessions per day....when the babies are eating 12 times.
I realized I needed to be managing Kailash and telling her what I wanted. I erroneously assumed someone else directed her to pump every 2 hours and to deliver that milk to the babies. When we brought the babies back to the Rama, things got even worse. Now the milk needed to be delivered down the street. And the pump needed to be sterilized. Kailash is back at the Dr. Patel hospital where she gave birth. Every 2 hours, we need to fetch milk from Kailash and bring the pump back to the Rama for sterilizaton. Then the process begins again. Back and forth and forth and back. It was so much easier when I could just lift up my shirt. I feel like a drug runner, or a gerbil on a treadmill. I'm almost ready to quit, but working on finding a runner to pay to do the back and forth. Everything can be outsourced in India.
Well, my breasts don't have any milk in them. I barely had enough with Stella and this time, there's no chance. Kailash does have milk in her breasts and I want it. Camilla is just 4 lbs. She needs it. Oliver, well, he'll just have to make do with Similac. Part of the surrogacy contract requires Kailash to provide breast milk for 15 days. After that, we can have more, but we need to negotiate the details.
The first days in NICU, before we got here, I'm not sure what was happening on the breast milk front. I think nothing. Then I asked for it and Kailash started pumping. She was transferred 2 blocks to the hospital where the NICU was located for ease. I asked her to come down to NICU to pump every 2 hours, but somehow something was lost in the Gujarati-English translation. She did come, but only when my bossy nurse Sandiya called her down for feeding time. Love Sandiya! This was the easiest time for milk collection, yet somehow we were still just hitting maybe 4-5 pumping sessions per day....when the babies are eating 12 times.
I realized I needed to be managing Kailash and telling her what I wanted. I erroneously assumed someone else directed her to pump every 2 hours and to deliver that milk to the babies. When we brought the babies back to the Rama, things got even worse. Now the milk needed to be delivered down the street. And the pump needed to be sterilized. Kailash is back at the Dr. Patel hospital where she gave birth. Every 2 hours, we need to fetch milk from Kailash and bring the pump back to the Rama for sterilizaton. Then the process begins again. Back and forth and forth and back. It was so much easier when I could just lift up my shirt. I feel like a drug runner, or a gerbil on a treadmill. I'm almost ready to quit, but working on finding a runner to pay to do the back and forth. Everything can be outsourced in India.
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