Hoping to BF . . . thanks for the inspirational stories here!

I wish you the best of luck! My hubby and i will start the homestudy in August and i am so nervous already. I have all these plans to spruce up the outside and inside of our home. Im driving my hubby crazy.

Welcome! I think that, especially having breastfed successfully before, you would find breastfeeding your long-awaited (I'm assuming) second baby to be especially gratifying. When you all ready know how to nurse a baby, that is a big advantage. All you need to do is learn the parts that are unique to adoption. It sounds like you have all ready read a lot of what I have written, so I won't get into it in detail, again. I assume you know that getting milk production going in advance can be helpful, but is optional. Getting a Lact-Aid kit and being prepared to start nursing with it as soon as the baby is in your arms is the only thing that is essential. Doing one of the medical protocols can be helpful, but I have concerns about them, largely in the way that information, often inaccurate, has spread. I think the efficiency of taking birth control pills and domperidone together has often been exaggerated. Some moms do well on them, but I have seen it hold moms back more often than help them. It depends a lot on how long they do it and how it relates to the arrival of the baby. I don't think doing it for only one month is helpful, and I think it almost always has a negative effect when it is used after the baby has arrived. I think it is most helpful for mothers who are waiting for a baby being carried by a surrogate, which is actually who is what designed for. Those mothers know as soon as the pregnancy is confirmed, know when the baby is due, and that they will be able to keep it when it is born. Since nothing is predictable about adoption, we have a lot more to consider. Taking domperidone, without the birth control pills, is almost always helpful, as far as milk supply. Although it is a drug and there could be negative effects, I think it is generally very safe. The questionable cases are in people who are on very high doses. I did not have access to it until about the time my youngest child was weaning. I did order some, like 6-7 years later, because I was curious to see what effect it might have had. I took 40 mgs a day and by about a week later, I could express drops of milk and some streams. That was with no sucking stimulation of any kind, so I was impressed. I was going to try pumping for a month or so, to see what would happen, but my old problem with nipple vasospasm started in again. Since there was no baby to benefit from the milk, at that time, it wasn't worth fighting with that. I did keep taking the domperidone, however, because I felt calmer on it. I had no periods as long as I was taking it. That, alone, would have helped build my milk supply. I could also express large drops and streams for as long as I was taking even a little of it. Well, I was trying to avoid talking too much, but I did it anyway! If you have any specific questions, I would be happy to offer any advice I could. Besides nursing six adopted children, with a wide variety of situations, I have been doing what I could to counsel of adoptive moms for more than 20 years. I used to do a lot of writing and give quite a few presentations on it, until health problems started holding me back. Even though my personal experience breastfeeding is getting farther in the past (my youngest weaned in 1997) I have tried to keep up with what has been going on since then. I really want to help other moms and babies have what was definitely one of the most wonderful experiences I have ever had!