Our daughter was a NICU baby with a complicated history who came home on a feeding tube. I had always planned on breastfeeding her, but once we were home, it felt like the problems kept piling up (oral aversion, thrush, tongue tie, severe reflux, and more), and that goal began to seem out of reach. Despite my own training as an IBCLC, I was anxious and overwhelmed, and my main objective shifted to getting her off the feeding tube by whatever means necessary. We were incredibly fortunate to find Sarah in the thick of it all. She has extensive experience with medically complex infants and with both breast and bottle feeding. She was confident she could help us, and her support never wavered. Step by step, we peeled back the layers of why feeding our baby was so complicated, and we slowly began to make progress. One day, our daughter woke up and began taking full bottles, almost out of the blue. We were overjoyed and in disbelief. What followed felt truly miraculous. About 12 hours after her first full bottle in two months, she breastfed like she had been doing it all her life. From that moment on, she was exclusively breastfed, and we never looked back. When I returned to work a few months later, she had no trouble taking a bottle, and she continues to breastfeed at 16 months old. I truly believe that without Sarah’s expertise, our daughter would have required a long-term feeding tube and breastfeeding would never have been attainable. We will always be grateful for her support during one of the hardest times of our lives.
— Caty R.
