A loving, committed mother is an indispensable. Person in our development. Just imagine a world without mothers. It would be a sterile place. Indeed, mothers instill powerful social and nurturing characteristics in each generation.
It’s principally from their mothers that children learn the virtues of sacrifice sharing, valuing others, compassion, community, and a host of other interpersonal values and skills that enable humans to live together in peace. Biologically, women are designed for self sacrifice. When pregnant, a woman’s body focuses its.
Primary attention to nurturing that new growing life developing within her. One person called it the most powerful image of a woman, a mother, a survivor that will not be held down. Whoa. New mum bosmith really has the completely brave mama bear thing utterly downpat. Not only is she contended with stage three breast cancer, but she’s also undergone a mastectomy, chemo, and radiation to treat it. Plus, she managed to fall pregnant and have a baby and breastfeeding.
The texas bum says her cancer diagnosis came after a period of feeling incredibly poor. It was not hormone driven, which made it much harder to treat. Then I started getting very sick after I ate, and I was very tired, and the lump went from very tiny to extremely large and took over about half my breast, she told people magazine. That’s when I was like, no, there’s something else going on here.
Everyone experiences their own challenges when it comes to breastfeeding, but bosmith came up against a particularly difficult one breast cancer. In a moving post on facebook, smith shared a photo in which she was nursing her newborn son after having mastectomy with a scar across her left breast proudly on display.
Never be ashamed of a scar. It simply means you are stronger than whatever tried to hurt you, smith, 32, wrote on facebook last month. I can’t begin to explain how this feels every day. To be able to breastfeed my son after losing one breast of cancer and being told I may not ever have this sweet boy in my arms, I’m not ashamed of this body. This is what continues to remind me.
Of how lucky I am to be here today. Smith, from sugarland, texas, was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer in February 2015 and told by doctors that she only had a 40% chance of living for five years. I was devastated and scared, smith tells south. But I also knew I had no. Other choice but to fight. I was only 29, and I knew.
I still wanted to do so much with my life. And so she underwent 16 rounds of chemotherapy with six different drugs amostectomy to remove her left breast and 44 rounds of radiation, after which smith was told she had a complete pathological response and that there was no evidence left of the disease. Before smith started her treatment program, her doctors checked her fertility and established that she had a diminished ovarian reserve, suggesting that becoming pregnant would be a challenge. I cried, says Smith. I had held on to so much.
Hope that I would still be able to conceive. Smith says doctors advised her and her fiance, James Coffer, to start IVF, but they chose to try naturally first with the help of the oral medication leptrazole, a hormone therapy drug used to treat certain types of breast cancer, which may also be prescribed as a fertility treatment for women with ovulation problems or unexplained infertility. Two months later, Smith was pregnant.
I was shocked, she says. I didn’t think it would happen, let alone so quickly and easily. It was the most amazing feeling. On October 18, 2018, baby James was born, and Smith knew that her decision to keep her right breast was the right one. Breastfeeding has been amazing, she says. It’s still so surreal to me that I’m a mother and that I’m breastfeeding my child when I wasn’t even sure I’d be alive.
It’s possible for some people to breastfeed during or after breast cancer treatment, depending on the type of treatment. Treatment for breast cancer is different depending on the type and location of cancer you’re dealing with. But in general, it may include surgery to remove just the tumor, one breast, or both chemotherapy, in which drugs are administered in order to kill the cancer cells, prevent cancer from spreading, or to slow the growth of cancer and radiation therapy, in which intense beams of energy are used to kill cancer cells.
Breastfeeding during chemotherapy is never safe, Michael T. Capello, do, a neonatologist at Advocate Children’s Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois, tells Self. Many of these medications may accumulate in high levels in breast milk and be harmful to the baby, but during radiation, it may be okay, depending on the. Part of the body that’s receiving the.
Radiation therapy, Dr. Capello says. The most common form of radiation therapy is called external beam radiation, and it’s generally considered safe to breastfeed while receiving this type. But other types, such as breach of therapy, which occurs internally via an implant, may come with more risks. After a massectomy, you’re highly unlikely to be able to breastfeed on the affected side because the remaining tissue won’t produce much, if any, milk, Jennifer Litton, MD, associate professor in the department of breast medical oncology at the University of Texas MD anderson Cancer Center, tells south.
So if you undergo a double mastectomy, it almost certainly isn’t going to happen. But if you opt for a lumpectomy or single mastectomy, as in Smith’s case, breastfeeding may still be possible with the unaffected breast. Whether or not that will be enough is another question. One breast may be able to provide sufficient quantities of milk for a baby, says Dr. Capello, but not always to ensure the maximum production.
With one breast, it’s advised to nurse as frequently as possible and to pump after feeding as a way to increase milk production. Sometimes supplementation is necessary if one breast does not provide enough milk for the baby. Ashley Colberg Sabo, MD, pediatrician at Advocate Children’s Hospital in Oakland, Illinois, tells Self that she would have to carefully monitor the baby’s weight gain to see if supplementation was required. Of course, many patients undergo a combination of these types of treatments, which may make timing a little more complicated.
Although circumstances can vary widely with doing patients, it may be several months after treatment before your doctor says it’s okay to breastfeed. Dr. Linton says the possibility of breastfeeding during or after treatment depends on each individual circumstances, so it’s important to have a thorough discussion with your oncologist if you’re interested in doing this. There may be some challenges to breastfeeding after a mastectomy, but breastfeeding is always very beneficial to the baby and definitely still worthwhile to pursue, Dr. Colberg Sabo says.
There are ways to plan ahead so. That you can still breastfeed during and after cancer treatment, despite the difficulties. If you’re already nursing and need to start chemotherapy, you may decide to wean your baby before treatment or pump breast milk and throw it away. Pump and dump during therapy so that milk production continues and breastfeeding may be resumed after the oncologist assures you that it’s safe to do so, Dr. Capello says. However, many patients are prescribed anti estrogen drugs during or after cancer treatment, possibly for up to a decade, which would need to be discontinued before breastfeeding or becoming pregnant, Dr. Litton says.
So again, the best thing to do. Is to have a conversation with your doctor about your options and your timing. I have patients who were diagnosed very young and were off their therapy and went on to breastfeed successfully, he says. It’s just a very personal decision. For Smith, sharing her now viral breastfeeding photo on Facebook was simply part of her desire to share her story as a cancer survivor. When I was diagnosed, I shared everything. I didn’t hold back, she admits. But even she has been amazed at the response. I never expected this amount of attention.
And it’s been extremely supportive and positive, she says. The response has been pretty much amazing. There have been some negative comments, but I just appreciate all the supportive and. Kind comments I’m receiving. Bo’s emotional post has since been shared over 5000 times and liked over 17,000 times too, with many people leaving messages of support. This is one of the most beautiful.
Pictures that I’ve ever seen. Thanks a lot for sharing this beautiful. Moment in your life with us. One person wrote. What a beautiful photo of strength and love. You’re doing a wonderful job nurturing your precious baby warrior mum. Another wrote. You are living proof that you can get through a bad patch and come out the other side strong and beautiful. Such a beautiful little boy.
Another woman commented, what is inflammatory breast cancer? In inflammatory breast cancer, the cancer cells may not grow as a lump that can be felt in the breast. They grow along the tiny channels or lymph vessels in the skin of the breast. This blocks the vessels. The body reacts to the cancer cells. In the lymph vessels, and the breast becomes inflamed and swollen. Symptoms often develop quite suddenly. The breast may become red and inflamed firm, swollen, hot to touch.
Inflammatory breast cancer can spread more quickly than other types of breast cancer, so treatment is often started straight away. Many cancer centers and hospitals have small foundations or grants to help support women undergoing breast cancer treatment, such as funds for babysitting house cleaning, massages and even acupuncture. If your friend is overwhelmed, you can contact the cancer center and ask if there are any funded support services. Be careful of comparisons. Everyone’s cancer is different. It’s different on a molecular level and on an emotional level. Someone with a small, very curable type.
Of breast cancer, who has little social. Support or other stresses, can be completely devastated by her experience, while other women with more advanced cancers and huge support networks can actually feel that their lives are enriched by the experience. Again.