Erin Graham suffered six bouts of mastitis and a subsequent antibiotic allergy while breastfeeding her firstborn. Moreover, when her daughter was just five weeks old, Graham required emergency surgery for gallstones she’d developed. The care team reported that she would need to pump and dump her milk on account of the anesthesia, but Graham made a point to connect with a lactation care provider who dispelled this misinformation.
Despite it all, Graham persevered and went on to breastfeed her daughter for a year.
When her son came along, breastfeeding proved much easier.
“Breastfeeding my son was a piece of cake,” she recalls.
Becoming a mother was the most transformative and defining experience of her life, Graham goes on to say. So, when she witnessed friends and family members struggling to create and grow their own families, she felt especially touched and inspired. That’s when she applied to become a gestational carrier (surrogate). Graham has given birth to three babies as a gestational carrier since then and has pumped milk after each pregnancy.
The decision to pump milk for her surrogate babies started with a simple conversation early on in the surrogacy process, during match meetings where prospective surrogates and intended parents connect. Graham says there was never any pressure from any parties.
“It was all just gratitude and positivity,” she remembers. The first intended mother she worked with would even make her snacks to help keep her energy up while pumping around the clock.
During her first two experiences, the families were local, so they would coordinate meet ups to drop off the milk. She and her family became quite close to both of the families, so she found herself sometimes pumping at their houses during get togethers.
After her final surrogacy, Graham and the family coordinated shipping through FedEx, and while Graham says she’s heard horror stories of lost and thawed milk upon arrival, she never experienced any of these misfortunes.
When one of the families decided that they no longer needed Graham’s milk, she was connected to another family whose surrogate was unable to provide milk. Graham wasn’t ready to wean, so she provided milk for this infant instead. It’s one of her favorite infant feeding stories.
Graham shares how her experiences breastfeeding and pumping were so different. While breastfeeding, Graham says she never thought about how many ounces of milk she produced; instead, she focused on her babies’ cues. While pumping, she didn’t have the babies’ cues to prompt her, so she’d rely on an alarm and found that she became quite focused on her output. Pumping also required her to hone in on her organizational skills, making sure the freezer bags laid just right so that she could store and package them most efficiently.
Graham has remained deeply connected to the infertility and surrogacy space and has worked for a surrogacy agency and fertility marketplace where she helped both intended parents and surrogates find the agencies and clinics that fit their particular needs and desires.
In order to best serve her clients, Graham recently completed the Lactation Counselor Training Course (LCTC).
Having had the vastly different experiences of directly breastfeeding her own babies and pumping milk for her surrogate babies, now coupled with the LCTC training, Graham offers a unique perspective to her clients.
Graham has been featured in a GoStork Q&A where she offers more of her experience as a surrogate and fertility care advisor. You can find that here.