Nursing session in the blooming sunflowers of Pope Farms with a gorgeous group of mamas and adorable babies and toddlers! This is Flor’s nursing story.

“My name is Flor Mitchell. I am a bereaved parent. My first child was a still born at 20 weeks. We named him Wawa (quechua for baby). My second child was a miscarriage. We named him Inti (quechua for sun). On my third pregnancy we became “high risk”. We saw a doctor every other week. At week 22 an ultrasound showed my cervix was opening. I was going to go to labor and at that pregnancy stage chances of survival are really low. The same day I had a cerclage put in and my doctors recommended bed rest.

When we thought we were finally ready to “just” relax and enjoy our baby our little one got taken to the hospital NICU. After a couple of days we were told our baby’s heart wasn’t working very well. She was then transferred to another hospital and had to have heart surgery when she was only 7 days old. Illari’s surgery went well.

However, she had a feeding tube since she hadn’t learned to suck, swallow and breathe. She also developed a condition called chylothorax which meant she couldn’t have high calorie breast milk. I wasn’t allowed to breastfeed her. We lived at the hospital for about a month. We worked really hard on teaching her to take a bottle. At times it was very challenging and frustrating. But we knew we had to persevere. Six weeks after her heart surgery Illari was able to breastfeed. We were very excited and thought the transition from a bottle to breastfeed was going to be hard.

However, Illari showed us one more time what a great fighter she is. After a day of tears, many tears we tried a nipple shield. All the sudden she was breastfeeding like a champ. That was the first day she looked at me on the eye. It was a sweet moment. Ever since then she has loved breastfeeding a co sleeping. She is now 2 years old and still breastfeeds. I don’t know when we will be ready to wean. For now, we just love our breastfeeding times.”

– Flor & Illari