For all my training as an IBCLC, some mothers’ bodies simply cannot produce enough milk no matter what we try together — a reality the profession does not always prepare you to sit with gracefully. One client in particular, after months of every intervention we had, made the decision to move to formula, grieving a plan that had not worked despite her genuine effort.
What she taught me was how to sit in that grief without rushing to fix it with statistics about formula being fine, even though it is. Sometimes the most honest, most pastoral thing I can offer a mother is simply grieving alongside her that her body did not do what she hoped, before moving to any solution at all. Grace, in that room, looked like presence before it looked like a plan.