Phew! What a story! Just one thing to add. Domperidone IS available in the United States. It can be prescribed by your doctor and a compounding pharmacy can prepare it. It's not officially approved by the FDA, but it's not illegal either. I used it with DD#1, but not even that solved our breastfeeding woes. After 12 weeks of trying to create a milk supply that just never came in, we switched to bottle feeding. For DS#1, I tried to breastfeed for 6 weeks, then switched. The next two we adopted, and I knew I'd never be able to nurse them! 
We're all fat and happy anyway.
KE, thanks for sharing the information and your story!
Wow. What an amazing story. It's a testament to your dedication as a mother. Awesome.
"One by one, each of the offending supplements (oil, sugar, and formula) were dropped from her diet until I found myself nursing her exclusively and we never looked back."
Why are things that saved her daughter's life considered offending substances?
I wouldn't enjoy giving my children those things, just like I don't like it when I have to give antibiotics. They may be necessary, but may also have negative side effects.
I wouldn't consider negative side affects "offensive". I would be disturbed, I'd try to relieve them (probiotics for diarrhea from antibiotics). But despite them, I would be grateful to modern medical science that my child could survive against such great odds. I don't get that sense from this post.
I haven't seen any side affects from antibiotics that are worse than the symptoms they are prescribed to treat (strep throat, pneumonia). In those cases, I'm relieved to be able to give them to my child and speed her/his recovery.
I'll let Barbara answer the question about whether she was grateful or not.
My point is that I understand Barbara's relief at being finished with supplements. You can be concerned about side effects even if they are minor and even if a medication is necessary. You still want to use as little as possible.
KE, I did have a compounding pharmacy prepare domperidone for me, but I found it ineffective. The brand-name drug (Motillium) worked wonders for me. I've heard anecdotally that the compound just doesn't work for many. Motillium is not available in the US, but as you say it's not illegal to import it.
Abbi,
I do find formula offensive (my personal opinion). I believe that corn oil in an infant's diet is unnatural, as well as chemically created sugars. I don't feel that any of this supplementation really represents "modern medical science". The high calorie supplementation is a double-edged sword: it does pack on the weight for babies who desperately need it, but it also increases the predisposition for later obesity (a sensitive issue in my family). But primarily, because those supplements stood between me and my daughter nursing full-time, I found them offensive, just as I sobbed when my older daughter was given bottles of formula in the hospital while I sat attached to a breastpump.
Now, am I grateful that the supplements contributed towards my daughter's survival? Of course!! But I couldn't be done with them quickly enough, especially since she was out of danger and I knew they were no longer necessary.
You wrote, "I would be grateful to modern medical science that my child could survive against such great odds. I don't get that sense from this post."
Wow. I sure hope you don't mean that as maliciously as it sounds, so I'll try to explain what you're missing.
The day my daughter was born she was placed on a ventilator, where she remained for 41 days. The day she was weaned from it and went on CPAP instead? We celebrated! The day she weaned from the CPAP and went to a high-flow nasal cannula? We rejoiced! The day she went from a high-flow cannula to a low-flow cannula? We high-fived. Does this mean we were ungrateful for the ventilator technology that kept her alive? Or the CPAP or the cannulas? Not at all. What it means is, the ability of a preemie to graduate AWAY from all the vital supports is how a parent measures progress and creates the hope that one day soon their child will be well enough to come home. Being a NICU parent is unlike any other kind of birth experience you can imagine. The things we go through and the things we see we wouldn't wish on any other parent, and we don't really expect others who haven't been down that road to understand it. Never doubt my gratitude to the nurses and doctors who saved her life as well as the scientific means available to them to effect this miracle. My daughter wouldn't be alive without them. Had she been born just a few short years earlier, she wouldn't have survived at all (most likely). But all those marvels of medicine stood between my daughter and me, so it only makes sense that I would want them gone, gone, gone as soon as humanly possible.
Barbara, I certainly had no malicious intent in my response. And I don't doubt that you celebrated your daughter's graduation from various medical interventions.
I just can't imagine calling such interventions that saved my daughter's life "offensive" in the first place, including the ones that allowed her to gain weight. Without that weight gain, I don't see how she would have been able to survive such a fragile birth.
I also disagree that mass produced sterile formula that allows the children of mothers who cannot produce enough milk, adopted babies, orphans or any baby who cannot have access to breastmilk for whatever reason, to thrive is not modern medical science. Before the advent of mass produced formula, these children simply died, especially the children of poor people who could not afford to pay a wet nurse. Or they died of unsterile or nutritionally insufficient concoctions.
As for obesity and supplementation- i think the evidence is a lot more tenuous than the dangers of insufficient infant fat intake and the effects on brain development and general growth. I can't imagine worrying about possible future adult weight issues when my daughter was struggling to gain every ounce.
Abbi, for the record, powdered formula is far from sterile and has many times been recalled because of bacterial contamination. Do a search for formula+bacteria+recall.
Just one example: http://articles.latimes.com/2003...n/na-
briefs10.4
In case anyone wants or needs to know Motillium is avialable in Israel.
At any rate, thanks for sharing the story. Your dedication to being able to give your daughter Mother's Milk is amazing
Abbi,
My daughter didn't struggle to gain weight. If you had read my story carefully, you'd see that I specifically said she had no trouble gaining weight, never having a day where she actually lost any. That's almost unheard of in the NICU.
I didn't like that my daughter needed supplementation and I don't like that it was part of her diet. It's impossible to know if she would have thrived without them since she did, in fact, receive them. Why you feel that it's "unimaginable" I would find them offensive is beyond me, but hold whatever opinion you like.
You are mistaken about the link between obesity and high-calorie supplementation of preemies being tenuous. My daughter's pediatrician is well aware of this link, even though he is not an expert on prematurity studies. When she was an infant, we were concerned with balancing her need for appropriate weight gain against packing on fat cells that would be present for the rest of her life and possibly predispose her to obesity (along with our genetic contributions). We continue to watch her weight/height ratios as she is a very solid, though not fat, child.
Let's just agree to disagree since you clearly don't understand my POV.
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