This first-time mom didn’t know her baby wasn’t getting any milk during his first three days of life, and she’s opening up about her extremely rare but devastating experience.

By Melissa Willets

 

It took mom Jillian Johnson five years to share the story of her son Landon’s death; mainly because she was in so much pain after losing him, and also because she feared being judged. But now Johnson is opening up, in a blog post for Fed Is Best, about how Landon passed away from dehydration just days after his birth, and how she had no idea he was actually starving to death. She hopes her experience, while exceedingly rare, will save other families from going through the painful loss she did.

During Johnson’s pregnancy, the first-time mom and her husband educated themselves in an effort to be the best parents possible. “We were ready! Or so we thought….” she writes in her post, adding, “every class and book was geared toward breastfeeding and how it’s so important if you want a healthy child. Landon was born in a ‘Baby-Friendly’ hospital. (What this means is everything is geared toward breastfeeding. Unless you’d had a breast augmentation or cancer or some serious medical reason as to why you couldn’t breastfeed, your baby would not be given formula unless a prescription was written by the pediatrician.)”

Read more at Parents.com