Teen Continues To Pump Breast Milk For Daughter After Adoption: ‘I Didn’t Want To Be Selfish’

Though Alaskan teen Kaleena Pysher says she didn’t have the “life experience” to properly raise her baby daughter, that hasn’t stopped her from doing everything in her power to ensure the baby has the best life possible.

Kaleena hand-picked adoptive parents for her baby daughter, but she didn’t stop there. After researching the benefits of breast milk, Kaleena decided to continue to pump breast milk for her daughter for the adoptive parents.

“I didn’t want to be selfish,” Kaleena said when detailing how she is sure to be home every two hours to pump for her baby.

The Daily Mail reports that 19-year-old Kaleena became pregnant during her senior year of high school. She says she couldn’t provide the kind of life that her baby needed and deserved. She notes that she knows the effects of teen pregnancy on a baby first-hand, as her sister had a baby at 14. Kaleena said she wanted more for her baby, so she decided on adoption just three months into her pregnancy.

Kaleena then set out to find the perfect set of adoptive parents for her child. At just four months of pregnancy, Kaleena had decided on an adoptive family. However, this would not be the last decision Kaleena made for her baby that was both selfless and beautiful.

“When I first found out that I was pregnant, I knew I didn’t have the life experience to raise a baby, and I wasn’t going to be selfish… So, I decided for adoption.”

When Kaleena was seven months pregnant, she spoke with a nurse at the hospital about breastfeeding and decided that her daughter would be best suited to receive breast milk for the first few months of life. She discussed it with the adoptive parents and the choice was made: Kaleena’s daughter would receive her breast milk for at least three months after birth.

“When a baby is fed breast milk, they are just way ahead of the game. I decided that I wanted my baby to have the best options and to be able to grow.”

According to the Alaska Dispatch News, the adoptive parents agreed that breast milk was best and bought Kaleena a breast pump and offered to pay for her to ship frozen milk from Alaska. The teen mom says that she bonded with her baby throughout the pregnancy and truly just wants what is best for her daughter, which includes both supportive adoptive parents and breast milk.

Therefore, when Kaleena’s daughter, Rylie, was born, she was allowed to breastfeed her until the adoptive parents arrived. Kaleena said she immediately handed the baby over to her adoptive family when they arrived and did not hold her again expect for a couple of minutes.

“I wanted my daughter to bond with them. They are going to be raising her.”

After Rylie was handed over to the adoptive family, Kaleena continued to tend to her daughter’s needs by consistently pumping breast milk every two hours. In fact, it is noted that Kaleena skipped “normal” teen activities to ensure her daughter had the breast milk she could provide. Instead of going out with friends, Kaleena would stay home to ensure she could pump every two hours.

Kaleena would continue doing this for three months before the family began weening Rylie and replacing some of the milk with formula. However, Kaleena has no plans to stop pumping until her supply is gone. Instead, she has opted to donate her extra breast milk to a milk bank in Colorado, which will be used to feed infants born prematurely.

Kaleena says her deepest fear is that the adoptive parents will change their minds about an open adoption, but the family says there is no way that would happen, and that Kaleena will continue to be a part of the baby’s life for years to come.