Highlight Reel: Breastfeeding for the 21st Century

Highlights from our conversation with Lisa Myers from Ceres Chill, a breastfeeding system for the 21st Century.

Episode Transcript

(00:11):
So I wanted it to be really beautiful because every other baby bottle in the world, youcan like, I mean, I don't need to name names.
Like just pick a major baby bottle, walk out on the street, cover up the baby bottlenipple, ask any Joe Schmo what it is, and they're gonna be like, that's a baby bottle.
Like, because it's got the measurements.
It's just so institutional, so industrial.

(00:31):
Maybe if you're lucky, it's got like a butterfly or a duck on it, right?
But the whole thing is like, what do you do with them between kids?
Like, where do you put them?
Like, do you throw them away?
Do you recycle them?
Are they part of landfill?
Do you know anyone intimately enough that they want your used breast milk or formulabottles?
Or do you put them in the basement or the attic and you're waiting for a child?

(00:52):
Like, Heather, you dealt with all of that.
I mean...
I had a miscarriage between kids, so there was four years between them and it's like, whatdo you do, right?
Do you throw them away or does it just take up all that space?
Why can't baby bottles be insanely beautiful?
So the chiller that I invented that addressed all the limitations, the cooler, it seemslike a small thing in that, you know, it looks like a Yeti.

(01:21):
Every says, it's a Yeti.
It's a hydroflask that you use for your breast milk, but it's patented.
It's two chambers.
You can put ice in one chamber, your breast milk in the other, but it can hold more breastmilk.
So 27 ounces over 20 ounces, and it can keep it cold for 20 hours with a handful of ice.
And you can find ice anywhere.
Most women can find it in their home.

(01:43):
Right.
And then when you run out of time, rather than being toast, cooked, like with the coolers,because if that ice pack is spent, it's all over.
You just find ice and you're back in business for another 20 hours.
Like 83 % of moms start out wanting to breastfeed.

(02:04):
And by the time they get to six months, that is pretty much cut in half because women haveto go back to work and they're trying to live their life and they don't really have
meaningful options.
They don't have the tools.
They don't have the support.
They don't have the information to be successful.
So, and then the AAP comes out with a recommendation.
The American Academy of Pediatrics of breastfeeding for two years.

(02:25):
And it's like, great.
How do we do that?
So yeah.
So I would say.
The world's gotten better.
The fact that you and I and Jeremy are having this conversation is huge.
The fact that Siri's still exists.
The fact that pumps can now be covered by insurance and easily bought on Amazon at allrange of prices is huge.
The fact that you and I though are telling the same story about failing our kids and notknowing about donor milk.

(02:50):
And that was a 10 year difference in when our kids were born bonkers.
Dr.
Hind has an actual Ted talk on this subject where she talks about how there is moreresearch and the value of eating tomatoes, drinking red wine or erectile dysfunction.

(03:11):
Like any one of those, like individually, then all of the world's research onbreastfeeding and breast milk put together.
Like any one of those has more research articles, more publications than all of theresearch on breast milk period.
And that's every human being's first food.
Bonkers.
You say that a lot on this show.

(03:32):
Bonkers.
Yeah.
Bonkers.
That's a good word for it.
Excuse me.
have other words, but bonkers is a really good word.
So what she talked, I mean, what changed is during COVID.
I mean, a lot of the concern around how do we keep infants safe?
Does COVID pass through your breast milk?

(03:53):
All of those questions helped us get more research about breast milk overall.
What sucks, what really, really keeps us going, gets us going, gets me mad is that rightnow with the state of the world and it's changing thanks to podcasts like yours and really

(04:14):
angry moms like me, I'll say.
Yeah.
But breastfeeding is the privilege of a bougie educated white woman.
You have to have some maternity leave, some support, um, insurance.
Um, you know, being educated on the advantages of breastfeeding and then being able toadvocate for yourself.

(04:36):
And I failed there.
I failed my daughter in that way.
And so I look at all the advantages I had, and even I couldn't be successful and Icouldn't show up in that way.
And I made a choice to work.
I felt rather than breastfeed because I felt that that was my choice that I had to make.

(04:58):
Individual goals, like when I think about moms, Jeremy, this is what I'm thinking of iswhat you were saying.
I want a mom to have bought this for herself, to have somehow made it to whatever her goalwas for breastfeeding, whether that's one month or two years.
And to be sitting on a beach watching her six year old play in the surf, like in like,let's say Costa Rica, she's sitting on the beach watching her daughter play in the surf

(05:24):
and she is sitting there drinking a daiquiri out of her chiller thinking, I did that.
I, cheers, cheers to me.
to me.
I made that happen.
I paid for this vacation.
My daughter is a healthy child and I-
still have this bottle that represents the massive accomplishment, Milestones.
So many things that are so important to us moms.

(06:40):
it's been a shut up production.