September 25, 2025 • 53 mins
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In this episode, we hear from Lisa as she shares her breastfeeding journey from more than 30 years ago and discusses the cultural and medical challenges she faced.
The conversation explores the shifts in baby care practices across generations, the influence of societal expectations, and the vital role of support systems in achieving successful breastfeeding. This conversation emphasizes the importance of trusting one's instincts and making intentional choices when it comes to baby feeding.
00:00 Introduction and Guest Background
01:29 Generational Perspectives on Baby Feeding
05:50 Early Experiences and Cultural Norms
08:53 Personal Health and Breastfeeding Decisions
13:58 Challenges and Support in Breastfeeding
15:50 Hospital Experiences and Medical Advice
28:02 Doctor's Advice and Initial Struggles
29:33 Formula Feeding and Pumping Challenges
32:01 Emotional Toll and Seeking Help
32:48 Finding a Solution35:33 Reflections on Breastfeeding Journey
40:28 Balancing Motherhood and Work
45:34 Cultural Shifts and Public Perception
51:02 Concluding Thoughts and Gratitude
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/lo-s-lactation-lab--5834691/support.
Follow Lo Nigrosh:
#lactationjourney #breastfeedingmoms #maternalhealth #postpartumtruths #supportmoms #newborn #newmom #newbaby #baby #pumpingmoms #breastfeeding #chestfeeding #humanmilkforhumanbabies
In this episode, we hear from Lisa as she shares her breastfeeding journey from more than 30 years ago and discusses the cultural and medical challenges she faced.
The conversation explores the shifts in baby care practices across generations, the influence of societal expectations, and the vital role of support systems in achieving successful breastfeeding. This conversation emphasizes the importance of trusting one's instincts and making intentional choices when it comes to baby feeding.
00:00 Introduction and Guest Background
01:29 Generational Perspectives on Baby Feeding
05:50 Early Experiences and Cultural Norms
08:53 Personal Health and Breastfeeding Decisions
13:58 Challenges and Support in Breastfeeding
15:50 Hospital Experiences and Medical Advice
28:02 Doctor's Advice and Initial Struggles
29:33 Formula Feeding and Pumping Challenges
32:01 Emotional Toll and Seeking Help
32:48 Finding a Solution35:33 Reflections on Breastfeeding Journey
40:28 Balancing Motherhood and Work
45:34 Cultural Shifts and Public Perception
51:02 Concluding Thoughts and Gratitude
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/lo-s-lactation-lab--5834691/support.
Follow Lo Nigrosh:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lo-nigrosh-16371495/
- Website: https://www.quabbinbirthservices.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quabbinbirthservices/
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2F54fe1szmemB9n7YUJgWv
- Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/los-lactation-lab/id1614255223
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@loslactationlab3967
#lactationjourney #breastfeedingmoms #maternalhealth #postpartumtruths #supportmoms #newborn #newmom #newbaby #baby #pumpingmoms #breastfeeding #chestfeeding #humanmilkforhumanbabies
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Have you ever had the experience of a pediatrician or
other care provider just telling you to stop breastfeeding and
feed formula because some problem has arisen in the early
weeks and they don't know any other way of helping you.
That is just one of the difficulties that my next guest, Lisa,
experienced over thirty years ago now when she was feeding
(00:24):
her babies who are now grown adults. Lisa is a
relative of mine and her mom was on the podcast
and she talks about her feedy experiences that happened over
sixty years ago. So it is pretty awesome to get
to hear these through lines from one generation to another.
It's one of the things I'm really fascinated by when
(00:47):
it comes to lactation and culture and the anthropology of
feeding our babies. So enjoy this episode with Lisa, and remember,
if you are experiencing any difficulties with feeding your baby,
don't suffer in silence, don't suffer alone, don't wait until
(01:09):
it feels hopeless to get the help you need. I
would love to be the person that helps you with
your lactation problems, and you can reach out to me
on my website or by email. And I would love
to help you feel better about wherever you are in
your baby feeding experiences. You're a really special guest because
(01:31):
you are a member of my family by marriage, and
you are the daughter of my one hundredth episode guest.
And I invited you on because I am really interested
in this idea of what happens from one generation to
(01:54):
another when it comes to baby care feeding our babies,
because sometimes we see that there are through lines, and
other times we see that people intentionally or unintentionally given
the times the advice they're being given by their fit,
by their friends, their peers, and their care providers, we
(02:15):
see major shifts, and so getting to hear your experience
alongside your mom's is really special. Thank you so much
for being here.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Thanks for asking me. I went and relistened to her episode,
and there are some similarities in our conviction or ideas
of how we thought it was going to go compared
to the subsequent confusion. So it's interesting to me and
I'm interested to see how today's going.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
To go to I do want to get into your story,
but I want to say one more thing, which is
that when we are making these decisions about feeding our babies,
especially when it's difficult. Because if we've made a decision
one way or the other, and we just go with
that decision and we feel really good about it, and
there aren't a lot of difficulties that come up, that's
(03:05):
one thing, But many of us experience something else where.
We're having to make multiple choices along the way based
on how the tides turn. And one of the reasons
that breastfeeding feels so important for so many people is
it's that start of a deep bond we hope to
(03:26):
build with our kids. I have so many people say
to me, I knew that breast milk was the best nutritionally,
but that was not what was driving me. And I
don't know yet how all of your baby feeding stories
turned out, but I want to say that you are
one of the people in my life that I get
(03:48):
to see at a distance interacting with your teenage children
and now adult children, and I could only hope to
have those types of relationships with my kids as they grow.
And it's such a good reminder for me that all
(04:08):
of this effort that we put into making the right choices,
we're not going to make them all right, But it
is possible to have those deeply bonded, trusting relationships where
they have their own life and aren't dependent on us.
And I just want to say to you from those
of us who are in the thick of it, who
(04:30):
are just hoping that all of our actions are leading
to that. At least for me, that's what I'm looking
for in the end. And I always have to remind
myself in the moment what's most important right now. It's
like having a good relationship with my kids.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Thanks for saying that. It was a lot of luck.
My kids are great kids, and I feel like I
screwed up a lot along the way. They had to
learn resilience, They had the capacity to become successful adults
without a lot of intervention on our part. And yeah,
they are great kids, and so are yours. I really
admire all of your parenting choices. Your kids are so
(05:05):
much fun to hang out with. You all have a
great relationship, and it's intentional. That's the part that's important
if you're thinking about the kind of relationship that you
want to have.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Mm hmm. Yeah. And I have had plenty of people
tell me that they were worried that if they needed
to suspend breastfeeding for whatever reason their bond would be impacted.
But then they tell me once they get past the
decision and into the next phase, that bond is still there.
There's not a broken bond. There may be a grief
(05:37):
or a loss of the experience that they wanted, but
like you said, it's all about making intentional choices and
that can happen regardless of the feeding mechanism.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Yeah, So I want to take you back into your childhood.
If you tell me what your experience was of seeing
baby feeding.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
If ever, Wow, I don't think I saw that ever.
I think it was a very private thing, or it
was in my world it was supposed to be a
very private thing. I can't imagine, like growing up in
(06:24):
our family when there were babies, I can't even remember. No,
I can't remember ever seeing like at the park or something. Yeah, no,
I don't remember seeing that at all. If I did,
I think I would have been so fascinated. But I
thought it was like an embarrassing or just very personal thing.
(06:48):
You just went off, We're not a public thing.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
And did you ever see babies bottle feeding? Do you
have any memories of that?
Speaker 2 (06:58):
For sure? I don't remember when all my cousins were
that age. I would have been too little, so I
don't remember. But no, I feel like that's something you
would see at the park or over at a friend's house.
If there was a baby, that would be fine. Anybody
could do it, though, like the father or another family member.
(07:20):
It wouldn't always just be mom and baby. But that
seemed Yeah, I think i'd seen that. I cannot. My
memory is not very good anyway. I don't remember things
from my childhood that much.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Nothing. And then, as you grew into adolescence, maybe into
your twenties, did you have any exposure to the primary
purpose of breasts and mammary glands and receive any education
(07:58):
many of us have the time about sex or about menstruation.
Many of us don't. For some reason, this is something
that's started to fascinate me in the last few years.
When I asked this question, people are like, yeah, No,
nobody ever talked to me about my breasts or about
what might happen with my breast beyond maybe taking me
bra shopping or something, but never really talking about what
(08:21):
is happening inside of the breast to make them grow
and what that purpose is at puberty, did you ever
have any discussions, either in a formal way like high
school or otherwise that you remember.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I think I don't remember we had sex at in school.
I feel like that was middle school, and I'm sure
I just blocked it out. I thought the whole thing
was so embarrassing, and I think I remember thinking at
the time, like during those classes, that I already know
that there's milk or something, and like I already know
that stuff. What I do remember, I had calcifications in
(08:57):
my twenties. I had some breast slumps from moved and
they're not breastlumps, they're calcifications. I guess I still have
lumpy breasts. I is told by people that I had
lumpy breasts, and I did in my twenties. Around twenty
three or twenty four, I had some calcifications removed. That
to me was my main concern with my breasts. I
(09:19):
wasn't thinking, and I didn't even think at the time,
like is this going to affect anything?
Speaker 1 (09:24):
I was about to ask that. So you had no
discussions with the surgeon about the mammary tissue, the milk
docs and how that might impact you.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
No, do you know.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Where the calcifications were were they in fatty tissue or Wow?
That is really interesting to have a surgery in your
breast and to have no discussions about how feeding.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
And what's interesting to me is that I didn't ask.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
I hear a lot of people say they put their
health care on themselves to have known to pursue some
line of questioning. But if there is a care provider
whose job is to help people with breast safety, it
seemed because the breasts their primary purpose is for feeding babies,
(10:12):
that would be part of the discussion. But the whole
point of this line of questioning is that we just
have not viewed breasts like that for so long in
modern Western world. That these things happen, even with care
providers who are breast experts, that.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Is really interesting to me. And I guess I've assumed
they were very clear about how tiny these things were.
There was a tiny incision, the few things here and
there that they pulled out. I saw them there tiny.
I think my ascension was, they'll just take those out
and everything. It didn't affect anything else, And.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Perhaps they would have brought it up if they thought
it might have had it.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
It didn't occur to me to worry about that.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Okay. So then before you had your oldest, did you
have exposure to peers breastfeeding?
Speaker 2 (11:09):
I guess so, God, it's not that long ago. I
really don't remember. I think I would have had friends.
I'm trying to think of whom, some local friends whose
kids are a little bit older. I don't remember any
real conversations about so what's it like?
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
I'm trying to remember if I would have asked. I mean,
I feel like all that conversation might have been superficial
on my part. I don't think I asked go ahead. No,
if I asked, what's like? What was childbirth like? I
remember asking that what and maybe was breastfeeding? And and
(11:51):
I just don't remember having any great revelation. I think
I'm trying to remember one couple that were very close
friends than Her daughter is maybe three or four months
older than Eddie, so very close in age. We spent
a lot of time together. I just don't remember anything
out of the ordinary. I think she just did it.
She said, it's fine, it's weird. It worked, it didn't work.
(12:14):
This part's hard. There was never any Oh, here's some
things you really need to know or don't worry if
it seems hard. Don't worry if it's not automatic. Sometimes
it's not automatic for everybody, so don't worry if it
takes a few tries or something like that. I think
maybe it might have been a message I got. Yeah, nothing, okay.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
So what was your attitude coming into parenthood when it
came to baby feeding?
Speaker 2 (12:42):
So I definitely wanted to breastfeed. I knew that breast
milk was healthy for my baby, and I really wanted
to give my kids the healthiest chance. Once I was pregnant,
it took us a while to get pregnant. Once we
got pregnant, I thought, oh, I'm gonna make all my
own I'd never buy jarred baby food. I'm going to
(13:04):
make everything from scratch. Everything's going to be really healthy.
I'm going to breastfeed and give my baby the best
chance to start off with the most healthy food. I
had a history of drug addiction, I'd had an abortion
and gone through a whole bunch of really unhealthy lifestyle choices,
(13:26):
and so I wasn't sure whether any of that's had
anything to do with why it was hard to get pregnant.
I don't actually think it did, but I had a
real concern that I wanted to make sure that my
previous lifestyle wasn't going to affect my kids at all,
and so I was super I had a conviction. I
(13:49):
was really dedicated to making sure. My plan was to
breastfeed for a year, and I think I did that.
So that was the plan.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
And as you were pregnant and thinking about this, did
you feel supported by care providers? Was it even a
discussion at all? Did anybody ask you how you're planning
to feed your baby?
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Yeah? Definitely, my ob asked and we talked about it.
But are you planning on breastfeeding? Oh? Yes? Oh good?
Speaker 1 (14:26):
At that point, how far removed were you from your
years of addiction? Had it been a long time?
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Six years? Seven years?
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Okay? That I was okay, yeah, okay, all right. So
there wasn't any discrimination from care providers about birth and.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
It's on your Miobi had been my doctor for a
long time and she was always very supportive.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Okay, great.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
We see that happening a lot where somebody has become
a mom and they have I have a history of
addiction of some sort, and I will see a lot
of pushback from nurses and doctors in the hospital setting
about breastfeeding their babies.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Really, oh, because of recent drug use or not trusting
a mother.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Not trusting them. Yeah, it's really problematic. I'm glad though
that was not your exp Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
No, I did not have that experience and it had
been Yeah, that like a long time.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Yeah, it's enough to know, like I had a good start.
You're in the clear.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
I was on the right path.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Okay, So that was your attitude heading into the experience.
Go ahead and tell me how it went from your perspective,
and if I have any questions, I'll jump in.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
The birth went really well with my baby. I ended
up not having my doctor Mayo. She was not on
call that night. I had a traditional hospital birth planned.
The doctor on call ended up being my doctor's partner,
who i'd never met, and he is very famous, very experienced,
(16:12):
obi locally, very well known. But I'd never met him,
and he it was okay, he obviously didn't know me,
and that was just a weird feeling. The whole that
part was very weird, and a couple times he said
things that I felt were really judge or he commented
(16:34):
on my age, but he added wrong and he said
at one point I think he was trying to compliment me.
So I was just before my thirty fifth birthday when
I had my first. The process was moving along pretty
well and I was trying to go natural. At one
point he said, wow, you are doing really well for
(16:55):
a thirty nine year old woman having her first and
I said, that's because I'm not do the math, buddy,
I'm thirty four, right. It just made me feel like,
who is this guy? But anyway, I had the baby.
Everything went really well. It was the middle of the night.
He was born at three in the morning and stayed
(17:18):
with us in the delivery room for several hours, and
my in laws came in the middle of the night
to be there. It was incredible. Everybody was so happy.
Then they wanted to take him away and let me sleep.
I said, no, I'll keep him here because I'm going
to breastfeed. And they said, listen, dearie, you need to sleep.
(17:38):
We'll go give him some sugar water or something like that.
I remember saying, no, you can't do that. I can
only give him breast milk. And they laughed at me
and said, look like you've never had a baby before.
You don't know how this works. We're going to take him.
You need to sleep. He'll be fine. It's just water. Okay,
(18:00):
it's just water. And sure, I'm sure it's totally fine.
It just felt bad. It felt bad, and I didn't
get why I couldn't sleep with him just there. I
could still Yeah, anyway, So that's the first thing that happened.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
I want to say as you move into the next
thing that happened. We want people to trust medical professionals
to have solid, evidence based advice for them, and we
get frustrated when people have all sorts of conspiracy theories
about the medical establishment. These sorts of actions towards patients,
(18:44):
both the judgment and the looking down on people and
the flat out bad practices are what caused people to
have a mistrust of the medical establishment.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
And I'm sure she wasn't wrong. If I really felt
like she was giving me dangerous advice for my baby
or for me, I would have done something. But it
just feels like there has to be a better way
to talk to somebody who's just gone through eight hours
of labor and who is exhausted and embarking on this
whole new thing. There's got to be a better way
(19:21):
wait to say it.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
She's wrong. She's wrong. It is not any longer common
practice to give any baby sugar water. Secondly, we know
that introducing anything else besides breast milk, especially in the
first few days, it does impact the microbiome. See and
(19:44):
the gut of an infant is still permeable. But colostrum
helps seal the gut and prevent infection. It gives that
first dose of antibodies. So there are reason and humans
are carry mammals. We are supposed to have our babies
(20:06):
on us at all times. If you look at a chimp,
you don't see them put tiny little infants down. So
many mothers in a hospital setting will feel this biological
urge to be close to their babies. They don't what's
common practice to room in now. In fact, now if
a parent does you know what, I just really need
to prioritize my sleep, and you take my baby to
(20:27):
the nursery. That gets judged, of course.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
No way to not get judged, right.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
And it's the thing about the way we treat women
in the postpartum floor. I don't know how many times
I have had to walk into the postpartum room and
see that some nurse has made some offhanded comment that
she did not even recognize, off putting or chipping away
(20:57):
at that person's view of himself as a mom in
these earliest hours, and those things stick with that person
once they get home, even if they can't connect the dot.
If they have been told by some expert that you
don't know what you're doing. I'm the expert. You should
(21:18):
just listen to me, then that erods your self confidence
to be able to make decisions that are right for
you and your baby. And I don't know how many
times I've had to go into a room and say, okay, wait,
hold on, you are doing amazing. You know your baby
better than anyone, and you're going to continue to be amazing.
(21:38):
And it's going to get better and easier as you
get to know your baby and figure this out and
know your nipples are not too short.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Like it's such a lovely message, and yet it's really
hard to feel that and to believe it you're a
new mom, because here you have a nurse who has
probably been through sixty three labors this month, and it's
probably a whole lot easier for her. Yes, if she
just takes the baby and gives them some water, whatever.
(22:07):
But this reminds me of Mom's story. Mom wanted the opposite.
She wanted me in the room with her, and the
nurses didn't know what to do with that, so they
left her alone. They just didn't do anything. They never
came back to check on her. Incredible, that's that's way worse. Yeah,
that was bad, right, and later perfect Yeah talked her
(22:31):
about it. It's still upsetting, yes, I know.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Yeah, trusting this mother to do it's right for her
baby and to recognize that humans, anthropologically speaking, when we
look at the evolutionary timeline, were not left to just
mother and isolation. What makes it so hard when we
have our babies with us at all times is not
(22:57):
that is what is biologically normal, but rather that we
now have these very tiny isolated families, no outside support,
your daily maids. So that's why when somebody says, you
know what, when I go home, I'm not going to
have any help. And right now I just need to
prioritize my sleep. I get it. Because we're not living
(23:19):
how biology brought us. We have veered from that a bit,
and we need to do the best we can given
the current situation.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
And figure out how to get the support despite our
separation or isolation and order. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Yeah, When people say I don't remember a lot, but
these are the.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Moments that I remember. Talking on the phone, I guess
I must have called mom. It was mourning on the
East Coast and I called mom. And the doctor heard
me say something like talking to somebody about Yeah, as
soon as I figure out like my routine, as soon
as I figure out the schedule, we can get together.
(23:57):
You can come over something. And he looked at me
and he said, you may not make plans right now.
He said, you're not going to get organized. Could you
just be with your baby? And I felt like such
an idiot. I remember it so well, and it was
great advice, not given very nicely, but it was really
good advice. I had such a plan in mind. I
(24:19):
had such an idea for what kind of a mom
I was going to be. I was going to go
back to work, breastfeed, I get all the laundry done,
and have friends over for tears. You need support. You
need people to tell you what to expect, I think,
and you need people to I imagine. It must be
really hard in your position how to support without just
(24:39):
to be there for whatever's needed. Not knowing what's going
to be needed. I think I must have been very judged,
unsure of myself. I needed that feeling a lot.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
I always have to keep in the back of my minds.
Person had me following them around all the time, then
sure I could tell them all the things I think
that they should do. But I'm going to leave and
they're going to left, yeah, to care for this baby.
So what feeling do I want to leave them with.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
I certainly did not leave that hospital feeling empowered. I
can tell you that we're feeling like I knew what
was best for my baby.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
So and I think one of the reasons so many
people struggle in the postpartum period and feel this sense
of oh my gosh, like I thought I was going
to be able to do all these things and I can't,
and I'm feeling like I'm failing because everybody else must
be doing all of these things, and it's only gotten
worse with social media. It's a blessing and a curse.
(25:36):
The reason why I think so many of us feel
this way is that we are not in close contact
day in and day out with other families and little babies.
We used to live in larger social groups. So by
the time it's our turn, we've seen the baby at
Thanksgiving or in the stroller at the park, but we
have not seen what it looks like on a daily,
(25:59):
hourly basis. It's shocking when we realize, oh my gosh,
it's not just the times of being out with friends.
There's so much more to it.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
That's such a good point that I had not thought about. Yeah,
not living in a village. You don't all have that
experience and know what to expect.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Think about in places people still live in larger social
groups like hunter gathered groups, for instance, the children are
caring for the babies from their earliest moment, a part
of that care team, and so you kinda know, Oh
(26:42):
you can know because you're just around other babies all
the time. And with breastfeeding, if you are around breastfeeding
all the time, from your earliest moments, you are picking
up on things that you don't even know. You're picking
up on how to shift your breast, how to like
change sides, how to move your clothing in a way
that's comfortable. You can't just learn that from reading a
(27:02):
book or having a class. It has to be something
you pick up or just learn on the go.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
So interesting, that's a really good Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Okay, so you left the hospital with this feeling of man,
do I.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Know what I'm doing? It all went okay for a
few days, and then I was breastfeeding and it felt fine.
I think it took a few days for my milk
to come in, and then he was losing weight. Eddie
was pretty skinny. And after I can't remember how soon
you go back for a doctor's visit, but it was
in the first week we went to the Is that
(27:38):
possible too.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Well, well, for the pediatrician, yeah, you would go it's
over the years.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
But sometime in the first couple of weeks I went
and he was a little jaundiced. He had a high
billy ruben count, and the pediatrician looked at him and
said he had lost a few ounces and he was
concerned about his billy ruben. He said, it's not abnormal.
This happens, and what you need to do is stop
nursing for forty eight hours and only give him formula.
(28:09):
And he said, now I'm not going to do that, like,
why should I do that? And he said, it's just
what you need to do. I know how my brain works,
and when I'm hearing information that is upsetting, I have
no idea what he said, And probably five minutes after
the conversation, I think the message was that he wasn't
(28:32):
getting enough milk or there wasn't enough. I had to
give him formula because you could see how much he
was getting. When you're breastfeeding, you don't really know how
many ounces of milk he's getting. With formula, you can tell.
I remember asking, can I at least keep breastfeeding and
(28:55):
supplement with formula? And he said better to just not
breast feed it all for forty eight hours and just
do formula. I'm pretty sure i'd have to ask John,
because I had forgotten this whole thing. John reminded me
of this a couple of days ago when I was
writing down notes to talk to you, and he said,
don't you remember what the doctor told you about the
(29:17):
Billy Ruben? And I was like, holy cow, I had
totally forgotten this whole thing. I can't remember if I
kept nursing and supplemented or just gave him formula. I
think I stopped nursing for two days, but if I
started pumping, I had no idea how to pump. I
(29:40):
was getting like a couple of drops. I was just
not working. I was waking myself up in the middle
of the night. When he would wake up, I would
give him a bottle and then I'd put him to bed,
and then I'd stay up and try to pump. And
it was terrible. I was getting like three drops. I remember.
The next six weeks were me trying to somehow get
(30:03):
my milk production up. I felt like I had very
little milk. I don't I never really thought it was
because I didn't nurse for two days, But I just
don't know if I ever got on a regular like,
if I just ever got in the swing of things completely.
(30:24):
He was so new. It was definitely in the first
two weeks after that, I just felt like he wasn't
getting enough milk. When I went back, his skin turned
to normal color again. He was fine. They said go
back to nursing, and he just wasn't getting enough milk
and he wasn't gaining weight. I started getting pressure from
(30:46):
people to keep going with the formula because I wasn't
able to give him enough milk. I remember my mother
in law saying, look how skinny he is. If you
have to feed him and me saying no, I have
to keep breastfeeding. The more I breastfeed, the more milk
(31:08):
there will be. How did you not imagine? I had
read it, but it seemed obvious. You got to prime
the pump once. I had this idea that it takes
a while to get started. It's what did happen for me.
The more I nursed, I felt like it would get better.
For the next six weeks, I tried every contraption to
(31:34):
stimulate my breast milk production. I did a lot of
different kinds of pumps. I got one of those things
with the little tubes that you put around your neck
and put down so it has formula but he's nursing,
but it's actually stimulating my breast milk production. But he
was also getting formula mixed into I did that for
(31:55):
a while. Anyway, this went on for weeks, as exhausted
and worried about him. And then I went to my
ob six week checkup. She was checking me out. Everything's fine,
and then she said how is breastfeeding? And I burst
out into tears, and then it's so hard it's not working,
(32:18):
And she said, what do you mean to tell me
what you're doing. I told her all these things I'd
been trying, and she kind of looked at me and said,
can I make a suggestion? She goes, can you clear
your calendar for the next two or three days. Can
you get in bed with your baby and feed him
around the clock at will anytime he wants, and not
(32:42):
get up and do the laundry? And I said, oh yeah,
I could totally not do laundry and stayed in bed
for forty eight hours with him and nursed around the clock,
and my problems were solved. And I think it had
as much to do with just relaxing and resting and
(33:04):
sleeping as much as also just taking away the stress
of this performance anxiety, like I just felt like my
body wasn't working right. And then it was fine, go ahead.
I never turned into one of those people that had
milk squirting out. I was not prolific, but it was plenty.
(33:27):
It worked fine. I nursed him for another year and that.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Was yeah, yeah, I love that. When you said that,
the OBI said can I make a suggestion? I thought
the next thing that she was going to say was
why are you doing this to yourself? I'm because we
heard that.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
The next thing she was going to say, is some
new contraption that I hadn't tried it. I was like
a little scared, but no, so you think she was
going to say, why are you contorting yourself to do this?
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Why not just why are you putting yourself through all
of this? And there's another there's I have plenty of
clients who need help coming to that decision. We need
the act of listening first to figure out what somebody
needs having that. We call that a nurse in when
you just clear the calendar and lay in bed all day.
(34:22):
For some people, if they've really just been going and
trying to live up to all the ways they post
part of life was going to be. That works. And
then I often get other clients who say something is
going on. I don't know what it is, but regardless,
I cannot increase my supply. And the answer is not
(34:45):
to just sit in and nurse your baby. Sometimes I
have a client who is a fourth time mom and
this is the first baby. She has not been able
to breastfeed. Now the baby just has a lot of
oral motor dysfunction. It's been very difficult. Some other IBCLC
who she called and s booked on the phone, was like,
(35:05):
just have a nurse in and she was like, I
have three older children. That is not the solution to
this problem, right, But I love that in your situation,
that really was what you needed. You needed just to
connect with your baby, connect with yourself, and.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Have that time and somehow release this stress. Every time
he woke up, it was stressful. When I was trying
to pump, it was stressful. I just kept thinking I
was doing something wrong.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
And so during that six weeks from the time you
brought them home, you go through the high Billy rubin
to the time when you had that visit, what were
your days looking like?
Speaker 2 (35:48):
I was home. I'm sure I was not working. I
took a break from work. I can't remember doing much.
We took a lot of walks, we had a dog,
we went to the park with the stroller. I feel
like I did that a lot of the day. I
remember thinking like, oh, today I'm going to cook a
meal or do some chores around the house. I remember
(36:11):
thinking how it is so hard to just even get
one thing done. So I feel like my days probably
were not doing a lot else besides playing with the baby,
taking care of him, taking him for walks, and a
lot of diaper changes, but maybe a shower here and there.
Probably in my brain thinking oh, I've got all this
(36:32):
stuff to do, which is how I operate all the time,
all the stuff that I should be doing. It wasn't
like I imagine, I wasn't just relaxed and totally in
the moment, because I probably thought, oh gosh, why can't
I get the laundry done.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
I was just about to say, to this day, my
kids are ten and six, and I'll feel like, oh man,
my kids are getting in the way of all the
stuff I need to do around the house. And I
think when we bring our babies home, a lot of
people think they put it on themselves, but I think
it really is like a zeitgeist. We need to keep
up and bounce back. What's almost this baby is getting
(37:15):
in the way of all the other stuff I need
to do. They're so needy. I'm in some moms groups
on Facebook and people will say, oh my gosh, I
cannot put my baby down. She won't ever let me
put her down. What's wrong with my baby? And I
always like to jump in and say, oh my gosh,
I know this is so hard. There's nothing wrong with
(37:36):
your baby, and there's nothing wrong with you. Yeah, your
baby wants to be held because that's biology. And what
makes it hard is that you probably have no one
else around who can do all the other stuff for you.
So right, get through it.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
John was going to work every day I was home.
I had all this time off work, and this idea
that he would come home everything would look exactly the
same as when he left was somehow problematic in my mind,
and that I think I probably thought, Yeah, today, it's
(38:12):
just a six week old baby. They sleep a lot.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Yeah, but they sleep, they need to be held, and
they need to be as not old, and like they
don't always just let you put them down so you
can go wash the dishes.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Or And I also remember, so Mom came out. She
was living on the East Coast then, and she came
out for several weeks, and so she was staying with us,
and she would say, do you want I can go
take the baby for a walk around the block, so
you can take a nap, or you can do whatever
it is. And I was like, no, that's not what
I want. I want to be with the baby all
(38:44):
the time. I'll take them for a walk. But yeah,
I did not want somebody else to take that off
my plate. That wasn't the part I wanted taken off
my Yeah, it's so hard for me just to let
that go. I just didn't want to say, you know what,
(39:04):
for the next six weeks, I'm doing nothing around here.
I'm just playing with this baby. Just get into moment
and that's Yeah, that's hard. That would be very hard
for me to do.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Yeah, when I walk into clients' homes and they apologize
for a sink full of dishes, I'm always like, I
don't have a baby, and your house is way cleaner
the mine.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Really, nobody cares. It's really hard to believe that, but yeah, really.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
And if they do care, who cares?
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Who cares?
Speaker 1 (39:36):
But it's so hard in that moment. I have in
recent years made a commitment to myself to not apologize
for my house when people walk in. And I want
friends who are okay with walking into a dirty house
or a clean house, And I'm not going to do
(39:59):
that anymore where I say, oh man, I'm so sorry. Right,
it's been so busy, it's so dirty. We are four
people living in a house and we're all very busy,
and that's not our priority. It is sometimes yeah, yep,
but it's hard because that is the expectation.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Yeah. So yeah, that was what it was like, and
we need a great time. We did a lot of
walking and playing with the baby. It was great being home.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
How long were you at home?
Speaker 2 (40:24):
So I want to say, is it possible? I was
three months? I think it might have been three months.
And the only thing I remember about that I tried
to pump back when I went to work, and I
guess I put him in daycare. I put him in
a very sweet daycare near my house, and we used
to get up early and walk every morning over there,
(40:46):
and then I'd go to work. I think I started
working from home. Then I was a travel agent and
I started working from home to save commute time and
stuff like that. Now that's misremembering because with the first
I did have to go back into work and pump,
and there was a lot of disgruntled coworkers because I
(41:10):
was getting a lot of breaks to go pump and
it wasn't fair. And I remember thinking, yeah, if you
want to go sit in a closet right stress over
trying to get two ounces of crest milk, you just
knock yourself out and so I did that for a while,
and then I eventually got to work from home, and
(41:30):
so I think that's when that switched.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
They're like, we're so far that pump from the closet.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
I was in the file closet.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
And was there any one else in your office who
had ever pumped for a baby?
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Yes, sure, but not at the time. There was nobody
else that was doing that. And like taking that kind
of time away from my desk. It was a travel agency.
We were taking calls and you had to be available.
If I wasn't at my I guess other people were busier.
It actually made a difference to them.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
You're literally keeping the next generation of humans alive with
milk from your own body. That might be a little
important than taking a call. But we don't think that way.
The work of mothering is not valued, right, all of
these unpaid tasks that we do that take hours and hours.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
When Charlie was two and I dropped out of the workforce,
it took me forever to just say I'm a mom.
I couldn't just say I'm a mom. Then there's no
follow up questions, like if you say I'm a teacher
or I'm an IBCLC. People have questions, but if you
say I'm a mom.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
They're like, oh, so you chose not to work.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
Yeah, okay, so I know we're getting here to time.
I would love to know how your next two experiences
either differed or were the same from the first one.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
That's funny. I think I had a lot more self
confidence with the next. My second was just two years later.
I think I must have nursed the first until I
got pregnant again, so it would have been like sixteen
months or something like that, a year in three four months.
(43:25):
If I had this idea that it's not a good
idea to nurse while you're pregnant, or that you can't nurse,
or maybe I just thought I was done anyway, I
can't remember, but have you ever heard that you can't
get pregnant if you're nursing?
Speaker 1 (43:42):
This is a myth. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
That may have been why I stopped, because then we
were thinking we were getting ready to try again. Who knows,
John might remember if I made an actual decision or
if it just happened. By the time my second was born,
I felt like I knew what I was doing. It
hadn't been that long since I'd been breastfeeding the first
it worked much better and I knew to rest more,
(44:07):
I knew to try to quiet my shoulds. I feel
like it went much more smoothly. Yeah, and there was
no Billy Rubin issue for me to argue about. That
was only with the first Okay, I think by that
time that pediatrician had retired. He was an older guy,
(44:28):
and my next pediatrician was. Anyway, it wasn't an issue anymore.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
Was it challenging to find the time to breastfeed as
regularly as what babies want when you also had a
two year old around?
Speaker 2 (44:45):
I remember that it felt very natural. It wasn't like
I had to stop everything to breastfeed.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
It felt like what you wanted the first experience to be.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
It did, and I was always one of those people
that could have a conversation by taking a walk, holding
a baby in nursing or in a front pack, and
I could just feed her. Everything didn't have to stop
and have the right environment for it to work. It
just felt much more easier that I could just fit
it into my I could still be having a conversation,
(45:21):
or I could have somebody over who who could be
having dinner and she would just be there.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
I want to ask about that, because I do think
along the way there was a shift. There's still some
really outdated ideas that people have that people should nurse privately.
Or we started this conversation by discussing the fact that
you did not see anybody nurse a baby as a child.
(45:51):
So by the time it was your turn, was this
a cultural discussion that was being had. Did you see
more people when you're nursing a baby. You tend to
notice other people as well, So was this something that
you saw out and about. Was this a conscious decision
you made not to hide yourself. How did that go?
Speaker 2 (46:11):
God, I just don't remember. So no, I don't think
it was a conscious decision at all. Once you're out
with your stroller and your baby, you start seeing babies everywhere. Now,
in the last ten or fifteen years, I notice more
people nursing completely openly, not hiding their breasts, just having
(46:35):
it be super normal. One of my best friends, who
I'm on a lot of Zoom meetings with, is constantly
showing your breast of Zoom. Sometimes I'll text her and
say just so you know, and she's, yeah, whatever, But
I don't know that feels really real. There really recent
that I'm noticing that now, Like it's just people's bodies
(46:57):
in general. Thirty years ago, people weren't wearing crop tops
or whatever. If somebody was wearing super short shorts, that
was right frowned upon. And now people's bodies are allowed
to be however they want to have them. And I
(47:21):
don't know, it just feels like it goes along with
more of an acceptance of bodies in general. And also
just seeing breastfeeding feels, yeah, it seems much more and acceptable.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Yeah, it really is, and it varies widely. People are
pro breastfeeding, but sometimes here I see a lot of
people their partners don't want their breasts in public, or
family members will ask people not to feed in their house.
But it's way less common than I think it was previously.
(48:04):
Do you ever remember anyone saying anything to you, making
an off handed comment or remarking no.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
The thing I do remember is people asking, like, after
about maybe six months or so, asking so, how long
are you going to breastfeed? I remember getting that question
a lot, and I remember thinking like, why would you
ask me that? How long am I planning to breastfeed?
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Right?
Speaker 2 (48:29):
Am? Done till I feel it. I don't know, but
I remember that a lot, definitely from an older generation,
but yes, I do. I remember that. And then just
all the pressure when he was not gaining weight, all
the pressure about here's what you have to do. I
don't remember ever anyone saying are you concerned? What do
(48:52):
you think you'd like the new right? But yeah, I
don't nobody ever said why are you breastfeeding? Or are
you sure you want to? Or can you do that
somewhere else? Yeah, I just remember the question because he's
over six months or over a year, I'm not going
(49:13):
for five years. Also, with the trainings, some of my
kids took a lot longer than others. Yeah, And it
just never seemed like a big issue for me.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
All went off to call it exactly they were toilet
trained by that.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
It was just fine. And I like this point of
pride that, oh my child was toilet trained at eighteen months.
I'm just like, how is that? Why are you like?
What's the benefit? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (49:44):
I think that's so true. And I think the thing
about breastfeeding beyond six months is babies have to have
breast milk or formula as their primary source of nutrition.
All the way until one or beyond, and so if
you're going to wean at six months, you're going to
(50:04):
be switching to People have this idea that, oh, once
I can introduce solids, then that's mostly what their right building.
The other thing I hear is even from pediatricians and
care providers, they'll say it has no benefit past one
and that is absolutely not true. In fact, what we
often see is a picky toddler who is still breastfeeding
(50:28):
and they are getting and maybe they're like really small,
and pediatrician is worried about their weight at pressured to wean,
and then we see that they really drop off their
growth curve because the breast milk itself changes to meet
the needs of the age.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
Of that child, and that was their primary source of
nutrition and they need that.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Yeah, it's crazy, this idea that babies and toddlers need
to just grow up so fast the moment to being
grown up. Are there any particular images or memories of
the baby feeding days that you think you will carry
with you.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
Forever, just that skin to skin moment, all those times
where it's quiet and you're just half asleep maybe and
you've got a baby on your belly. Those moments are
falling asleep and then waking up and everybody's just still
(51:37):
right there. Or if you might have fallen asleep nursing
and you didn't realize it and then oh they fell
asleep now and now I'm awake. I don't know, just
those really quiet, close moments. I'm just so sweet.
Speaker 3 (51:51):
I very much look forward to those moments with my
grandchildren in my rocking chair. I really appreciate you, and
I hope that people here that message that however you
choose to feed your baby is your choice, and that
it's important enough to let.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
The rest of the world chill out for a little bit.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
Our role should be to help people look inward, to
take the information that's there and say, Okay, what do
I need to do with this information? But there is
a role for professionals and pediatricians providing solid, evidence based advice.
But there's a way to do it that helps people
feel like, you know what, I've been given this information,
(52:33):
this is what I need to do given the information,
And there's a way to do it where somebody walks
away and they may or may not listen to you,
but they feel worse about themselves and their parenting than
they did when they walked.
Speaker 2 (52:46):
Yeah. I can tell your clients are so lucky to
have you. They will feel that they have choices and
that they can do what feels right for them. I
feel like that's yeah, Supermast.
Speaker 1 (53:02):
Thank you so much. Thanks for taking the time to
share these stories from over thirty years ago.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
There was a long time ago.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
Hard to Yeah. Yeah, I just think it's so important
to hear these stories from all different times. It carries
us through.
Speaker 2 (53:23):
Thanks for asking me, thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (53:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
Yeah, Just think in twenty years you'll be looking back.
You'll have your thirty year old kids looking back, trying
to remember all the details.
Speaker 1 (53:38):
Yes, I know I already feel that way, don't.
Speaker 2 (53:41):
I ask you so much, Talk soon, Bye, Thanks bye,
Have you ever had the experience of a pediatrician or
other care provider just telling you to stop breastfeeding and
feed formula because some problem has arisen in the early
weeks and they don't know any other way of helping you.
That is just one of the difficulties that my next guest, Lisa,
experienced over thirty years ago now when she was feeding
(00:24):
her babies who are now grown adults. Lisa is a
relative of mine and her mom was on the podcast
and she talks about her feedy experiences that happened over
sixty years ago. So it is pretty awesome to get
to hear these through lines from one generation to another.
It's one of the things I'm really fascinated by when
(00:47):
it comes to lactation and culture and the anthropology of
feeding our babies. So enjoy this episode with Lisa, and remember,
if you are experiencing any difficulties with feeding your baby,
don't suffer in silence, don't suffer alone, don't wait until
(01:09):
it feels hopeless to get the help you need. I
would love to be the person that helps you with
your lactation problems, and you can reach out to me
on my website or by email. And I would love
to help you feel better about wherever you are in
your baby feeding experiences. You're a really special guest because
(01:31):
you are a member of my family by marriage, and
you are the daughter of my one hundredth episode guest.
And I invited you on because I am really interested
in this idea of what happens from one generation to
(01:54):
another when it comes to baby care feeding our babies,
because sometimes we see that there are through lines, and
other times we see that people intentionally or unintentionally given
the times the advice they're being given by their fit,
by their friends, their peers, and their care providers, we
(02:15):
see major shifts, and so getting to hear your experience
alongside your mom's is really special. Thank you so much
for being here.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Thanks for asking me. I went and relistened to her episode,
and there are some similarities in our conviction or ideas
of how we thought it was going to go compared
to the subsequent confusion. So it's interesting to me and
I'm interested to see how today's going.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
To go to I do want to get into your story,
but I want to say one more thing, which is
that when we are making these decisions about feeding our babies,
especially when it's difficult. Because if we've made a decision
one way or the other, and we just go with
that decision and we feel really good about it, and
there aren't a lot of difficulties that come up, that's
(03:05):
one thing, But many of us experience something else where.
We're having to make multiple choices along the way based
on how the tides turn. And one of the reasons
that breastfeeding feels so important for so many people is
it's that start of a deep bond we hope to
(03:26):
build with our kids. I have so many people say
to me, I knew that breast milk was the best nutritionally,
but that was not what was driving me. And I
don't know yet how all of your baby feeding stories
turned out, but I want to say that you are
one of the people in my life that I get
(03:48):
to see at a distance interacting with your teenage children
and now adult children, and I could only hope to
have those types of relationships with my kids as they grow.
And it's such a good reminder for me that all
(04:08):
of this effort that we put into making the right choices,
we're not going to make them all right, But it
is possible to have those deeply bonded, trusting relationships where
they have their own life and aren't dependent on us.
And I just want to say to you from those
of us who are in the thick of it, who
(04:30):
are just hoping that all of our actions are leading
to that. At least for me, that's what I'm looking
for in the end. And I always have to remind
myself in the moment what's most important right now. It's
like having a good relationship with my kids.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Thanks for saying that. It was a lot of luck.
My kids are great kids, and I feel like I
screwed up a lot along the way. They had to
learn resilience, They had the capacity to become successful adults
without a lot of intervention on our part. And yeah,
they are great kids, and so are yours. I really
admire all of your parenting choices. Your kids are so
(05:05):
much fun to hang out with. You all have a
great relationship, and it's intentional. That's the part that's important
if you're thinking about the kind of relationship that you
want to have.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Mm hmm. Yeah. And I have had plenty of people
tell me that they were worried that if they needed
to suspend breastfeeding for whatever reason their bond would be impacted.
But then they tell me once they get past the
decision and into the next phase, that bond is still there.
There's not a broken bond. There may be a grief
(05:37):
or a loss of the experience that they wanted, but
like you said, it's all about making intentional choices and
that can happen regardless of the feeding mechanism.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Yeah, So I want to take you back into your childhood.
If you tell me what your experience was of seeing
baby feeding.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
If ever, Wow, I don't think I saw that ever.
I think it was a very private thing, or it
was in my world it was supposed to be a
very private thing. I can't imagine, like growing up in
(06:24):
our family when there were babies, I can't even remember. No,
I can't remember ever seeing like at the park or something. Yeah, no,
I don't remember seeing that at all. If I did,
I think I would have been so fascinated. But I
thought it was like an embarrassing or just very personal thing.
(06:48):
You just went off, We're not a public thing.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
And did you ever see babies bottle feeding? Do you
have any memories of that?
Speaker 2 (06:58):
For sure? I don't remember when all my cousins were
that age. I would have been too little, so I
don't remember. But no, I feel like that's something you
would see at the park or over at a friend's house.
If there was a baby, that would be fine. Anybody
could do it, though, like the father or another family member.
(07:20):
It wouldn't always just be mom and baby. But that
seemed Yeah, I think i'd seen that. I cannot. My
memory is not very good anyway. I don't remember things
from my childhood that much.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Nothing. And then, as you grew into adolescence, maybe into
your twenties, did you have any exposure to the primary
purpose of breasts and mammary glands and receive any education
(07:58):
many of us have the time about sex or about menstruation.
Many of us don't. For some reason, this is something
that's started to fascinate me in the last few years.
When I asked this question, people are like, yeah, No,
nobody ever talked to me about my breasts or about
what might happen with my breast beyond maybe taking me
bra shopping or something, but never really talking about what
(08:21):
is happening inside of the breast to make them grow
and what that purpose is at puberty, did you ever
have any discussions, either in a formal way like high
school or otherwise that you remember.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I think I don't remember we had sex at in school.
I feel like that was middle school, and I'm sure
I just blocked it out. I thought the whole thing
was so embarrassing, and I think I remember thinking at
the time, like during those classes, that I already know
that there's milk or something, and like I already know
that stuff. What I do remember, I had calcifications in
(08:57):
my twenties. I had some breast slumps from moved and
they're not breastlumps, they're calcifications. I guess I still have
lumpy breasts. I is told by people that I had
lumpy breasts, and I did in my twenties. Around twenty
three or twenty four, I had some calcifications removed. That
to me was my main concern with my breasts. I
(09:19):
wasn't thinking, and I didn't even think at the time,
like is this going to affect anything?
Speaker 1 (09:24):
I was about to ask that. So you had no
discussions with the surgeon about the mammary tissue, the milk
docs and how that might impact you.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
No, do you know.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Where the calcifications were were they in fatty tissue or Wow?
That is really interesting to have a surgery in your
breast and to have no discussions about how feeding.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
And what's interesting to me is that I didn't ask.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
I hear a lot of people say they put their
health care on themselves to have known to pursue some
line of questioning. But if there is a care provider
whose job is to help people with breast safety, it
seemed because the breasts their primary purpose is for feeding babies,
(10:12):
that would be part of the discussion. But the whole
point of this line of questioning is that we just
have not viewed breasts like that for so long in
modern Western world. That these things happen, even with care
providers who are breast experts, that.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Is really interesting to me. And I guess I've assumed
they were very clear about how tiny these things were.
There was a tiny incision, the few things here and
there that they pulled out. I saw them there tiny.
I think my ascension was, they'll just take those out
and everything. It didn't affect anything else, And.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Perhaps they would have brought it up if they thought
it might have had it.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
It didn't occur to me to worry about that.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Okay. So then before you had your oldest, did you
have exposure to peers breastfeeding?
Speaker 2 (11:09):
I guess so, God, it's not that long ago. I
really don't remember. I think I would have had friends.
I'm trying to think of whom, some local friends whose
kids are a little bit older. I don't remember any
real conversations about so what's it like?
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
I'm trying to remember if I would have asked. I mean,
I feel like all that conversation might have been superficial
on my part. I don't think I asked go ahead. No,
if I asked, what's like? What was childbirth like? I
remember asking that what and maybe was breastfeeding? And and
(11:51):
I just don't remember having any great revelation. I think
I'm trying to remember one couple that were very close
friends than Her daughter is maybe three or four months
older than Eddie, so very close in age. We spent
a lot of time together. I just don't remember anything
out of the ordinary. I think she just did it.
She said, it's fine, it's weird. It worked, it didn't work.
(12:14):
This part's hard. There was never any Oh, here's some
things you really need to know or don't worry if
it seems hard. Don't worry if it's not automatic. Sometimes
it's not automatic for everybody, so don't worry if it
takes a few tries or something like that. I think
maybe it might have been a message I got. Yeah, nothing, okay.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
So what was your attitude coming into parenthood when it
came to baby feeding?
Speaker 2 (12:42):
So I definitely wanted to breastfeed. I knew that breast
milk was healthy for my baby, and I really wanted
to give my kids the healthiest chance. Once I was pregnant,
it took us a while to get pregnant. Once we
got pregnant, I thought, oh, I'm gonna make all my
own I'd never buy jarred baby food. I'm going to
(13:04):
make everything from scratch. Everything's going to be really healthy.
I'm going to breastfeed and give my baby the best
chance to start off with the most healthy food. I
had a history of drug addiction, I'd had an abortion
and gone through a whole bunch of really unhealthy lifestyle choices,
(13:26):
and so I wasn't sure whether any of that's had
anything to do with why it was hard to get pregnant.
I don't actually think it did, but I had a
real concern that I wanted to make sure that my
previous lifestyle wasn't going to affect my kids at all,
and so I was super I had a conviction. I
(13:49):
was really dedicated to making sure. My plan was to
breastfeed for a year, and I think I did that.
So that was the plan.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
And as you were pregnant and thinking about this, did
you feel supported by care providers? Was it even a
discussion at all? Did anybody ask you how you're planning
to feed your baby?
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Yeah? Definitely, my ob asked and we talked about it.
But are you planning on breastfeeding? Oh? Yes? Oh good?
Speaker 1 (14:26):
At that point, how far removed were you from your
years of addiction? Had it been a long time?
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Six years? Seven years?
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Okay? That I was okay, yeah, okay, all right. So
there wasn't any discrimination from care providers about birth and.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
It's on your Miobi had been my doctor for a
long time and she was always very supportive.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Okay, great.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
We see that happening a lot where somebody has become
a mom and they have I have a history of
addiction of some sort, and I will see a lot
of pushback from nurses and doctors in the hospital setting
about breastfeeding their babies.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Really, oh, because of recent drug use or not trusting
a mother.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Not trusting them. Yeah, it's really problematic. I'm glad though
that was not your exp Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
No, I did not have that experience and it had
been Yeah, that like a long time.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Yeah, it's enough to know, like I had a good start.
You're in the clear.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
I was on the right path.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Okay, So that was your attitude heading into the experience.
Go ahead and tell me how it went from your perspective,
and if I have any questions, I'll jump in.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
The birth went really well with my baby. I ended
up not having my doctor Mayo. She was not on
call that night. I had a traditional hospital birth planned.
The doctor on call ended up being my doctor's partner,
who i'd never met, and he is very famous, very experienced,
(16:12):
obi locally, very well known. But I'd never met him,
and he it was okay, he obviously didn't know me,
and that was just a weird feeling. The whole that
part was very weird, and a couple times he said
things that I felt were really judge or he commented
(16:34):
on my age, but he added wrong and he said
at one point I think he was trying to compliment me.
So I was just before my thirty fifth birthday when
I had my first. The process was moving along pretty
well and I was trying to go natural. At one
point he said, wow, you are doing really well for
(16:55):
a thirty nine year old woman having her first and
I said, that's because I'm not do the math, buddy,
I'm thirty four, right. It just made me feel like,
who is this guy? But anyway, I had the baby.
Everything went really well. It was the middle of the night.
He was born at three in the morning and stayed
(17:18):
with us in the delivery room for several hours, and
my in laws came in the middle of the night
to be there. It was incredible. Everybody was so happy.
Then they wanted to take him away and let me sleep.
I said, no, I'll keep him here because I'm going
to breastfeed. And they said, listen, dearie, you need to sleep.
(17:38):
We'll go give him some sugar water or something like that.
I remember saying, no, you can't do that. I can
only give him breast milk. And they laughed at me
and said, look like you've never had a baby before.
You don't know how this works. We're going to take him.
You need to sleep. He'll be fine. It's just water. Okay,
(18:00):
it's just water. And sure, I'm sure it's totally fine.
It just felt bad. It felt bad, and I didn't
get why I couldn't sleep with him just there. I
could still Yeah, anyway, So that's the first thing that happened.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
I want to say as you move into the next
thing that happened. We want people to trust medical professionals
to have solid, evidence based advice for them, and we
get frustrated when people have all sorts of conspiracy theories
about the medical establishment. These sorts of actions towards patients,
(18:44):
both the judgment and the looking down on people and
the flat out bad practices are what caused people to
have a mistrust of the medical establishment.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
And I'm sure she wasn't wrong. If I really felt
like she was giving me dangerous advice for my baby
or for me, I would have done something. But it
just feels like there has to be a better way
to talk to somebody who's just gone through eight hours
of labor and who is exhausted and embarking on this
whole new thing. There's got to be a better way
(19:21):
wait to say it.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
She's wrong. She's wrong. It is not any longer common
practice to give any baby sugar water. Secondly, we know
that introducing anything else besides breast milk, especially in the
first few days, it does impact the microbiome. See and
(19:44):
the gut of an infant is still permeable. But colostrum
helps seal the gut and prevent infection. It gives that
first dose of antibodies. So there are reason and humans
are carry mammals. We are supposed to have our babies
(20:06):
on us at all times. If you look at a chimp,
you don't see them put tiny little infants down. So
many mothers in a hospital setting will feel this biological
urge to be close to their babies. They don't what's
common practice to room in now. In fact, now if
a parent does you know what, I just really need
to prioritize my sleep, and you take my baby to
(20:27):
the nursery. That gets judged, of course.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
No way to not get judged, right.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
And it's the thing about the way we treat women
in the postpartum floor. I don't know how many times
I have had to walk into the postpartum room and
see that some nurse has made some offhanded comment that
she did not even recognize, off putting or chipping away
(20:57):
at that person's view of himself as a mom in
these earliest hours, and those things stick with that person
once they get home, even if they can't connect the dot.
If they have been told by some expert that you
don't know what you're doing. I'm the expert. You should
(21:18):
just listen to me, then that erods your self confidence
to be able to make decisions that are right for
you and your baby. And I don't know how many
times I've had to go into a room and say, okay, wait,
hold on, you are doing amazing. You know your baby
better than anyone, and you're going to continue to be amazing.
(21:38):
And it's going to get better and easier as you
get to know your baby and figure this out and
know your nipples are not too short.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Like it's such a lovely message, and yet it's really
hard to feel that and to believe it you're a
new mom, because here you have a nurse who has
probably been through sixty three labors this month, and it's
probably a whole lot easier for her. Yes, if she
just takes the baby and gives them some water, whatever.
(22:07):
But this reminds me of Mom's story. Mom wanted the opposite.
She wanted me in the room with her, and the
nurses didn't know what to do with that, so they
left her alone. They just didn't do anything. They never
came back to check on her. Incredible, that's that's way worse. Yeah,
that was bad, right, and later perfect Yeah talked her
(22:31):
about it. It's still upsetting, yes, I know.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Yeah, trusting this mother to do it's right for her
baby and to recognize that humans, anthropologically speaking, when we
look at the evolutionary timeline, were not left to just
mother and isolation. What makes it so hard when we
have our babies with us at all times is not
(22:57):
that is what is biologically normal, but rather that we
now have these very tiny isolated families, no outside support,
your daily maids. So that's why when somebody says, you
know what, when I go home, I'm not going to
have any help. And right now I just need to
prioritize my sleep. I get it. Because we're not living
(23:19):
how biology brought us. We have veered from that a bit,
and we need to do the best we can given
the current situation.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
And figure out how to get the support despite our
separation or isolation and order. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Yeah, When people say I don't remember a lot, but
these are the.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Moments that I remember. Talking on the phone, I guess
I must have called mom. It was mourning on the
East Coast and I called mom. And the doctor heard
me say something like talking to somebody about Yeah, as
soon as I figure out like my routine, as soon
as I figure out the schedule, we can get together.
(23:57):
You can come over something. And he looked at me
and he said, you may not make plans right now.
He said, you're not going to get organized. Could you
just be with your baby? And I felt like such
an idiot. I remember it so well, and it was
great advice, not given very nicely, but it was really
good advice. I had such a plan in mind. I
(24:19):
had such an idea for what kind of a mom
I was going to be. I was going to go
back to work, breastfeed, I get all the laundry done,
and have friends over for tears. You need support. You
need people to tell you what to expect, I think,
and you need people to I imagine. It must be
really hard in your position how to support without just
(24:39):
to be there for whatever's needed. Not knowing what's going
to be needed. I think I must have been very judged,
unsure of myself. I needed that feeling a lot.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
I always have to keep in the back of my minds.
Person had me following them around all the time, then
sure I could tell them all the things I think
that they should do. But I'm going to leave and
they're going to left, yeah, to care for this baby.
So what feeling do I want to leave them with.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
I certainly did not leave that hospital feeling empowered. I
can tell you that we're feeling like I knew what
was best for my baby.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
So and I think one of the reasons so many
people struggle in the postpartum period and feel this sense
of oh my gosh, like I thought I was going
to be able to do all these things and I can't,
and I'm feeling like I'm failing because everybody else must
be doing all of these things, and it's only gotten
worse with social media. It's a blessing and a curse.
(25:36):
The reason why I think so many of us feel
this way is that we are not in close contact
day in and day out with other families and little babies.
We used to live in larger social groups. So by
the time it's our turn, we've seen the baby at
Thanksgiving or in the stroller at the park, but we
have not seen what it looks like on a daily,
(25:59):
hourly basis. It's shocking when we realize, oh my gosh,
it's not just the times of being out with friends.
There's so much more to it.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
That's such a good point that I had not thought about. Yeah,
not living in a village. You don't all have that
experience and know what to expect.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Think about in places people still live in larger social
groups like hunter gathered groups, for instance, the children are
caring for the babies from their earliest moment, a part
of that care team, and so you kinda know, Oh
(26:42):
you can know because you're just around other babies all
the time. And with breastfeeding, if you are around breastfeeding
all the time, from your earliest moments, you are picking
up on things that you don't even know. You're picking
up on how to shift your breast, how to like
change sides, how to move your clothing in a way
that's comfortable. You can't just learn that from reading a
(27:02):
book or having a class. It has to be something
you pick up or just learn on the go.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
So interesting, that's a really good Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Okay, so you left the hospital with this feeling of man,
do I.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Know what I'm doing? It all went okay for a
few days, and then I was breastfeeding and it felt fine.
I think it took a few days for my milk
to come in, and then he was losing weight. Eddie
was pretty skinny. And after I can't remember how soon
you go back for a doctor's visit, but it was
in the first week we went to the Is that
(27:38):
possible too.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Well, well, for the pediatrician, yeah, you would go it's
over the years.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
But sometime in the first couple of weeks I went
and he was a little jaundiced. He had a high
billy ruben count, and the pediatrician looked at him and
said he had lost a few ounces and he was
concerned about his billy ruben. He said, it's not abnormal.
This happens, and what you need to do is stop
nursing for forty eight hours and only give him formula.
(28:09):
And he said, now I'm not going to do that, like,
why should I do that? And he said, it's just
what you need to do. I know how my brain works,
and when I'm hearing information that is upsetting, I have
no idea what he said, And probably five minutes after
the conversation, I think the message was that he wasn't
(28:32):
getting enough milk or there wasn't enough. I had to
give him formula because you could see how much he
was getting. When you're breastfeeding, you don't really know how
many ounces of milk he's getting. With formula, you can tell.
I remember asking, can I at least keep breastfeeding and
(28:55):
supplement with formula? And he said better to just not
breast feed it all for forty eight hours and just
do formula. I'm pretty sure i'd have to ask John,
because I had forgotten this whole thing. John reminded me
of this a couple of days ago when I was
writing down notes to talk to you, and he said,
don't you remember what the doctor told you about the
(29:17):
Billy Ruben? And I was like, holy cow, I had
totally forgotten this whole thing. I can't remember if I
kept nursing and supplemented or just gave him formula. I
think I stopped nursing for two days, but if I
started pumping, I had no idea how to pump. I
(29:40):
was getting like a couple of drops. I was just
not working. I was waking myself up in the middle
of the night. When he would wake up, I would
give him a bottle and then I'd put him to bed,
and then I'd stay up and try to pump. And
it was terrible. I was getting like three drops. I remember.
The next six weeks were me trying to somehow get
(30:03):
my milk production up. I felt like I had very
little milk. I don't I never really thought it was
because I didn't nurse for two days, But I just
don't know if I ever got on a regular like,
if I just ever got in the swing of things completely.
(30:24):
He was so new. It was definitely in the first
two weeks after that, I just felt like he wasn't
getting enough milk. When I went back, his skin turned
to normal color again. He was fine. They said go
back to nursing, and he just wasn't getting enough milk
and he wasn't gaining weight. I started getting pressure from
(30:46):
people to keep going with the formula because I wasn't
able to give him enough milk. I remember my mother
in law saying, look how skinny he is. If you
have to feed him and me saying no, I have
to keep breastfeeding. The more I breastfeed, the more milk
(31:08):
there will be. How did you not imagine? I had
read it, but it seemed obvious. You got to prime
the pump once. I had this idea that it takes
a while to get started. It's what did happen for me.
The more I nursed, I felt like it would get better.
For the next six weeks, I tried every contraption to
(31:34):
stimulate my breast milk production. I did a lot of
different kinds of pumps. I got one of those things
with the little tubes that you put around your neck
and put down so it has formula but he's nursing,
but it's actually stimulating my breast milk production. But he
was also getting formula mixed into I did that for
(31:55):
a while. Anyway, this went on for weeks, as exhausted
and worried about him. And then I went to my
ob six week checkup. She was checking me out. Everything's fine,
and then she said how is breastfeeding? And I burst
out into tears, and then it's so hard it's not working,
(32:18):
And she said, what do you mean to tell me
what you're doing. I told her all these things I'd
been trying, and she kind of looked at me and said,
can I make a suggestion? She goes, can you clear
your calendar for the next two or three days. Can
you get in bed with your baby and feed him
around the clock at will anytime he wants, and not
(32:42):
get up and do the laundry? And I said, oh yeah,
I could totally not do laundry and stayed in bed
for forty eight hours with him and nursed around the clock,
and my problems were solved. And I think it had
as much to do with just relaxing and resting and
(33:04):
sleeping as much as also just taking away the stress
of this performance anxiety, like I just felt like my
body wasn't working right. And then it was fine, go ahead.
I never turned into one of those people that had
milk squirting out. I was not prolific, but it was plenty.
(33:27):
It worked fine. I nursed him for another year and that.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Was yeah, yeah, I love that. When you said that,
the OBI said can I make a suggestion? I thought
the next thing that she was going to say was
why are you doing this to yourself? I'm because we
heard that.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
The next thing she was going to say, is some
new contraption that I hadn't tried it. I was like
a little scared, but no, so you think she was
going to say, why are you contorting yourself to do this?
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Why not just why are you putting yourself through all
of this? And there's another there's I have plenty of
clients who need help coming to that decision. We need
the act of listening first to figure out what somebody
needs having that. We call that a nurse in when
you just clear the calendar and lay in bed all day.
(34:22):
For some people, if they've really just been going and
trying to live up to all the ways they post
part of life was going to be. That works. And
then I often get other clients who say something is
going on. I don't know what it is, but regardless,
I cannot increase my supply. And the answer is not
(34:45):
to just sit in and nurse your baby. Sometimes I
have a client who is a fourth time mom and
this is the first baby. She has not been able
to breastfeed. Now the baby just has a lot of
oral motor dysfunction. It's been very difficult. Some other IBCLC
who she called and s booked on the phone, was like,
(35:05):
just have a nurse in and she was like, I
have three older children. That is not the solution to
this problem, right, But I love that in your situation,
that really was what you needed. You needed just to
connect with your baby, connect with yourself, and.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Have that time and somehow release this stress. Every time
he woke up, it was stressful. When I was trying
to pump, it was stressful. I just kept thinking I
was doing something wrong.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
And so during that six weeks from the time you
brought them home, you go through the high Billy rubin
to the time when you had that visit, what were
your days looking like?
Speaker 2 (35:48):
I was home. I'm sure I was not working. I
took a break from work. I can't remember doing much.
We took a lot of walks, we had a dog,
we went to the park with the stroller. I feel
like I did that a lot of the day. I
remember thinking like, oh, today I'm going to cook a
meal or do some chores around the house. I remember
(36:11):
thinking how it is so hard to just even get
one thing done. So I feel like my days probably
were not doing a lot else besides playing with the baby,
taking care of him, taking him for walks, and a
lot of diaper changes, but maybe a shower here and there.
Probably in my brain thinking oh, I've got all this
(36:32):
stuff to do, which is how I operate all the time,
all the stuff that I should be doing. It wasn't
like I imagine, I wasn't just relaxed and totally in
the moment, because I probably thought, oh gosh, why can't
I get the laundry done.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
I was just about to say, to this day, my
kids are ten and six, and I'll feel like, oh man,
my kids are getting in the way of all the
stuff I need to do around the house. And I
think when we bring our babies home, a lot of
people think they put it on themselves, but I think
it really is like a zeitgeist. We need to keep
up and bounce back. What's almost this baby is getting
(37:15):
in the way of all the other stuff I need
to do. They're so needy. I'm in some moms groups
on Facebook and people will say, oh my gosh, I
cannot put my baby down. She won't ever let me
put her down. What's wrong with my baby? And I
always like to jump in and say, oh my gosh,
I know this is so hard. There's nothing wrong with
(37:36):
your baby, and there's nothing wrong with you. Yeah, your
baby wants to be held because that's biology. And what
makes it hard is that you probably have no one
else around who can do all the other stuff for you.
So right, get through it.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
John was going to work every day I was home.
I had all this time off work, and this idea
that he would come home everything would look exactly the
same as when he left was somehow problematic in my mind,
and that I think I probably thought, Yeah, today, it's
(38:12):
just a six week old baby. They sleep a lot.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Yeah, but they sleep, they need to be held, and
they need to be as not old, and like they
don't always just let you put them down so you
can go wash the dishes.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Or And I also remember, so Mom came out. She
was living on the East Coast then, and she came
out for several weeks, and so she was staying with us,
and she would say, do you want I can go
take the baby for a walk around the block, so
you can take a nap, or you can do whatever
it is. And I was like, no, that's not what
I want. I want to be with the baby all
(38:44):
the time. I'll take them for a walk. But yeah,
I did not want somebody else to take that off
my plate. That wasn't the part I wanted taken off
my Yeah, it's so hard for me just to let
that go. I just didn't want to say, you know what,
(39:04):
for the next six weeks, I'm doing nothing around here.
I'm just playing with this baby. Just get into moment
and that's Yeah, that's hard. That would be very hard
for me to do.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Yeah, when I walk into clients' homes and they apologize
for a sink full of dishes, I'm always like, I
don't have a baby, and your house is way cleaner
the mine.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Really, nobody cares. It's really hard to believe that, but yeah, really.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
And if they do care, who cares?
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Who cares?
Speaker 1 (39:36):
But it's so hard in that moment. I have in
recent years made a commitment to myself to not apologize
for my house when people walk in. And I want
friends who are okay with walking into a dirty house
or a clean house, And I'm not going to do
(39:59):
that anymore where I say, oh man, I'm so sorry. Right,
it's been so busy, it's so dirty. We are four
people living in a house and we're all very busy,
and that's not our priority. It is sometimes yeah, yep,
but it's hard because that is the expectation.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Yeah. So yeah, that was what it was like, and
we need a great time. We did a lot of
walking and playing with the baby. It was great being home.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
How long were you at home?
Speaker 2 (40:24):
So I want to say, is it possible? I was
three months? I think it might have been three months.
And the only thing I remember about that I tried
to pump back when I went to work, and I
guess I put him in daycare. I put him in
a very sweet daycare near my house, and we used
to get up early and walk every morning over there,
(40:46):
and then I'd go to work. I think I started
working from home. Then I was a travel agent and
I started working from home to save commute time and
stuff like that. Now that's misremembering because with the first
I did have to go back into work and pump,
and there was a lot of disgruntled coworkers because I
(41:10):
was getting a lot of breaks to go pump and
it wasn't fair. And I remember thinking, yeah, if you
want to go sit in a closet right stress over
trying to get two ounces of crest milk, you just
knock yourself out and so I did that for a while,
and then I eventually got to work from home, and
(41:30):
so I think that's when that switched.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
They're like, we're so far that pump from the closet.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
I was in the file closet.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
And was there any one else in your office who
had ever pumped for a baby?
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Yes, sure, but not at the time. There was nobody
else that was doing that. And like taking that kind
of time away from my desk. It was a travel agency.
We were taking calls and you had to be available.
If I wasn't at my I guess other people were busier.
It actually made a difference to them.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
You're literally keeping the next generation of humans alive with
milk from your own body. That might be a little
important than taking a call. But we don't think that way.
The work of mothering is not valued, right, all of
these unpaid tasks that we do that take hours and hours.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
When Charlie was two and I dropped out of the workforce,
it took me forever to just say I'm a mom.
I couldn't just say I'm a mom. Then there's no
follow up questions, like if you say I'm a teacher
or I'm an IBCLC. People have questions, but if you
say I'm a mom.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
They're like, oh, so you chose not to work.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
Yeah, okay, so I know we're getting here to time.
I would love to know how your next two experiences
either differed or were the same from the first one.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
That's funny. I think I had a lot more self
confidence with the next. My second was just two years later.
I think I must have nursed the first until I
got pregnant again, so it would have been like sixteen
months or something like that, a year in three four months.
(43:25):
If I had this idea that it's not a good
idea to nurse while you're pregnant, or that you can't nurse,
or maybe I just thought I was done anyway, I
can't remember, but have you ever heard that you can't
get pregnant if you're nursing?
Speaker 1 (43:42):
This is a myth. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
That may have been why I stopped, because then we
were thinking we were getting ready to try again. Who knows,
John might remember if I made an actual decision or
if it just happened. By the time my second was born,
I felt like I knew what I was doing. It
hadn't been that long since I'd been breastfeeding the first
it worked much better and I knew to rest more,
(44:07):
I knew to try to quiet my shoulds. I feel
like it went much more smoothly. Yeah, and there was
no Billy Rubin issue for me to argue about. That
was only with the first Okay, I think by that
time that pediatrician had retired. He was an older guy,
(44:28):
and my next pediatrician was. Anyway, it wasn't an issue anymore.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
Was it challenging to find the time to breastfeed as
regularly as what babies want when you also had a
two year old around?
Speaker 2 (44:45):
I remember that it felt very natural. It wasn't like
I had to stop everything to breastfeed.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
It felt like what you wanted the first experience to be.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
It did, and I was always one of those people
that could have a conversation by taking a walk, holding
a baby in nursing or in a front pack, and
I could just feed her. Everything didn't have to stop
and have the right environment for it to work. It
just felt much more easier that I could just fit
it into my I could still be having a conversation,
(45:21):
or I could have somebody over who who could be
having dinner and she would just be there.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
I want to ask about that, because I do think
along the way there was a shift. There's still some
really outdated ideas that people have that people should nurse privately.
Or we started this conversation by discussing the fact that
you did not see anybody nurse a baby as a child.
(45:51):
So by the time it was your turn, was this
a cultural discussion that was being had. Did you see
more people when you're nursing a baby. You tend to
notice other people as well, So was this something that
you saw out and about. Was this a conscious decision
you made not to hide yourself. How did that go?
Speaker 2 (46:11):
God, I just don't remember. So no, I don't think
it was a conscious decision at all. Once you're out
with your stroller and your baby, you start seeing babies everywhere. Now,
in the last ten or fifteen years, I notice more
people nursing completely openly, not hiding their breasts, just having
(46:35):
it be super normal. One of my best friends, who
I'm on a lot of Zoom meetings with, is constantly
showing your breast of Zoom. Sometimes I'll text her and
say just so you know, and she's, yeah, whatever, But
I don't know that feels really real. There really recent
that I'm noticing that now, Like it's just people's bodies
(46:57):
in general. Thirty years ago, people weren't wearing crop tops
or whatever. If somebody was wearing super short shorts, that
was right frowned upon. And now people's bodies are allowed
to be however they want to have them. And I
(47:21):
don't know, it just feels like it goes along with
more of an acceptance of bodies in general. And also
just seeing breastfeeding feels, yeah, it seems much more and acceptable.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Yeah, it really is, and it varies widely. People are
pro breastfeeding, but sometimes here I see a lot of
people their partners don't want their breasts in public, or
family members will ask people not to feed in their house.
But it's way less common than I think it was previously.
(48:04):
Do you ever remember anyone saying anything to you, making
an off handed comment or remarking no.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
The thing I do remember is people asking, like, after
about maybe six months or so, asking so, how long
are you going to breastfeed? I remember getting that question
a lot, and I remember thinking like, why would you
ask me that? How long am I planning to breastfeed?
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Right?
Speaker 2 (48:29):
Am? Done till I feel it. I don't know, but
I remember that a lot, definitely from an older generation,
but yes, I do. I remember that. And then just
all the pressure when he was not gaining weight, all
the pressure about here's what you have to do. I
don't remember ever anyone saying are you concerned? What do
(48:52):
you think you'd like the new right? But yeah, I
don't nobody ever said why are you breastfeeding? Or are
you sure you want to? Or can you do that
somewhere else? Yeah, I just remember the question because he's
over six months or over a year, I'm not going
(49:13):
for five years. Also, with the trainings, some of my
kids took a lot longer than others. Yeah, And it
just never seemed like a big issue for me.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
All went off to call it exactly they were toilet
trained by that.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
It was just fine. And I like this point of
pride that, oh my child was toilet trained at eighteen months.
I'm just like, how is that? Why are you like?
What's the benefit? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (49:44):
I think that's so true. And I think the thing
about breastfeeding beyond six months is babies have to have
breast milk or formula as their primary source of nutrition.
All the way until one or beyond, and so if
you're going to wean at six months, you're going to
(50:04):
be switching to People have this idea that, oh, once
I can introduce solids, then that's mostly what their right building.
The other thing I hear is even from pediatricians and
care providers, they'll say it has no benefit past one
and that is absolutely not true. In fact, what we
often see is a picky toddler who is still breastfeeding
(50:28):
and they are getting and maybe they're like really small,
and pediatrician is worried about their weight at pressured to wean,
and then we see that they really drop off their
growth curve because the breast milk itself changes to meet
the needs of the age.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
Of that child, and that was their primary source of
nutrition and they need that.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
Yeah, it's crazy, this idea that babies and toddlers need
to just grow up so fast the moment to being
grown up. Are there any particular images or memories of
the baby feeding days that you think you will carry
with you.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
Forever, just that skin to skin moment, all those times
where it's quiet and you're just half asleep maybe and
you've got a baby on your belly. Those moments are
falling asleep and then waking up and everybody's just still
(51:37):
right there. Or if you might have fallen asleep nursing
and you didn't realize it and then oh they fell
asleep now and now I'm awake. I don't know, just
those really quiet, close moments. I'm just so sweet.
Speaker 3 (51:51):
I very much look forward to those moments with my
grandchildren in my rocking chair. I really appreciate you, and
I hope that people here that message that however you
choose to feed your baby is your choice, and that
it's important enough to let.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
The rest of the world chill out for a little bit.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
Our role should be to help people look inward, to
take the information that's there and say, Okay, what do
I need to do with this information? But there is
a role for professionals and pediatricians providing solid, evidence based advice.
But there's a way to do it that helps people
feel like, you know what, I've been given this information,
(52:33):
this is what I need to do given the information,
And there's a way to do it where somebody walks
away and they may or may not listen to you,
but they feel worse about themselves and their parenting than
they did when they walked.
Speaker 2 (52:46):
Yeah. I can tell your clients are so lucky to
have you. They will feel that they have choices and
that they can do what feels right for them. I
feel like that's yeah, Supermast.
Speaker 1 (53:02):
Thank you so much. Thanks for taking the time to
share these stories from over thirty years ago.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
There was a long time ago.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
Hard to Yeah. Yeah, I just think it's so important
to hear these stories from all different times. It carries
us through.
Speaker 2 (53:23):
Thanks for asking me, thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (53:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
Yeah, Just think in twenty years you'll be looking back.
You'll have your thirty year old kids looking back, trying
to remember all the details.
Speaker 1 (53:38):
Yes, I know I already feel that way, don't.
Speaker 2 (53:41):
I ask you so much, Talk soon, Bye, Thanks bye,
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