Dawn Obrecht, MD is a frequent speaker on addiction and recovery to physicians and other interest groups. She has published 3 books. Doc Dawn lives in Colorado with her husband, Eric. She has 6 grandchildren and 2 wonderful daughters and son-in laws.

Dawn grew up in Baltimore and talks about her difficult childhood growing up in an alcoholic household. While she knows that her parents did love her and they did take care of her and her brother, this experience certainly had an impact on her pre-teen and teen years. She knew early on that she wanted to become a Dr. and is grateful that her parents supported her in this decision. Dawn tells us of her early years when she left home to go to school, as well as her early years of combining parenting and running a growing family practice.

We hear Dawn talk about her feelings of being a grandmother to 6 beautiful grandchildren and how she has navigated through this role and has a purposeful and thoughtful relationship with her adult daughters.
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<p>Quote - "He had the idea that human milk might boost his immune system. So he came to me as a friend and asked if I would prescribe it. He needed someone to prescribe it. He could not just go to the milk bank and buy it and apparently his oncologist would not prescribe it.

 Lori says her days are never the same, never boring, always begins with a sense of wonder.She wonders if her day going to be busy or slow.  Is it going to be home visits or office visits?In this show, Lori shares the story  of one of the moms she saw on a particular day. Breastfeeding is not always easy for some mothers.  It can be very challenging for some and Quite painful for others. Most of the time there are answers and the breastfeeding challenges  Can be fixed.  For some mothers, the challenges are great or medical issues makes it Impossible for them to breastfeed in the way or the length of time they had intended.  Listen as Lori shares the details of one mothers breastfeeding story.

This show is all about steps you can take ahead of time to ensure a calm and peaceful household for when you have your newborn.
I am going to cover a small portion of my Ebook - The Guide to breastfeeding your newborn the first few days, and you can go to allaboutbreastfeeding.biz/guide and download the rest of the Ebook for the rest of the information This will be available for FREE until the end of January 2016. I have added much more and in February 2016, this will be available on the website as a booklet.

There is not a lack of information available about what you need to do to prepare for breastfeeding. Books, classes and items to purchase. I love talking about all this too. However, for now I would like to talk about some ideas, which are practical tips, and suggestions that are not necessarily shared. Some people think this is the boring stuff and just want to know what it is they should buy to prepare for your breastfeeding experience. I am here to say that you can have all the stuff in the world. You can have all the pretty things in pretty packages, just waiting to open up once you begin breastfeeding. However, there are also some things that you will be appreciative that someone told you ahead of time. I feel good to know that I am planting those seeds and having you think about some of this boring stuff. and believe me... you need to hear this

Courtney talks about her journey to become a massage therapist. Her dream job was being involved in music as a career. However, after a few car accidents, she began to pursue avenues for alternative healing and found her way to massage school. She always knew that she wanted to be a mom and is the proud mother of a beautiful 2 1/2 year old son, named Joshua. Courtney knows that her mother did breastfeed her and her siblings. She credits her mother for setting a good example about breastfeeding as well as credits herself for learning about the health benefits for mom and baby when you breastfeed. Courtney had a cesarean section and a hospital stay of 4 days. Breastfeeding was okay in the hospital, but her nipples cracked and bled soon after coming home. She stuck with it for a while because she had been told that breastfeeding hurts in the beginning and she kept trying to push through the pain. Her midwives did tell her that it was not normal to be in such a high degree of pain and did refer her for help with breastfeeding, however, Courtney just felt that if she could just give it a little longer, she would begin to heal. By the
time she came in for help, she had significant nipple trauma and tissue erosion.

Mary starts off by explaining to us how she came up with the name for her business. It all has to do with, believe it or not, how tall she is compared to the rest of Rhode Island. Mary is a middle child. Her mom breastfed all 3 children and at age 40 was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had a mastectomy and is doing well. She had a loving childhood and tells us that having an older sister who is severely mentally and physically handicapped has taught her to be a strong person and to be grateful for every experience she has and to be a patient person. Mary reveals that she met her husband on match.com back in the days when it was kind of “racy.” She knew as a youngster that she would always want to be around kids and music. She is grateful that she has built her career around her family and music and what makes her happy each day. Mary shares with us that she had a very easy time with breastfeeding from the beginning with her baby crawling up to the breast right after birth and she says that it was one of the coolest things that ever happened to her. She realized she had an abundant supply, so much milk that it was spraying all over the place. This actually became a problem for her because it caused her breast pain and the need to pump frequently. Her lactation consultant suggested a care plan to lower her supply so her son could have more comfortable feedings. She went through dealing with oversupply issues and then colic and dealt with it, but realizes now that she was not taking good care of herself and she just did not know any different. She felt this is what life was like with a newborn. Mary was quite transparent and talked about suffering from postpartum depression, which was diagnosed at about 1 year postpartum. Her postpartum reaction was severe and she needed an inpatient program to recover and take care of herself. Listen to her story as she shares from the heart as she had to make some very hard choices. Mary tells us about how she got into blogging and podcasting. She started blogging because she wanted to share stories about her role as a parent and have fun with it. She shares the microphone with her husband Blake on Parentpodcast where she talks about topics that she wanted to learn more information about.

In a previous show # 21,Lori talks about the fact that breastfeeding should not be painful. She talks about this a lot in her daily work. It is her working mantra:   If breastfeeding is hurting on Day 1, something is not right. If breastfeeding is hurting on Day 2, something is not right. And if breastfeeding is hurting on Day 3, something is definitely not right and I urge you to seek professional help right away.  This is her daily mantra to mothers, she says it many times a week.  Lori has  it on her website.  What Lori really would like to do is put it on every billboard, along every highway, in every town.  What Lori would like to do is put this mantra on her back car window shield.  She would like for this to be handed out to every mother in every childbirth education and breastfeeding class. When you enter the halls of the maternity unit or your birthing center or on the literature that your OBs and midwives give you, it would be great if this was  in big bold letters:    “Breastfeeding is not suppose to hurt“.   Her family hears her say this ad nauseum  and she knows they are bored of hearing her say it.  The BIG problem is, that 30 years later, Lori continues to meet with moms on a regular basis and it continues to astound her how frequently mothers are given the wrong information.  Download this episode to hear the full show.

Stephani is the mother of 2 daughters ages, 2 1/2 and 7 1/2. She works as a web accessibility consultant,is a budding entrepreneur and has her own pod cast, The Audacious Life. She was 1 of three children, her parents divorced when she was less than 2 years old. This was in the 70's and her mom spent time living in a somewhat alternative lifestyle so this meant that she spent her earlier years growing up in a beautiful Christian commune. As a young adult, Stephanie graduated from Emerson. She was drawn to the internet and studied New Media and Film and soon became employed with MIT. She started creating educational products for online learning that corresponds with programming at PBS. She is currently building an audience and interviewing great speakers for her newest endeavor a podcast called The Audacious Life.

Stephani had two very different breastfeeding experiences and shares with us how they were different. She learned so much from her experiences with her first baby, that she felt much better prepared with her second baby. Learning how to be assertive and asking for help and being prepared helped her have an easier experience with her second baby. She was told her position and latch were great with her first baby and yet when she came home, everything seemed to fall apart. Latching was difficult, and her baby was not gaining well. She remembered feeling like a failure as a mother and a woman. Stephani was glad that she persevered, met with another lactation consultant and ended up being quiet successful and breastfed her for over 20 months.