Weaning – by definition means to gradually take away, to detach. My personal and professional preference would be for moms who want to wean do so, Gradually and with love. This would be an optimal way to go about the weaning process. There are times when this is not possible and moms need to dry up their supply as quickly as possible. Today’s show is all about the “not possible.” About drying up quickly, which is why I did not title this show Weaning and titled it: drying up your supply. And yet, you will hear me use the term drying up and weaning interchangeably because it just seems to be the most accepted and understood way of talking about this topic. And I refuse to have to stay the course always using the exact right technical term with moms. Lots of times they don’t care about our terminology, they just want help and if they “hear” me best when using a term they are familiar with and connect to, I will do so to best meet them where they are at.
As a lactation consultant, the assumption is that I only help mothers who want to breastfeed their baby. Of course, this is one of the important things I do each and every day. Educate through classes, blogs, and private consults and now with podcasting. I also help moms with the weaning process. I recognize that there are many reasons why some mothers who have been breastfeeding and or pumping want to or need to stop producing milk. Since this is a choice and not an urgent matter, she can do so gradually. While there are few reasons why a mom would need to stop producing milk abruptly, these circumstances do arise. Usually it becomes a necessity because she has a medical problem or needs to take medication that there are no other options and this is not compatible with breastfeeding. Sometimes a mom has had a breast abscess and can continue breastfeeding and other times for medical reasons can no longer breastfeed from one side and she needs to dry up that side. Good thing our breasts are autonomous .What we do with one side does not mean we have to do the same with the other side.
Divorced parents when she was young and visited Dad on weekends. Felt like she was raised as an only child, so it is kind of funny that I have so many kids/. My parents each have one other child with their spouses, so I have a brother and a sister who are both younger than me, but I did not see them much. She was born and raised in Ohio. Brittany and her husband have left Ohio a few times for jobs, but each time her husbands job fell through, so they came back to Ohio and she feels they are there to stay now. Both their families live in Ohio and it sure is good to have family around for built in babysitters.
When Brittany was a teenager, she never envisioned having more than 2 or 3 kids. so we had 2 kids and we said lets’ have one more, it was triplets. In five years, she had five kids. When the triplets were born her oldest was not quite 5, so for about 6 months she had 5 children five and under.
Your sister got engaged a year ago. And the whole family was so excited. While you were planning her engagement party and her bridal shower, you also could not help yourself but to daydream about her wedding. You have been married for 10 years, your sister Heather is 5 years older than you & the family was almost giving up hope that she would find that special person,, and now she has. This is what you have been waiting for.
The hospital has since been renovated and redone the layout, but when she delivered there the NICU was several floors down from the pp unit. In those first hours, when all she could think was this was a punishment for something that I did wrong. What a cruel, cruel, cruel thing to be able to hear other babies and she could not even hold mine. Her second birth was with a midwifery practice as well as my other babies. This time was in a hospital and there was an LC and she said and was sympathetic and acknowledged how difficult this task was wanting to breastfeed a baby who was in NICU. She brought me a pump and so she pumped during those early hours. At least this time, because I had pumped at work before. The breastpump was not a foreign object to her. You don’t grow up learning how to use a breastpump. Once you get it down pat, it comes easily as habitual as brushing your teeth and flossing. She brought me an electric pump and I had only used a manual pump. I told her I always had used the Avent isis pump and she said oh no that is not going to help you with a NICU baby. Christine does say that she hated the electric pump and wound up using the manual pump. It was so comfortable and it is what she was used to and did her best with. By the time she was discharged, she was still not breastfeeding.
I know I don't take the time often enough to say thank you. Sometimes we have expectations for things to just happen, go the way we want to, people to do things for us, and generally just make assumptions that things should just happen. So, I wanted to take a few minutes today to thank all my listeners to subscribing to the show, to sharing it with friends and family and co-workers and for exposing people who might not have otherwise just found this show by happenstance. Isn't that how we spread the word about all things we think are good for our families. The best farmers market, the best nursery school, the best massage therapist, the best dentist and pediatrician and teacher and car mechanic. The best real estate agent to help find the house of your dreams, the best speech therapist. The list goes on. We like to share what we like. I try and do my best every day to share my knowledge and expertise on breastfeeding with every mother and baby that I see each day. I share some really cool websites that will help support what I have shared. I get into discussions with moms about parenting topics such as health and sleep and attachment parenting and I share websites that will help them learn more about these subjects. I get great pleasure our of sharing stuff that I like and I am incredibly grateful that you are sharing this show.... stuff that you like.
Michele's dad was in the military so she calls herself an army brat. She lived in several different states and was in several different schools by the age of ten. She has two sisters and she is right in the middle. She was born in Virginia and raised in Sacramento area. When she was younger she always knew she wanted to be a Dr. she started off thinking she wanted to be a pediatrician because I love kids. But when she was in college she was a live in nanny and took care of newborns and saw that they were struggling at night and calling their physicians in the middle of the night. Michele realized pretty quickly that this would not work out well for her when she did become a mother. She knew that she wanted to be more available to her children and getting called out in the middle of the night would not fit in well with her idea of motherhood. So, she started looking into other areas of medicine and eventually decided on podiatry. When it comes to choosing a school, she knew she wanted to go somewhere warm so she chose a school in Miami.