Lori speaks with Maureen Minchin . Maureen is a mother of 3, who because of her personal experiences with feeding her baby, has dedicated her life to educating the public about human milk and infant feeding and food allergies. Her work is radically different from most breastfeeding handbooks because it takes seriously the issues of infant formula feeding, exposing many realities about which even many health professionals remain ignorant. Milk Matters is her latest work, a massive tome with three different books under the one cover, which pulls together science, history and clinical practice.
This past week, the CDC, which is the center for disease control, released the 2016 Breastfeeding Report Card. Looking through the statistics, I sighed.... just like I do every year. There are people who really get excited with these numbers. Me? I always say that I am greedy. I want more. I want better. I want what parents want. And what do parents want? Well, the statistics tell us that nationally 81 percent of parents want to breastfeed their babies.
I first met Cassandra when she was 3 weeks postpartum with her first baby, a girl named Korina. Cassandra brought her mom with her to the consult and as they sat down, I noticed that Cassandra was moving quite purposefully. She took her time to slowly lower herself into the chair and as she sat I thought to myself,, either she is healing very slowly from her cesarean section or she has had a pretty significant 3rd or 4th degree tear from a vaginal birth that is slowly healing. For the uninitiated to vaginal tearing, a 1st degree tear is a thin tear of the perineal skin with no muscles involved. a 2nd degree includes skin and muscle, a 3rd degree is quite significant with the tear going through the perineal muscles and includes a layer of muscle surrounding the anal canal, and a 4th degree tear goes all the way into the canal or rectum. As one could imagine, this is quite painful and the healing can be several months.
Dr. Romie completed her medical training at the Medical University of South Carolina, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the University of Michigan where she won numerous teaching and research awards.
She previous served as faculty at the Medical College of Wisconsin. After surviving career burnout and undergoing life-saving surgery, she traveled the world learning various yoga and mindfulness techniques. Dr. Romie is a media expert analyst and regular contributor in national and local media outlets. She shared her journey in a TED Talk is “The Powerful Secret of Your Breath.” When not speaking around the country, she heals clients at the Center for Natural and Integrative Medicine in Orlando, Florida.
I would like to introduce you to the 7 Founders of La Leche League International. Each of these women played a different part in the growth of LLL and each had different roles as the organization grew. Several were members of the same church, two were sister-in-laws. What they all had in common was they were moms breastfeeding their babies during a time period where only 20% of mothers were breastfeeding their babies.
Background History: Hilary was born in the 50’s in Southern California. Her father was a scientist and her mother a poet. When she was 19 she moved to Switzerland to study music.
First Breastfeeding experience: She says she was terrified of becoming a mother. When she was 27 years old she went to Israel with her fiancée and worked in the Baby House. This experience helped her work through any fears she had about motherhood. With this reassurance she began to look forward to having a baby and breastfeeding. La Leche League was popular in Switzerland. She read their book, The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, Sheila Kitzinger and other childbirth and breastfeeding books to help prepare her for birth and breastfeeding.
This week, we are highlighting WBW= World Breastfeeding Week breastfeeding and our goal is to do whatever we can to support parents in their efforts to breastfeed their baby. We live in a world where there are many barriers, that tends to make the basic act of breastfeeding a baby, uncomfortable and cumbersome for some mothers.