There is so much information about breastfeeding. Some of it is great and accurate and exactly what we want moms to know.
Other information runs the gammet from poor to downright negligent. While there are frequently what I call “nuggets” of truth in what a lot of people share with
breastfeeding moms, it may not be right for their individual breastfeeding relationship. Confused? Well, come along with me for the ride and
I hope to be able to explain myself.
Poor information can be responsible for some mothers not continuing to breastfeed.
Poor information can be responsible for moms not making enough milk.
Poor information can be responsible for babies not gaining well.
Jennifer was born in small town Water Valley, Mississippi, whose claim to fame is having one grocery store called Piggly Wiggly. Her mother was born at home in that same small town and when she was 5 years old they moved to Lake Havasu, a retirement community, which is in Arizona. It also has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the state as there was not a lot to do. Jennifer was creative at home,she made magazines, got into journalism, and was writing little things that she has kept since then. This was all before blog posts were a thing. We laughed at how the paper journal is old school. Jennifer had an older brother and an older sister, who were both in their early to mid 20s when she was born. Since she never lived with them, she felt pretty much an only child. We talked about the return of coloring books and how adults are using them to explore the arts and relax. Jennifer mentions using them in her prenatal mediation class
My name is Autumn and I am an ASU student. Im a breastfeeding college mom who was recently assigned a persuasive speech topic. I was able to pick so i decided to choose something im struggling with now which is being shamed for public breastfeeding without a cover. Would you be up for helping me with an interview on why we should normalize breastfeeding instead of making it something to do in a private manor?
I feel awful that Autumn or anyone else who has been shamed for public breastfeeding without a cover. I know that I am very much into the world of breastfeeding mothers and so it is easy for me to say that I just don’t get it. But, honestly, I just don’t get it. Gosh, no matter what anyones personal opinion is, the primary purpose of our breasts is to feed our babies, is to keep our babies alive through the nourishment and hydration we offer and the primary way our babies grow and thrive from newborn to infant to toddler. Our human milk is meant for our human babies and plain and simple and for untold amount of years, it has been a matter of survival.
Joyce has been married to her high school sweetheart, Ray for 50 years. Joyce and Ray are the proud parents of 3 children who were all breastfed and proud grandparents of 7 grandchildren, who have either been breastfed or received breastmilk that their mother has pumped. She has been an RN since 1964. In 1970, Joyce became a Lamaze trained Certified Childbirth Educator. When she moved from Indiana to Arizona, she became the first childbirth educator to teach natural childbirth classes in the local hospital. Joyce has been a school nurse for 23 years and taught childbirth classes in the evenings. Her students began asking her to attend their births. Joyce realized she enjoyed it so much that she soon became certified as a doula with DONA. ( Doulas of North America) in 2004. She has used the knowledge and experience gained as a breastfeeding counselor to help moms get off to a good Breastfeeding start at the over 100 births she has attended so far.
Lori Jill Isenstadt, IBCLC & breastfeeding reviews
Natalie Eckdahl, MBA hosts the BizChix Podcast where sheinterviews female entrepreneurs from around the world and providestraining to business owners. She is a former management consultantand serial entrepreneur who leverages her corporate experience andgraduate business education to help entrepreneurs confidentlylaunch, build and grow their businesses. Natalie takes aholistic view of her clients lives and helps them build a businessthat matches their personal and professional goals.
Natalie built a successful personal brand and platform from the ground up via her podcast which was recognized byiTunes as a #1 New Business Podcast in March 2014. She has beenfeatured in Inc Magazine, Huffington Post and the Orange CountyBusiness Journal. Natalie also speaks nationally on the topicsof team building and masterminding.
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.
ACA & Breastfeeding Insurance information
Maureen is very angry at what she was not told as a young mother and feeding her baby & she is on a mission, even if it upsets the apple cart, to educate parents about infant feeding. She says that if educators had to worry about making parents feel guilty about many of the subjects, we would be missing out on very important information and that would be negligent. Take a listen.
Maureen had a child and this changed the course of her lifes work. She had no idea how difficult breastfeeding could be in the 1970’s and suffered with excruciating pain for 3 months and the only reason she continued is because her mother who was poor in the 1940s when she was born, had similar problems, but persevered because she was poor. Her mother kept telling her that it was so terrible, but when you get past all the pain there is nothing like it and you just have to persevere. My middle-class friends parents would say to them why would you continue doing this when you are in so much pain? We have formula now and so why would you keep doing this and be in pain? I brought you up on formula and you were fine and of course, they stopped breastfeeding.
Dr. Newman was born in a small city near Tel Aviv. His family immigrated to Canada when he was 15 months old and he grew up as an only child in Toronto. He has 3 children, ages 32, 35 and 40 years old. Dr. Newman has worked as a pediatrician for many years in the Emergency Department until 1992, when he went Full Time to the Breastfeeding Clinic. He has done a fair bit of traveling. He was just in China in December for 3 weeks and has spoken in every state in US and in every province in Canada.
He spoke in Bejing, Tawiaan, hong kong and makaw. While this trip was a business one, Dr. Newman describes it as a interesting trip because of the heavy smog in Bejing. He had a cough that turned into a virus and while he managed to fulfill his speaking engagements, he needed to come home to really recover. He spoke of Red alerts they had related to the smog. Because it was so bad, there were days when the schools and factories were closed and days when you could not drive. They had odd and even days based on your drivers license. However, Dr. Newman is quick to point out that some of the wealthier people had plates that would cover them for odd and even so they were not limited to certain days to drive.
Eddie shares his personal insights about how he viewed breasts before his wife gave birth and after when she started breastfeeding: Yes, Eddie is the first Dad that I have interviewed on the show. Before his wife got pregnant he saw breastfeeding as being a natural part of normal everyday life, However, he does admit that being a guy there were some uncomfortable aspects of it. Being a guy and being attracted to woman and being attracted to breasts and seeing them with their breasts exposed, it was uncomfortable. There were times when he would be having a conversation with a woman and one part of his brain is going wow what a beautiful woman and looking at her breasts and the other part of my brain is like – look the other way.
Eddie grew up in a rather religious household that things like sex education were not being talked about. However, he definitely has always felt that breastfeeding is something that was totally natural. I was never offended previously tohis wife having their child and it is not something that I never found offensive. If anything, it was just about himfeeling uncomfortable with the sexuality part of it.
I was introduced to Vanessa from Kate Erickson from Kates Take on Entrepreneur on Fire. I have loved her podcast and I wish I had this show around when I was pregnant.
Vanessa tells us she is originally from San Diego, mom, dad and brother. who is two years younger. Small family and no extended family.Dad serial entrepreneur and home with family a lot. She spent her childhood on the sand and sun and skateboarding. Love SD and lives with her husband and 1 1/2 year old. Went to college in Santa Barbara and then came back to San Diego.
She always thought she would have been that big corner office, big corporate job, which she feels she did achieve, but never thought she would be doing anything entrep or pregnancy at all, but being a parent has helped see the world and her life and through a differ perspective. It is through being a mom that I have found this passion to help parents navigate birth and all the craziness that all comes along with it. As a younger person, I never imagined that I would be doing the work that I am currently doing.
She got turned onto birth during her pregnancy. During her pregnancy she admits to being pretty obsessed with researching and making sure she made the best decisions for her and consuming all that information and then being able to have a really good birth experience. and being able to Sticking to her birth plan has been great and being nice to able to help other people where they can do the same thing. Helping them make good decisions about their pregnancy and birth where they feel good and confident about their decisions and plan for their birth and execute the plan for what they want.
We have a discussion about the differences in how babies respond to the procedure, the aftercare exercises and how long it takes some babies to recover from the procedure and mothers and babies to get to the place of normal breastfeeding. Dr. Agarwal highlights the fact that the tongue does not know how to really move well as it has been restricted for so long. So all the mechanics of the tongue movement and how it is going to function – all this change needs an adjustment period. It takes a while for the tongue to figure out what it is suppose to do. There are also a lot of pieces to this recovery and normal breastfeeding. Some of these moving parts ( variables) are:
1. Mom’s breast size,
2. Mom’s milk production.
3. Mom’s pain level
4. Mom’s perception of babies pain
5. Babies pain or soreness level
6. Babies, palate, jaw, tongue length, just to name a few variables.
Dr Rajeev Agarwal is a local pediatrician in Arizona. He has a beautiful wife and 2 children. Dr. Agarwal moved to Arizona in 2005 and opened his first office the same year. If you are ever in the area, you must take a tour of his amazing office, It truly is a treat. He has since moved to a second office. Over the years, he has received many awards, which he proudly displays in his office. He is an expert in tongue tie procedures and has performed many over the past few years. He is also a member of the (IATP) International Association of Tongue Tie Professionals. Dr Agarwal is in hot demand as a speaker and has spoken world wide.
Dr. Agarwal was born in India, and grew up in different cities because his father worked for the government as a telecommunications engineer and he would get transferred to different cities every few years. His mother stayed home with her 4 children. Dr. Agarwal describes his growing up years as being very blessed and living a very charmed life with doting parents and siblings. He was very creative with painting and drawing. His mother leaned towards treating childhood illnesses with home medicine and this is where the seeds were planted for being a physician and using natural medicine. He started engineering school and did well, but it was not very fulfilling. He did really well with it but did not feel the love. It was his sister who saw in him that he did not seem very happy with this. Since she saw that he was always the one asking people how they were doing and was so kind and caring, that perhaps he would enjoy being a Doctor. He said okay, took the exam and was accepted into medical school. As a kid growing up, it is not anything I ever thought I would be doing. We are a very close knit family She was in medical school. She said you will probably enjoy medicine more than the physics and math and I am so glad that she suggested as this was the best decision I made in my life.
Joanna Wilder RN, BSN, LM, CPM has been practicing “good birth” for 25 years. As a nurse Joanna started out in an inner city Phoenix hospital in 1990. Three years gave her a good foundation in Labor and Delivery, Nursery and Postpartum. Next, she helped create Bethany Birth Center. For fourteen years, she had the privilege to work as a nurse in the birth center, led a unique childbirth education program, and served as a community liaison orienting women to birth choices in AZ. This birth center closed in 2007. In November 2006, she began to work toward her licensure as a midwife. In May 2010, she was licensed as a midwife in AZ and completed her national certification or CPM in April of 2011. Joanna has been involved in grass roots community development in inner city Phoenix for 25 years. She works with a teen mom program in “the neighborhood”, and also with a breastfeeding grant program bringing support to Hispanic moms. She is passionate about helping women learn to trust their bodies. One of her passions, birthed from her own story, is walking with women as they heal from childhood sexual abuse. Joanna believes that the birth space is “holy ground”. Breastfeeding creates a powerful space for attachment and bonding to occur, and for mothers to reclaim their bodies, and their stories.
Heather Kinsy was born and raised in Arizona and now residing in Oregon. She is married to Michael and mom of 2 boys, Joseph 2 years old and Vincent 4 months. She is an Associate Director in Technical project management for an International Clinic Research Organization and enjoys the flexibility of a home based working arrangement She enjoys cooking and baking exercising is an advocate for natural birth and breastfeeding. Heather had a very tight knit community with her classmates and extended family living within 1 mile of the house that she grew up in. She is just now realizing what a blessing it was to have both sets of grandparents who lived close and were healthy for many, many years. Heather has a younger sister who is an amazing support person for her. While she misses her Phoenix family and friends, she does not miss the heat.
Heather shares with us her story of the births of both of her sons. She had natural childbirths with both her babies and was very pleased with her experiences. Heather had a difficult time with breastfeeding her first son Joseph and hoped for a better experience with her second son Vincent. Joseph was tongue tied and she suffered with poor latch, a high level of pain and low milk supply in this breastfeeding relationship. She worked very hard to keep up with pumping when she returned to work, and yet at a certain point, her supply began to gradually drop and she discontinued pumping and breastfeeding in his 8th month. When Heather was pregnant the second time, she took steps ahead of time to ensure that she educated herself during her pregnancy and she also made sure she connected with an IBCLC before giving birth.
After an evaluation by a specialist, she was told her son was tongue tied. While she was not happy that this was something she was going to have to deal with, she was happy to know that she was with the right pediatric practice who was familiar with babies with tongue tie. She had the procedure done and within a day, she realized that breastfeeding was so much better. She could really feel that her baby had a good latch now and there was very little soreness, if any. Heather could also tell that Vincent had a better, more productive feeding. He seemed more at ease and she could tell his belly was full. From that point on, she was able to breastfeed Vincent.
With all the difficulties she had with Joseph, the pain and the low milk supply, she was pleasantly surprised to have a very different experience with Vincent and thrilled that she was making plenty of milk. Almost too much milk. Heather talks to us about how making too much milk can sometimes be a problem and what she did to work through this.