Lori tells Nancy that she is a huge fan of her, why she loves her books and that she really enjoys her approach to breastfeeding and the breastfeeding mother. Nancy gives us a little info about herself and what life was like in the family she grew up in. She was the oldest child and the only girl, with two younger brothers. Grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, right on the cusp of a very large societal change in the 60s and 70s. Her goal was to become an elementary school teacher. In those days womens lib was beginning to heat up and prior to this most women were going to be a mother who stayed home or a school teacher or a nurse. Nancy arrived at college right around the time that protests were happening and it just felt like everything exploded and changed overnight. My first year in the dorms was the last year they had curfews. I came to school ready to wear my matching outfits only to find that suddenly everyone was wearing jeans.
Her major was elementary education. Nancy dropped out after 2 years of college, which was actually the thing to do in those days. It took her a while to try and figure out what she wanted to do and it only came to her after she had her first child when she was 29 years old. She states that all of a sudden she knew what her mission in life was going to be and of course it related to breastfeeding. She became a LLLL in 1982 as a volunteer. It did become my passion and it did become my career.Nancy became Board Certified in 1991 and worked hard building her private lactation consulting practice in Chicago. Since that time, she has worked for a major breast pump company and has become an International Speaker, sharing her love and knowledge of breastfeeding to professionals in the field as well as the every day mother.
During this interview, Nancy takes us on a journey as she talks about her own early experiences with breastfeeding, having a breast implant when she was 20 and discovering something very interesting years later, about what happened to that implant. Nancy talks about the changing world we live in with mothers returning to work much earlier than they did 20 years ago, with more returning to work before there baby is 6 weeks old. This brings with it quite a bit of challenges as the mom struggles to figure out how to pump and store enough milk for her baby and how to maintain a good supply while she is working.
Nancy gives some great information on breastmilk storage capacity and the mothers "magic number." She also talks about the importance of building a relationship, bonding with your baby. We talked about the mindset of mothers if they are struggling to make enough milk for their baby. Nancy tells us why it is so important to have a different mindset then thinking that if you can't make enough milk for your baby, then why bother at all. There is a lot to listen to and much to learn from this interview.