#306 | Breastfeeding Q&A: Engorgement & Oversupply; Sleepy Feeders; Hands-Free Pumps; Foremilk/Hindmilk Imbalances; Cracked Nipples

I'm Cynthia Overgard, owner of HypnoBirthing of Connecticut, childbirth advocate and postpartum support specialist. And I'm Trisha Ludwig, certified nurse midwife and international board certified lactation consultant. And this is the Down To Birth Podcast. Childbirth is something we're made to do. But how do we have our safest and most satisfying experience in today's medical culture? Let's dispel the myths and get down to birth.

Let's get serious. We are aspiring to do a breastfeeding Q A, every quarter, throughout the year, we do our regular Q and A's at the end of every month, those will still contain breastfeeding questions here and there, but these are exclusively breastfeeding Q and A episodes that we're going to do quarterly, because they're just so many. And the last few we did were huge hits. Of course, I'm sure even lactation consultants out there are loving listening to you and learning from you so but you had asked that we kick off today's episode with a very interesting voicemail message we got a few months ago that we didn't bother to share. Didn't quite know what to do with but you heard it and you were you said you were enthralled, and you didn't even notice that it was three minutes long, because the story was so interesting to you. So do you want to say anything before we play that or do? No, let's just, let's play it, and then let's talk about it.

All right, hi, I have a question for you. My name is Nicole. I'm just trying to figure out what rights I have on March 14, I went to my last prenatal appointment. I was due March 18, my doctor insisted that I had to be induced exactly on my due date. No questions asked. I had brought the insert from the SBA website for Pitocin and cytotech to help me understand the difference in risk between stillbirth risk past 40 weeks, in the case of advanced maternal aid, since I was 41 years old when I delivered, versus the risk of all the other side effects of the two drugs that she wanted to use to induce me, my pregnancy was 100% uncomplicated. Despite me being 41 years old, my OB literally did every single test imaginable, high risk ultrasound. I even monitored my blood sugar using a blood sugar monitor because my doctor refused to take the accept the fresh test as an alternative to the regular glucose drinks that everyone has to drink. At any rate, I told my doctor at that appointment that I felt like I was progressing, I really did, and that I felt like due dates are just a guess, and that really they could be off by like a week or so, and I just wanted a few extra days before we immediately rushed into inducing me, and she didn't like that. She basically completely lost it on me, and my kids were even with me at the appointment, which was awful. They were like in tears by hand of it, she started yelling that she never would have treated me if she had known I would be asking questions like this late in the game, she said, I'm the reason that OBS are quitting because people like me are asking too many questions all the time. She said I didn't have to worry about maternal death, which is one of the side effects of COVID, by the way, along with fetal death and so many other side effects, because I am a privileged white woman, and only women of color are dying during childbirth. Basically, it was horrible. I left the appointment, I cried, I called up a friend, I called up my husband, and ended up the next day switching to a midwife, which, by the way, the next day was three days before my due date. I ended up going to labor one day after my due date, and free birthing unintentionally in our bathroom with my husband while the midwife was on the phone, thankfully and en route, because she came so quickly, she was nine pounds and four ounces, and I didn't even tear at all. It was an amazing experience, and I was happy for my healthy baby, and was happy to just walk away from the OB that I had seen and was never going to go back to her office again. I didn't review her poorly. I didn't speak poorly about her on any mother's Facebook pages, even though I was tempted to on numerous, numerous occasions, I left it alone. I was happy to move on, however. Fast forward to last week, and I received a bill from my OB for over $2,000 when I called the billing department to confirm it was what she was charging me, was because I had, she had spent so much time with me answering my excessive questions, so I had to pay a premium for her services. And for reference, she spent maybe 15 minutes with me. Do I have any recourse? I feel like I should be allowed to have informed consent. She didn't even provide me with that. She never even bothered to answer my question. So what can I do? What should I do? I hope I don't have to pay the bill because, of course, insurance isn't accepting it. So thank you so much for all your information, it was because of you guys that I really wasn't scared to have a home birth within the. Life at an advanced maternal age, and for whatever reason, I wasn't scared while I was very quickly birthing my baby in my bathroom. And it was an amazing story and an amazing birth that really can't be tough. Thank you.

Amazing 40 advanced maternal age, free birth changed providers three days before her due date.

I've had many clients do that, so I didn't actually, I didn't actually bat an eyelash at that part that, but the rest of it is incredible. The audacity of her OB to tell her that she wasn't at risk because she was a privileged white woman. I mean, that's unbelievable to me. It's outrageous. I love, actually, the part where the OB said, This is why we're leaving our profession. This is why so many OBS are quitting, because women are asking questions, because women care. And she stuck it to her with that bill, which I've also had a client or two experience, and I've talked about that on the show here. But a little passive aggressive move after women leave the provider can be this special outside of the maternal care situation, excessive questions. One of my clients got a bill that said, like to a conversation to manage her anxiety, a comment about the race thing, which I just think was so wrong of her to bring up to any woman. We shouldn't be discrediting anyone who's giving birth.

It's, there's just the OBS. I just that that was her go to like it's so it's such a it's such a horrible thing to say to anyone, also to say that you're not at risk, though, when she's recommending induction, that is yes, of course, highly, or she's comfortable, right? She's at risk too, maybe is.

So as far as the bill, she wanted to know about the bill, I don't think there's ever been a bill I haven't paid, but I'm thinking, I don't know if I would or wouldn't, but I'm thinking I'd never pay that bill. It's just she shouldn't pay that bill. I don't think she should pay that bill either. I don't know we should not pay that bill.

She needs to. She needs to. Well, first of all, if you don't pay it, it doesn't really matter, because she's never going back. No, it doesn't really matter. You can't actually get it. Doesn't not. Non payment of medical bills does not actually affect your credit.

They could still send it to collections and things that's stressful. It won't affect you, just it won't affect her, while the stress of someone calling to have the bill paid, I don't know that kind of thing is something I would but in principle, I don't think it should be paid. And in principle, she said I didn't leave a bad review. I wish women would understand that, rather than thinking of a review in terms of good and bad, always stick with facts. You're always ethical when you stick with truth. And if she were to write a review and say, I'm 41 years old, the doctor was pushing induction on me and said, this is I'm the reason that went that OBS are leaving their work. I'm a privileged white woman at no risk of dying, and she sent me a $2,000 bill because I asked, quote, excessive questions with an appointment that wasn't even 15 minutes long, that is ethical and fair to share and should be shared and might protect another woman from ending up in the hands of a doctor.

So Bea wasn't even going to let her go one day past her due date, she was not open to any type of informed consent, none. So she's billing her $2,000 for this mother asking for informed consent, which is her right to have. So I would not pay a penny of it. And I don't think that she's going to be given a hard time. She just needs to go to the the office manager, the practice owner, and explain her situation, and tell them that they're not paying it, and then again, if they send it to collections, oh, well, it doesn't matter, and she can then leave a bad review, honest bad review, just like you said, stating the facts.

Yeah, I hope that woman hears that we played her voicemail today. It's been many months, and I hope she'll contact us and let us know what happened next. I think she was very well spoken. We didn't chop anything out. She spoke perfectly. She got a tremendous amount of content into about a three minute voicemail, which is really impressive, because normally we don't want to play anything that's over about a minute, but there was nothing worth cutting in her story so frustrating. Well, I'm just so happy. First, she had a beautiful, free birth at home at 40 plus years of age and a nine pound, four ounce baby like Bravo. That's awesome.

Okay, now, should we get into your first breastfeeding question? Yes, we should. All right, let's do it.

Hi. I was wondering, I have had such a bad experience with my milk coming in so quickly and my breast becoming super engorged, and it comes on so fast. And I was wondering. There is any way to prepare for that, to any techniques that we could do to not have so much pain, or fast ways to relieve that pain, other than simply nursing your child, which can be beneficial and not beneficial, in my experience, because you're dealing with all of that pain, but also you're encouraging more milk flow. Thank you so much. Bye.

Can I ask something before you answer that question? Sure, the vast majority of women are afraid they have too little milk or under supply, and I'm assuming, but you can correct me, is under supply not a more common problem than oversupply? Yes, it is okay. Women who have under supply or fear, they have under supply, which I feared, and apparently I didn't at all, but I just always worried about it. And I think that's normal. Those women don't understand why oversupply is a problem, and those women sometimes feel like, Oh, gee, you know, or you having too much of this liquid gold. Can you first explain why oversupply is a pretty serious problem, and women are so afraid to have it again when they experience it the first time with the first baby?

Yes, I often see oversupply or hyper lactation as more problematic than low milk supply, because with low milk supply, there's pretty specific things we can do to increase milk supply. It doesn't always end up that a woman does get to a full milk supply, but with over supply and hyper lactation, it can be really hard to reduce it at times, and it does cause a lot of problems with the with the baby feeding at the breast, it can contribute to very fussy feeding colic, like symptoms, reflux, poor sleep, frequent feedings. And then for the mom, she's more prone to plug ducts and mastitis and discomfort. So if a mom is exclusively pumping, she's still prone to plug ducks and mastitis, but she will eliminate the breastfeeding side of the issue. So when you see these mothers who have hundreds or 1000s, even of ounces of milk stored in their freezers, those moms are probably not breastfeeding most of the time because their babies just couldn't tolerate that kind of overproduction of milk. It's not the case 100% of the time, but most of the time it is okay. So what's your advice to this woman? Okay, gosh, now I forgot the question.

It's painful. She was saying it's painful. Yeah, so yes. So sometimes, if a mom has an abundant milk production, or is prone to an abundant milk production, the milk production, the milk does come in very abundantly in the first few days, and that can lead to engorgement and discomfort and pain. It's it's usually managed well by more frequent breastfeeding, lots of skin to skin. You can use cold cabbage is actually an excellent, ancient remedy. Green cabbage. Specifically, I recommend taking the cabbage and peeling the leaves apart and then putting them in the freezer. You can't put the whole cabbage in the freezer because then when you try to peel the leaves off, they'll break. But if you peel them off first and you put them in the freezer, then they're going to be nice and cold. You just put put them on the breast, and it's not just for the cold relief, like a cabbage. A piece of cabbage leaf fits very nicely around the breast. It's very comfortable. You will smell a bit like cooked cabbage, because it does. You know, your breast warms it up and serious. I never thought, okay, so it ends up all soft and Okay, yeah, so you leave it there for a few hours, you put it in, you leave it there, tell it Yes, until it feels kind of floppy and warm and but it isn't just because the cabbage is cold in a nice shape. There's actually two compounds in cabbage that reduce inflammation through the skin. So engorgement is also an inflammatory process. It's not just milk pooling in the breast, it's also fluids. So the other remedy that's really helpful is breast gymnastics, one of my favorite treatments for any type of breast inflammation. It sounds really silly, but it's called breast gymnastics, and it's extremely effective in the same way that if you had a sprained ankle, you wouldn't want to just sit there and do nothing with it, otherwise the swelling just gets worse and worse and worse. You want to use cold therapy and gentle movement. You even want to walk on it a little bit. So you want to keep the fluids moving. Same thing with the breast. So you take the breast and you actually do counterclockwise and clockwise circles with it, usually 30 to 60 seconds. If it feels good to do it before a feed, you can but it's definitely worthwhile to do after my first visual when you said breast gymnastics is like doing a cartwheel without a without a bra on or something No.

Yeah, that would not feel very good. Gymnastics is a pretty strong word. I know. I know, sobbing the breast counterclockwise, and just somehow, that's what it got labeled, stuck, okay, and then that helps to relieve the discomfort. Does anything actually address the oversupply and bring it down? Or is there really only, is it only a matter of like, Man time, it's time, because it actually in the first two weeks, your breast milk production can be more hormonally influenced and less supply and demand. Although when we're talking about new babies and new moms, I really focus on the supply and demand, because the breasts really do need that stimulation, and they need to lay down all the receptors for oxytocin and prolactin. But if it's a mom who has had a history of an overproduction of milk in those first couple of weeks, it's more of an automatic and less of a supply and demand. By two or three weeks, it starts to move more into the supply and demand. So as the baby is feeding, her breasts will then start to adjust, but so it just does kind of take time.

Hi, ladies. I have a question for Trisha about breastfeeding. I'm a doula, and I have had a couple of moms recently give birth, and their babies have been really sleepy. Granted, both babies were born around 3637 weeks. So their lactation consultants have suggested putting them to the rest babies kind of last. They suckle a few times, and then they fall asleep, so they were recommended to chop them up with a bottle, and these babies have both been guzzling the bottle when the bottle is offered. So just wondering if there's any tips or tricks that I can recommend to the moms to keep the babies awake while they're on the breast and not falling asleep so much for everything that you do.

Trisha in our February Q, a a woman asked a question about a quote, lazy feeder. Is that different from this? We don't we kind of we reject that whole thing. You said, there's no lazy baby at all. But is this the same thing, a baby dozing off at the breast, or is the lazy, the quote, unquote lazy feeder, about like a suckling mechanism that everyone's accusing babies of? Not do.

I think people could call either one of those babies lazy, and these babies that she's talking about could also be called lazy, but they're not lazy. There's a problem. And the problem is they're 36 and 37 weeks gestation, they are not even ready to be born. And when babies are born early, they're not good breastfeeders, and this is a big oversight in in lactation and healthcare. I mean, lactation consultants. Consultants obviously understand this, but not all obese and midwives or nurses recognize that when a baby is born before 38 weeks, they don't breastfeed Well, most of the time. Again, there's always exceptions. I was recently working with a mom whose baby was born at 36 weeks and just took off breastfeeding like you know, amazingly well. But she was also a repeat mom who had a great milk supply and that benefited, that really benefited her small baby who, you know, if she was first time mom, it may not have worked that well. So you have to give these babies time. They need to grow a little bit bigger. They need to gestate outside the womb a little bit longer before they're going to be really great breastfeeders. But the bottle paste feeding is very helpful. So if you're feeding a baby with a, you know, an upside down bottle, and a baby on their back, that's going to increase the flow, and that's going to be very fast, and the babies are going to chug milk, yes, and then sometimes that can make them a little bit flow frustrated when they go back to the breast, because the breast is variable flow. The flow at the breast changes all the time. Sometimes it's fast, sometimes it's slow. It takes a minute to get going, it pauses, it comes back. The flow at the bottle is just steady, very predictable and often way too fast, especially if you're using the hospital bottles, they are the worst possible nipples for breastfeeding. The flow is way too fast and the bottle nipple is way too long. So pace feeding is really important. Using a slow flow nipple is really important, and using a breastfeeding friendly bottle is really important.

What's a breastfeeding friendly bottle? A breastfeeding friendly bottle is a bottle that has a certain type of nipple shape that is more like feeding on the breast. So most bottle nipples are very long. They have that, you know, the part that you would call the teat is very long, and a mother's nipple is not it's short like this. And so you actually want a bottle that has a very short nipple tip and a wider base at the bottom, so that the. Baby is actually having to open their mouth wider to latch onto the wider part of the breast and not on the nipple. If the nipple top is long, the baby just now latches onto the nipple. And then when they try to go to the breast, they nipple feed instead of breast feed, right? So I recommend the even flow balance bottle. It's an amazing bottle. It's kind of unlike any of the other bottles on the market. It's always sold out. So if you're planning on breastfeeding and having some bottles in in the in the picture, get them now.

See, guys, I have a couple questions here breastfeeding related. So I know that people talk about not using a portable pump as their quote, unquote, main pump. I'm just looking for some clarification on what that really means. I'm someone who I only pump at work, sometimes in the car, on the way somewhere as well. But I've always used my spectra over the last two and it's half years, and I recently got, like a hint free pump, so I'm just wondering if I can use that now instead, or I'm still supposed to use the spectrum sometimes. For reference, I also am known to be somewhat of an over producer and prone to clogged duck stuff like that. I know I need to make sure I'm emptying as much as I can. And then my second question is, I've, I've read that when you're nursing it kind of pulls like calcium out of your bones. I don't know if that's true or not, but if so, at what point does it like re does it go back in? Is it recalcified or something. Is there a point in time, maybe after you're done nursing, where you should focus on your calcium intake try and increase that to help with that? I hope that makes sense. Thank you. So I love a portable pump, because if a mother can be pumping and doing other things, her pumping is going to be much more effective. One of the biggest challenges to pumping and increasing milk supply is the fact that a mother has to sit down and find 15 or 20 minutes, or in some cases, 30. Some women pump that long. I don't encourage that or recommend that, but you know, seven or eight times a day, they're going to sit down for 20 to 30 minutes and be, you know, stuck to a wall. That is what makes pumping very stressful and creates a lot of performance anxiety around pumping, which then blocks oxytocin, which then blocks the release of your milk, which then prevents you from increasing your milk supply. So portable pump is a great alternative. However, the portable pumps that fit inside the bra, they are not very effective at removing milk. For a mom, like she said, she has a great milk supply, it might be fine, but for most mothers, and in my experience, these wearable pumps that go inside the bra don't remove milk as well. Baby Buddha does make a portable pump that is more of the classic flange style. And this pump is awesome. So it's always my go to I love the spectra that she has too. But again, that requires you to basically be sitting down, which is fine. Sometimes in the day, you can sit down and pump for 15 minutes, but if you're needing to pump seven or eight times a day, that's not really realistic. So the baby Buddha is wearable. You can move about the house. You can wear a pumping bra, and you can be hands free. If you're just pumping a couple times a day at work, and you have designated pump times which you should have at work, then fine, you can use your spectra and sit down and work at your computer while you're pumping and be distracted, and that's the best way to help with pumping. The other thing about the wearable pumps is you can't really adjust the flange size. There are some newer ones on the market now that maybe you can also, again, baby Bucha just came out with one that I think is great, and I'm trying to get feedback on it from anyone who's using it. So if anyone out there is using the baby Bucha wearable pump. Let me know what your experience is like with it. What else? So yes, it is true that when you are breastfeeding, calcium is pulled from the bones, and that is a normal physiologic response in pregnancy and breastfeeding, but it does not lead to low bone density over time. When you stop breastfeeding, your bones return to normal, and you don't actually have to take more calcium in pregnancy or breastfeeding to compensate for that. It won't actually do anything. So you just have to know that nature is smart, and when you're done breastfeeding, your bones will be restored. And women who have breastfed for you know, many, many, many, many years don't have higher rates of osteoporosis.

Does it mean anything to you if I say Regina phalange isn't that from friends? Yes, I told you that in a previous episode. I'm still not giving you what I said, phalanges? Yeah. Every time you say flange, I think Regina Falange, and every time I mention it, you're I always have to tell you it's from friends. So I remembered in the fact, well, yeah, I but only because I've told you, not because you've watched the show enough. Okay, I'm friends. What is Regina Falange referring to?

I don't know what is what is she referring to? Well, Who? Who?

Oh, Phoebe. Oh, good.

It is Phoebe.

How to matter? I don't know. I just know it's Phoebe. It's her, like, alias. It's like her alter ego. Tells people that's her name, Regina, felling.

What is a flange? Exactly. Okay, should I show you I have? Yeah, sure. We're on YouTube. Now, hold on, okay, okay, if we're gonna have show and tell, then I'm gonna show you a few things. First, I'll show you a flange.

High time I knew what a flange was. You've honestly never seen a flange. I don't know what a flange is. I can't tell you, did you never pump? You know? Yes, I did. I did. You know what a flange is? Okay, well, I will know when you show me you recognize it. Are you ready? Yeah, sure.

That's a flange. That's a flange. It looks like one of those cones that goes around a dog's neck when they have surgery, right? Yeah, okay, that's the this goes around your nipple instead. So, yeah, so flange size is important because this hole, the circumference of this hole, matters, because if it's too big, your pump is going to draw in too much of your breast tissue, and if it's too small, it's going to pinch your nipple, so you need it to just be just the right size to basically just pull in just around the nipple.

So isn't the areola important?

Yes, sorry, gosh, let me show you. Apparently I have misplaced my breast. I probably left it at my office. So, yeah, my own breast. You mean your third breast, yes, but you're going to show us with one of your first two breasts, my breast that goes everywhere with me, but it's not with me today anyway, yeah. So you don't want too much of the areola to be drawn into the flange, basically so and you can, you can measure, there are little devices to measure your nipple size, to try to predict the right flange size. But honestly, the best way to measure it is to put your pump on and watch what is happening to the nipple and the areola while you're pumping, and have it evaluated for size. That's what I recommend. All right, thanks for demonstrating one more demo since we were talking about bottles. This is the even, flow, balanced bottle, Wide, wide based nipple, and you can see how short the nipple tip is. Most other bottles have a nipple tip twice as long, and again, that means that the baby is going to feed on the nipple and not on the bottle. So if you see, like my fingers are really spread apart here, this is how wide you want the baby's mouth to be, not like this.

Got it? Great. Everyone can watch on YouTube now and see what you just demonstrated, including the demonstration of your own bare breasts. Just kidding everyone, God, next time, next time, next time. All right, it's quickie time. Okay? Quickies do?

Here we go with quickies. First one, when will a forceful let down, calm down. I am seven weeks postpartum, and I have an intense feeling in my breast, but no leaking. So this is just individual. Some women feel their let down. Some Some don't some feel it very strongly. Some don't feel it at all. Some just feel it in the middle. Sometimes it is actually related to magnesium deficiency. So taking a magnesium supplement, magnesium glycine in particular, can be helpful, because that's a smooth muscle relaxer, and when your letdown is happening, it's the contraction of the smooth muscle. It is the contraction of the smooth muscles in the breast. So, you know, lots of people have magnesium deficiency, so it might be worth trying. How long should I nurse on each side to ensure four milk high milk balance? I really don't like mothers to think about this. There is no specific time, and you really don't want to think about it. You want to follow your baby's cues and not worry about four milk high milk imbalance, you can cause yourself a lot of stress and worry and even interfere with your breastfeeding if you overthink that. I.

Only humans, only humans. All the barnyard animals who are breastfeeding their their babies, can't possibly think about such things, and therefore can't worry about it, and everything is working just fine. We

have to remember that breastfeeding is best and most effective when we are more in our right brain and less in our left brains. It's a right brained activity.

It's very hard to turn off that intellect. It's very hard. It is and that way we manage anxiety. This is how a lot of women manage their anxiety. I had a I have a woman in my postpartum group. She's been there for about two years. Had her second baby last spring, and she's just a classic organized woman. Always kept track of diapers, maps. And one day I just we got into conversation, and I just said, Are you sure that isn't building anxiety? And she almost froze just at the challenge of the conversation. And yesterday, in the group, she was saying to a new mom who just joined, she was like, I am so much happier now that I don't track anything. I'm so happy now she doesn't even know that she would be happier this way. It's tough.

I always suggest to all moms to drop the apps, and it causes them they can they just like they can't even fathom it. And eventually they kind of keep, you know, we keep talking about it, eventually they come around to it, and every single time, once they've dropped it, they're like, oh my gosh, this is so much easier. I just am thinking about it so much less. And it works so more. Right brain, less, left Left brain. Okay, how can I learn to breastfeed without a breastfeeding pillow? My baby seven weeks, just drop the pillow. Just get rid of it, hide it will happen, I don't know. Yeah, it's really important actually, to learn to breastfeed without a pillow. And when I'm teaching somebody how to latch, I teach them without a pillow, always, because your body is the best pillow. And if you can just get your baby to latch on, then you can lean back, and your body becomes the place of rest for the baby's body. And it's very relaxing for you, and it's very relaxing for the baby. So ditch the pillow. Is it true that a woman's body can't keep up with supply as baby grows? Absolutely not, right? It's all supply and demand. I mean, it

would never work if that were true, right? That's true, absolutely not. How long does it take to heal a cracked NiP? I am using silverettes and working with an ivclc. Well, hooray for silverettes And hooray for working with an ivclc. We love silverettes. They work very well for healing nipples. But how long it takes really depends on the severity of the damage. I have had some nipples so severely damaged that it takes three weeks, even a month, to fully heal them, and then other nipples heal within two

days. What's causing that I never had that? Why does it happen?

Poor latch, no. Okay. Nipple feeding causes that I used to think, before I had my first baby, and I heard about it, that it was from the nipple being wet and then drying in the air, and being wet and drying in the air. But that's not it at all that causes a little bit of nipple sensitivity, because our skin is not used to being wet and dry 12 times a day. Okay, go ahead, I have exclusively breastfed my baby for eight and a half months. I now have to be away overnight from my baby, and I have never given a bottle. How do I handle this? Do I just introduce a bottle a sippy cup? How do I pump? Okay, that's a lot of questions, not exactly a quickie. Yeah. I mean, great. But your baby may or may not take a bottle, and depending maybe your baby's sleeping well overnight at this point, and they won't need to feed much. You can definitely try a bottle, and if that doesn't work, you can try sippy cup, if that doesn't work, you can try an Open Cup, if that doesn't work, you can try a straw cup. All of those things are suitable at this point, and she's going to have to do a little pumping in advance of going away to store up a little bit of milk. I don't know how often her baby feeds in the night, so I don't know how much. Okay. Last Quickie, this is a personal one, um, what, where is, what is the bravest place you breastfed in public, maybe on an airplane, because you're literally so close to the person next to you. And I breastfed on airplanes plenty. What do you think yours is? The only time I remember feeling self conscious and desperate and had to breastfeed was when I was in a store, and I remember because I. Feel it took bravery. I just breastfed my baby in restaurants or anything like that, but in a store once, I remember like, Oh no, because I just felt like I had no privacy. I couldn't sit down, I was standing and I just had to, I just had to breastfeed. And that's I don't really remember the details around it, but I remember feeling self conscious and kind of going to an aisle where I didn't see anyone, at least for a moment or two, and just breastfed for as quickly as possible to calm my my baby, I hate to even indicate that we should feel self conscious about it, but I remember feeling that way because I was a brand new breastfeeding mom. I wasn't used to lifting my shirt in public in any capacity. I'm sure I was totally modest about it, but it's a foreign experience when you're brand new to it. I do recall breastfeeding in Target, in an aisle, sitting on the floor, in the aisle, I just plopped down and started breastfeeding there. I also remember, actually, this one probably sticks out in my head the most breastfeeding in a meeting with my family business, in front of the senior members of the family business who were really not at all comfortable with a breastfeeding mother. I don't know if they ever even had seen somebody breastfeed, but I just remember being in the meeting Lola was hungry, just plop, you know, popped her on, and I'm pretty sure I made them quite uncomfortable. Are you talking like your father in law and the family, uncle? Yeah, yeah.

Not on my side of the family, on my husband's side of the family, yeah, I just don't think they'd ever seen it before. And they're like, I definitely had that experience with my in laws. They hadn't seen it before. I just unapologetically, still modestly, but I still think, well, you don't have a choice for one but to breastfeed. But I remember thinking, well, they'll just have to do whatever makes them comfortable. They're free to turn their head, walk away, pretend they're engaged in a different conversation. But my baby is hungry and nothing else matters. I agree. I agree. I think it's really important to work on breastfeeding in public, because if you don't get comfortable with it, then it can be a barrier to long term breastfeeding, because it can become so restrictive you feel like you can't go places and you can't do things. So you start small, and you breastfeed, you know, maybe in the car or places that don't feel quite so exposed. And as you get more and more comfortable with it, you build up to, you know, breastfeeding anytime, anywhere, and then you have freedom. You just take your baby and you go. It's just the fact that the breasts are so sexualized in our culture, they're so very sexualized. But you know what, nobody even sees your breast when you're breastfeeding. No, it's just that, even to have people's minds on it, like even for people to think about the fact that your breast is exposed, or you're handling your breast, or your baby is nursing from your breast, it's just, it's completely cultural. It's just in this culture, breasts are sexual. That's it. I mean, I'm sure even teenage girls don't even have a concept yet of appreciating the appreciating their breasts in the future as the conduit for nourishing and feeding their babies, but it's just sexual. And then when we're moms for the first time, we're the product of that conditioning. And I think it's the only reason it's awkward. We just have it in our brains that this was a sexual organ from the start when it wasn't intended to be. They sure don't feel sexual when you're breastfeeding, the last thing you want to think of them. Do not fails pretty quickly.

Do not stay away. They can return to feeling that way, but when you're they totally do. The brain will not accept mixing the two as it shouldn't no as it shouldn't anyway. Thank you, Trisha, it's awesome. And uh, we'll catch you guys next week for our next episode, and in three months for our next breastfeeding Q A, so keep the questions coming in at 802-438-3696, call us anytime. 24/7, we only pick up the phone sometimes, occasionally, I only do that once, just Friday nights.

Thank you for joining us at the Down To Birth Show. You can reach us @downtobirthshow on Instagram or email us at Contact@DownToBirthShow.com. All of Cynthia’s classes and Trisha’s breastfeeding services are offered live online, serving women and couples everywhere. Please remember this information is made available to you for educational and informational purposes only. It is in no way a substitute for medical advice. For our full disclaimer visit downtobirthshow.com/disclaimer. Thanks for tuning in, and as always, hear everyone and listen to yourself.