Ep. 51 – COVID-19 Vaccines while Lactating: Part 2

Share this episode with a friend 👇

Listen to this episode here or subscribe & listen on Apple Podcasts

Transcript:

This is Maureen Ferrall and Heather ONeal and this is The Milk Minute. We’re midwives and lactation professionals bringing you the most up-to-date evidence for all things lactation. So you can feel more confident about feeding your baby, body positivity, relationships and mental health. Plus, we laugh a little, or a lot along the way.

So join us for another episode. Do do do, do welcome to The Milk Minute Podcast. Welcome everybody. Hi, we’re back. This has been a much awaited episode. Everybody wants to know what is the COVID-19 vaccine update from The Milk Minute. So we’re here with it. I mean, I’m here with it. I’m surprising Heather with all of it.

Yeah. You know, we kind of divide up our research topics and I let her take this one. I let her. Let, yeah, you were like, I don’t want to research it. It doesn’t bring me joy. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s just that we want to lean into our joy. Yes. Like I want to Marie Kondo this situation here. So anyway, I’m very excited to learn more along with everybody and let Maureen drop her COVID 19 vaccine knowledge. Yeah. And, um, before we do that, as usual, we are going to take a listener question, and then if you stick around to the end, we will do an award in the alcove. And you know, the awards are probably the most important part of every episode. Cause you never know, it might be you.

Yeah, it could be you. There was an episode it was us. It was surprising for us too. Okay, everybody,

I’m pretty sure you all know how much we love Liquid IV at this point at The Milk Minute Podcast, but we’re going to tell you all over again. We want you to make your water work harder. Liquid IV is a hydration multiplier that’s great tasting, has five essential vitamins and minerals and three times the electrolytes of a sports drink without the added sugar or artificial anything.

Oh, so good. And the company gives back. Whenever you buy from them, they donate to communities in need. Yeah. So if you’re watching your hydration or even if you are one of those pregnant people that throws up all the time, like this one over here, it’s a good way to add in some extra nutrients. And also, you know, just like make your water taste more interesting. Yeah, I know. It’s kind of nice to mix it up from time to time. So anyways, head over to LiquidIV.com and enter promo code MILKMINUTE for 25% off and free shipping. Oo, free shipping. What do you got to lose? Nothing!

This week our question is from Denise. And she’s saying that her daughter’s pediatrician said that when her daughter is four months old, she can start cereal. And she’s worried about it with the rumors about Gerber cereal and metal… and if you guys have seen those viral videos about pulling iron out of the cereal… and what other options does she have instead of the Gerber cereal? So here’s the thing. Yeah. Heather’s like taking her glasses off. She’s like, I got a lot to say.

Let me just get in here really quick. So don’t start your baby on cereal at four months, unless it is medically indicated. And that means that you have so much reflux that your baby is losing weight and refusing to eat because they’re in so much pain and/ or, yep, that’s pretty much it. It’s pretty much because, here’s the thing, in those cases where doctors are actually recommending that are like going down every day.

Yeah, because if your baby has actual weight gain problems, they’re not going to prescribe cereal because it has very little nutritional value. They might prescribe some human milk fortifiers. Yeah. That’s a much better choice. Or formula supplementation for those babies that need it. And here’s the thing, with the rise of formula and baby food companies like in the 1920s and thirties and forties, the age of exclusive breastfeeding during that time plummeted, I mean, people were feeding their babies like, Gerber baby food at six weeks.

And so since then we’ve done a lot of scientific studies and realized that that’s not healthy. And that, that was really just a giant marketing campaign to make money and not actually for the health of our babies. And in really, you know, we’ve slowly seen the age come back up and it hung around four months for a while. And then in the last 10 or 20 years, we’ve seen a lot of our health organizations, like the WHO and the American Academy of Pediatrics, all kind of catch up and say, Hey, actually, we should be waiting till six months or later. Yeah. It’s just not necessary. And it does have some unsavory side effects.

Yeah. So like, it does make your baby fat. Yeah. You know, you, yeah, it’ll give you a fat baby. It messes with their insulin levels. It sure does. And it’s not good fat, you know, it’s not like, Oh, what a chubby little breastfed baby that’s exclusively breastfed. Like, and I don’t want to even focus on the fat. It’s like, this sets them up for metabolic disease, constipation. And part of the symptoms of that are then storing too much fat in your body.

And, you know, it’s setting these babies up to have an unhealthy gut microbiome. Yep. And, you know, here’s the thing, these cereals, in my humble opinion, should be treated like medicine. They should not be available over the counter for people to just use as if it’s equivalent to breast milk or formula.

This is not part of the question, but this is the question we get all the time. We have to, we just have to do an episode on this. Yeah. But anyway, our advice to you is to do a little research, maybe seek a second opinion and consider waiting until six months to start solids. And then starting with foods that have better nutrition for babies. And if you do choose to do cereal, you can make your own and you can help to control the quality of the ingredients in your cereal. Yeah. So I don’t want to like drop any specific companies right now in this moment, but you can do your research and make your own. It’s really not that hard. And it’s not that expensive.

No. And I do want to very shortly address the metal cereal thing. So grains are high in iron and it is normal for there to actually then be metal in grains, but it’s in these really small quantities. But one of our, one of the people Heather and I admire the most, who lives in Morgantown, West Virginia, Emily Caladrelli, who is the host of Emily’s Wonder Lab. And we just can’t get enough of her. She’s on Netflix. She does these awesome little TikToks, but she was like, Hey, yeah,  guess what? There is iron in cereal. Let me show you how you can get it from literally any cereal. And she like made this little video where she smashed up the cereal in a bag and added some water and made it into mush, like baby cereal, and then took a magnet and kind of stroked the cereal and yes, in the corner, then it collected all the iron because it made it more available by smashing it up and releasing all those particles into this, like watery mush. Yeah. She’s pretty awesome. Yeah. And not that I’m not saying Gerber cereals don’t suck. They do. Let me just be clear. I actually never recommend cereals, like highly processed cereals like that for babies, because like we said, they don’t have a lot of nutritional value.

If you see the words enriched or fortified, that means we’ve taken out all the good stuff and we’ve put some of it back. Yeah. It’s is messed up process. Anyway, guys, we have a lot to say on it that will go way beyond a single listener question. So we should just do an episode on that one day. Add it to our massive list.

Yes, indeed. And just because your pediatrician says you can start cereal at four months, doesn’t mean you have to start cereal at four months. Okay. Yes. And I think over the next 10 and 20 years, we’re going to see the age of recommended exclusive breastfeeding, continue to climb because prior to these baby food companies existing, it was much closer to 12 months for people.

And I think biologically that’s probably closer to about the, the normal time that we would have really almost exclusively breastfed babies without supplementation. So don’t be worried if your six month old doesn’t want to eat. Don’t be worried if you haven’t started solids at four months. It’s okay. It’s really okay. Breast milk is enough. You are enough.

All right. Let’s talk about this vaccine update, Maureen. Yeah. So listen, here’s the deal I helped with the first one a little bit, but not much. And then I did go and get my vaccine and that is pretty much all I know at this point, because I have been so busy doing other stuff for the podcast. So thank you for taking one for the team for all of us and doing this research. So where are we at now? Well, I didn’t actually do research. I just read research. Let’s be clear. It’s an important distinction. So where are we at now? So our last vaccine episode was in mid-December and here we are now in March.

And a lot has happened. I mean, that’s, it’s been a couple of months and right now the pace of scientific exploration on the COVID front is rapid. Yeah. I mean every day is like a month in science years. Yeah. And I’ll start by saying so far, most of the major health organizations that we mentioned last time have actually not updated their stances.

So that’s good. That’s actually kind of a good thing, right? Yeah. Because, um, pretty much everybody who was recommending before that pregnant or lactating people consider receiving the vaccine based on their risk level, they’re still saying that. Yeah, because here’s the thing. If in December they put this recommendation out, which is when they came out, for pregnant and lactating people, and separated them for pregnant and lactating people, cause it’s two different types of people.

That recently I’ve seen a couple of separations in the, in the recommendation. Some of them are still lumping them together and I’m like, just edit it. Just separate those humans. But the point is since that time, tons and tons and tons of pregnant and, or lactating people have received the vaccine and it’s been okay.

Like if it wasn’t okay, they would have changed those recommendations. Yeah. People have been registering with V-safe, at least in the United States through the CDC and then reporting adverse reactions through the VAERS program. And so far what we’ve seen, and now, I mean, last time I checked the report, there were like 30,000 pregnant people who had registered on it and maybe 15,000 lactating. It was less lactating people, but I think they’re also getting pushed less hard to register with, V-Safe. But anyway, that report, you know, had said, okay, lots of people are now receiving it and so far the adverse reaction reporting is pretty similar to the normal percentage of adverse reactions that we expect to see.

Like miscarriages and intrauterine death and blah, blah, blah, kind of on par with our normal stats. So that’s encouraging. I mean, not encouraging that those people are not making it, but encouraging it’s not increased the infant mortality or the maternal OB complications at all. And that’s important to talk about because recently we’ve been seeing a particular Facebook post being shared- no references, nothing really credible, but it does say like, Hey, you know, this one baby died after its breastfeeding parent received the COVID vaccine. And we’re like, wow. Yeah. That, if that story is true, who knows, it’s it is really sad. But also, it in no way tells us anything about vaccine safety. And I’m almost a hundred percent positive that that baby was not in some kind of COVID vaccine experimental study.

Right. So we just, you know, we hear stories like that and they are absolutely scary. And when we see instances like that, it’s, it is significant to those families and significant to that person, but it’s not necessarily statistically significant for the safety of a medication or a vaccine.

When you look at anything on a micro level, it looks like it’s causative. You know, like we have this one thing that we added and this one thing happened. But when you take a macro level view and you really back up and look at everything, the data is all saying that these COVID vaccines are not killing babies. It’s not killing women. Right. So that’s really encouraging. And I did want to say, um, there was a big health organization that changed their stance and updated it.

So when we were talking in December, the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the National Health Service of Britain was recommending pregnant and lactating people do not receive the vaccine. Oh, really? Out of an abundance of caution, which I understand. And they have changed that stance. Um, now that NHS print says that they’re recommending pregnant and lactating people with higher exposure risks to COVID consider receiving the vaccine.

So they then have also been encouraged by the large scale statistics, which is great because in general, I really respect our cog. And I think that their guidelines tend to be pretty up to date. So, I like to see that. That was cool. Yeah, that’s good. Um, and something else that’s exciting too, was that COVID vaccines were added to the LactMed website.

You know, Maureen’s favorite place to hang out on the internet. Heather’s like, Oh God, we’re reading LactMed again. I’m getting, I’m going to get to it a little bit later. Some people like to relax on TikTok. Maureen likes to relax on LactMed, no big deal. Um, but compounding on that, there are also more vaccines available now than when we had spoken about this previously and some of them have different mechanisms of action. So I’m going to visit LactMed in a little bit, and we’re going to talk about that, but before we get into that nitty gritty, I wanted to share some exciting news. Ooh news. Good news.  So, like we said, there are studies happening, right?

And pregnant and lactating people who received the vaccine have been encouraged to report not only adverse effects, but then also if they can, participate in studies so we can really have some good data about safety. Well, there also have been some studies analyzing breast milk from lactating people who received the COVID vaccines, looking for…

What do you think? Oh, antibodies for COVID! Love antibodies. So exciting, but tiny. This is tiny excitement guys. So one of the studies released a pre-print, which means it hasn’t been peer reviewed yet. Like, you know, a bunch of scientists could look at this and be like, y’all, this is bullshit. You didn’t do this right. But we’re assuming that they conducted the study well at this time. So it’s a pre-print of a really small study. In the preprint, they only included six lactating people. So again, super tiny sample size where we’re going with tiny excitement here. However, they found significantly elevated levels of SARS, CoV-2 specific IGG and IGA antibodies in the breast milk beginning at day seven after the initial vaccine dose.

And that’s great because these secretory antibodies they’re referencing are the ones that survive better in the digestive system and are better used by baby. And this does not mean that your baby is getting the vaccine or COVID. No, they’re getting the same kind of antibodies they would get if you had the flu and you were still lactating or, you know, um, uh, you brushed up against a child with a stomach virus.

Yay. Um, yeah, so it’s really exciting. So this is the first study to definitively show that maternal vaccination results in SARS CoV-2 specific immunoglobulins in breast milk. And it might be protective for infants. That’s awesome. Yay. Yay. Thank goodness. Tiny celebration, you know, and like we said, it’s a, pre-print, it’s not, you know, some study of thousands of people yet.

We’re probably not going to see that for like three years guys. Cause it takes so long to, to not only conduct a study well, but then analyze the data and get it all printed and get it peer reviewed and published, like. People who do research or just have more patience than I. Yeah, a lot of follow through. Yeah. I’m kind of like, well, we’re done. Are we done now? Oh, no. Four more years. Four more years. Your kid will be in kindergarten when we finally realized what’s going on. Yeah. That’s okay. It’s really valuable to have and I’m deeply appreciative of people who felt that the risk of taking a vaccine with, you know, potentially unknown risks where they felt like the, the benefits of that outweighed those risks.

And then they were on top of that, willing to participate in the study and give their personal health information. Yeah, that’s awesome. I do want to add on that note that I did receive two doses of the Moderna vaccine myself during this pregnancy and I will absolutely admit to lots of hesitancy and nervousness, and also, still not totally knowing if that was the right choice.

But since I did that, I’m also participating in a study. So, you know, I really, I think it’s important if you’re going to make that choice, then that you consider, you know using yourself to contribute to that data. Way to walk the walk, Maureen. Thanks. Well, there was one study. I did not, I like emailed a bunch of them.

They’re hard to find y’all like they are. And I emailed a bunch and one of them was like, Oh yeah, we’d love to have you in our study. Just like hand over your kids’ pediatric records for the next five years. And I was like, never mind. Yeah, that’s, that’s too much follow through for me. Just do what you can, right?

You don’t have to go above and beyond just do what you can in these moments. I just went with the easiest one that was like, we’re going to send you surveys every six months. And I was like, sounds great. There you go. I can do that. Surveys are good. Anyway, so Heather, can you follow me over to LactMed land?

Yes. Take me with you. Okay. Reminder, LactMed is like my favorite website in the universe and it talks about drugs and their safety and lactation. And it just has this lovely page right now about COVID vaccines. And I’m just going to do a lot of reading and summarizing from it because it really covers kind of all the updates I want to cover.

Okay. So thanks LactMed. So like I mentioned before, in December when we talked about this, we really just focused on the Pfizer/ Moderna vaccines that had just been approved in the United States and they use messenger RNA. So mRNA. Now there are a bunch of others that use totally different, totally different methods.

Yay, yay. New things to understand. So I’m going to, we’re going to talk about them and I’m going to try to understand them with you because guys, this is not our strong suit. But we’re here with you. We’re on the journey and you might be sitting there facing the decision of whether or not to use one of these.

So I just want to help get some information out there. We’re going to link this too if you’re like stop reading to me, I can read it myself. Yeah, that’s fine. Anyway, so some new vaccines, like the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the AstraZeneca vaccine, the Sputnik V, and the Cansino vaccine have all been recently made and used using, um, human and primate adenovirus vectors, which I’m going to talk about in a second. Another type of vaccine, this one is only available outside of the U.S., uses inactivated whole virus, SARS CoV-2, and that’s made by Bharat Biotech and Sinovac.

Okay. So what I’m going to do now, I’m going to give you a recap once again, of how all these work, um, including the mRNA one, cause like maybe you didn’t listen to the last episode or maybe you just forget, cause you don’t have to talk about mRNA every single freaking day of your life. And I feel like I do these days. I don’t actually care that much about mRNA guys. Today I do. Okay. So like I said in December, this vaccine works because it takes genetically engineered messenger, RNA strands, and that encode for the special spike protein that looks like the spike proteins on the Corona virus.

And it’s these microscopic nanoparticles. And it, you know, we inject this into our muscle right in your arm. And it stays in your muscle cells after the injection. And once it’s in there, the mRNA is released. Its genetic code has translated into these spike proteins. And then those proteins are processed into peptides that are displayed on the surface of your muscle cells, which is weird. And your body’s like, Hey, what is happening? What are these little spikes? And it sends an immune response. So it’s teaching your body to respond to this, the specific shape of that cell. So there isn’t really a plausible mechanism for the like intact mRNA or the functional viral spike proteins to get to your milk because it stays in those muscle cells.

And if somehow it did get then right into your bloodstream and circulate into your breast tissue and into your milk, which again, pretty impossible, but we’re, we’re going with small possibilities here so we can help you feel better. If it did get into breast milk, then it goes into baby’s digestive system where pretty much, not a lot survives. Right? Our digestive systems are great at breaking stuff down. And at that point too, because it’s just such like microscopic nanoparticles, you know, it’d be these really, really tiny things. It’s not a lot of material anyway.

For those of you who’ve gotten your injections. It’s like the tiniest little syringe, right? Not a lot guys. So. There’s your mRNA recap. Any questions, Heather? Um, no. Thank you. I’ll pass. Okay. Yeah. So we have enzymes that destroy free mRNA in our bodies, right? It doesn’t serve us any purpose to have it floating around in the body. Your body is like, screw that, destroy this. It’s great.

Okay. Now I’m going to move on to, I feel like I’m saying this wrong. Do you know if it’s adenovirus? Or adenovirus? I always say adenovirus. I feel like I’m always putting the wrong emphasis on the wrong syllable when we talk about this. So I guess I’ll go with adenovirus and, you know, I hope you’re right. I feel like there must be a couple of doctors and nurses listening who were like, damn it, Maureen said it wrong again. It’s all right. As long as you don’t say umbilicus.

Okay. Adenovirus vaccines. So, um, like I mentioned, some of the newer vaccines that have been approved since we last spoke in December, um, like the Johnson & Johnson vaccine are adenovirus vaccines. So these have been made from adenovirus vectors that have been genetically engineered so they can’t reproduce in the body. They’re also engineered to contain specific DNA sequences for dun duh, the spike protein. So once the adenovirus that has been engineered, it’s like this little special package full of DNA. Once that gets into the vaccine recipients, muscle cells, the DNA is transcribed into mRNA, right?

So it’s kind of like gives your body one extra step to do. Then that’s translated into the spike protein, et cetera, et cetera. The rest is the same. These vaccines do not require some of the special carriers that we have to have in the mRNA vaccines and have fewer unique ingredients that we could potentially then expose our babies to through breast milk.

So this one sounds better. Um, possibly. I don’t know. It’s. It’s been used before. I believe the Ebola vaccine is an adenovirus. Is it? I thought that one was mRNA. Pretty sure. No, really? No. Um, the COVID is the first successful mRNA vaccine to be used, distributed effective. Okay. Yeah.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine contains this like solubilizer polysorbate 80, which some people have concerns about. I get it. Um, it is a common food additive. It’s not expected to be harmful to a breastfed infant in the amounts present in the vaccine. Yeah. And we don’t know a ton about this one still. It’s still like a newer kind of vaccine. So, you know, we’re, we’re kind of on the same playing field as the mRNA vaccines here.

I think everybody wants to know why it makes you feel so sick though. Especially the second one. Yeah. Well, can I get there after one more? Yeah. Okay. There’s one more kind of vaccine. Um, like I mentioned before, the, let’s see what company Bharat Biotech and Sinovac has made a whole virus inactivated vaccine.

So these are kind of more like conventional vaccines. A lot of other vaccines we use are like this. So it takes a whole virus, the whole COVID virus, kills it, prepares it in a manner that’s been used for decades and various vaccines. And all of those other vaccines that use this method are considered safe while breastfeeding. Um, so essentially they grow the COVID virus in this like little cellular medium in a lab, then they completely denature it so it’s dead, not infectious. And then they use it as an ingredient in the vaccine and it creates an immune response, et cetera.

So all three of these different methods of getting the vaccine into your body. First of all, let me say, I have not heard of anyone being able to choose which one they get. It’s kind of like you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit. So it’s like, well, I hope I get the best one. And you know, I haven’t seen anything that says one is better than the other one. And I’ve pretty much heard from people on all fronts saying that either the second one has made them feel pretty bad or if they’ve had COVID before the first one makes them feel kind of crappy. But usually all those people that I’ve talked to within 36 hours, they feel all right. Yeah. So what’s up with that?

What is up with that? That’s my question. What is up with, why? Why are we feeling sick? So with any illness, pretty much all the symptoms you have are all due to your immune system. Like sometimes we have symptoms of illnesses that are literally just straight up, that bacteria or that virus, jack some stuff up. But usually it’s actually your immune system is trying to fight that bacteria or virus or foreign particle. And that’s all the stuff that you feel that really sucks.

So the whole point of, of vaccines in general is to create an immune response against something you have yet to actually encounter. So it makes sense that if your body recognizes this bacteria, virus, vaccine, foreign particle, that it’s going to react to similarly with things like fever, chills, body aches, diarrhea, diarrhea, because those are its normal processes by which to like, you know, get that stuff out of your body and fight it off.

So, and, and I think the reality is by the time we’re adults, most of us are not getting new vaccines anymore. We did that when we were little kids for a lot of people and, you know, you’re you deal with it with your kids. You’re like, Oh yeah. It’s vaccine day. You’re going to have a fever. You’re going to feel like crap. You’re going to sleep it off. But adults kind of react a little bit more violently sometimes, you know, just like we do like to the flu. Sometimes like an eight year old is totally fine with the flu and a 30 year old is like out for the count, you know? So, so really it’s just, it’s your immune response and it’s a good thing to see it. And I say with such exasperations because my second shot sucked. I hated it. I hated the response I got. I spent all night having chills and sweats and fever and it sucked, but I also knew to expect that, you know, and also, yeah, like I haven’t gotten a new vaccine since I was like 12.

I don’t remember having fevers and chills from vaccines when I was four. Right. Probably I did though. Yeah. Or who’s to say it’s not some other crud you picked up somewhere. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, that’s the reason it makes you feel so crappy and also the reason you like want to see your body doing something. Because if you have literally no reaction, then you don’t know that your immune system actually recognized that.

Yeah, I could have done without so much of that recognition because my, I mean, I had a full blown COVID case in October where I was sick for 15 days, like really sick, and my first shot put me down. I had the Pfizer and I mean, it was 36 hours of me just not feeling good. It felt like a mini dose of the same COVID that I had before. And I realized that it’s not that they gave me COVID again, it’s that they stimulated my immune response, which already recognized the COVID because I’ve had COVID. So I think that mine reacted very similarly to people’s second dose, the first time. Yeah. Which makes sense to me. I don’t have the science to back that up. But it makes sense. It does.

And, and I, I want to kind of go with that and in a lot of this, yeah. Like I want to be super clear and acknowledge. We don’t have the large scale safety data that a lot of people feel like is necessary for them to feel safe receiving these vaccines.

And, and that is the reality we’re living with right now. And whether or not you receive this as your personal choice, there is no right answer right now, especially if you are pregnant or lactating. I definitely encourage you, if you have questions, to speak to a healthcare provider that you trust, to read some research, if that makes you feel more comfortable. And as always, to take precautions against, you know, exposing yourself to COVID-19, whether or not you have had the vaccination.

And it’s not approved yet for infants or children. And so by breastfeeding, you’re actually giving them some protection without giving them the vaccine. Which is great. Yeah. You know, and, and I have encountered some people who decided to ween before getting their vaccine. Again, we don’t have data that supports that as the scientifically best choice, but if that is the best choice for you, then that is that’s okay.

I’ve also encountered people who decided to not ween because they were getting the vaccine. They were like, wow, it was going to be done, but now I’m going to breastfeed another six weeks. Again, if you feel like that’s the best choice for you, then good. You know,  I’m glad you feel comfortable with the choice that you’ve made.

Yeah. We’re definitely not telling people, Oh, you have to get it, but we’re also not going to help the fear-mongering of like, this shot kills you. It’s like, so far, it looks pretty good. And if you work in a high-risk area or, you know, you have aging parents that are not medically well, you might want to seriously consider protecting those people around you or yourself. Like maybe you’re one of those people that’s not, you know, medically stable. So, you know, follow your healthcare provider’s recommendation based on your personal risks. And always keep us posted, you know, you can always email us at MilkMinutePodcast@gmail.com and tell us your story. And, you know, we hope that you all make the choice that feels right to you. Because I mean, as midwives, we know that if you ever talk somebody into something, even if it went perfectly. It’s not worth it. They never feel good about it. And if they don’t feel good about it, it wasn’t worth it.

Yep. So, and, you know, keep listening. In two months, in six months, we might have an update that has very similar recommendations, completely different recommendations. Who knows? You know, the future is unknowable guys. But I’m excited to stay up to date on it. Yeah. And you know, like Maureen said, please, if you feel called, join a study. Yeah. Help us out because we can’t give you good data without people signing up for these things. Um, that’s how we learn. And it’s really, really difficult for us to have any kind of good evidence-based lactation information, because a lot of these bigger studies don’t want to take their risk to do it. So it’s a lot of, you know, gray area, cost benefit analysis, kind of deal.

So this is an opportunity where we can actually get some real data from volunteers and people are being called to do it. So, you know, we’re actually going to have some good data here at the end, and we’d love for you to be a part of it if you feel called. Well, thanks for joining us again, guys. I’m sure we’re all sick of hearing about COVID so we’ll try to keep it to this episode for now. Yeah. And I hope you all are sort of getting back to some semblance of normal and getting some relief from this long, long year of a pandemic. We feel you.

Let’s take a quick break to thank our sponsor, Aeroflow. Aeroflow is your one-stop shop to get the most popular breast pumps and accessories through your insurance. Yeah. So don’t let your insurance go to waste. Why don’t you let Aeroflow do all the dirty work for you? You never have to call your insurance when you use Aeroflow and they remind you when you’re eligible for free replacement parts.

Yep. So when you’re tired in your postpartum period, and you’re wondering why your pump isn’t working as well, you might get a text that says, did you know you need replacement parts? And you say, I did not know that. You push a button and boom, they show up at your door. Thanks, Aeroflow, thank you so much. Go ahead and check out the link to Aeroflow in our show notes and order your pump through them.

All right, before we let you get out of here, we got to give our award in the alcove. And this week we are giving it to one of our dearest friends and patrons, Rebecca. Yeah. So Rebecca had a baby recently and we have been talking a lot prenatally about how all she wanted was just like a boring and eventful birth. And y’all she got it. We’re giving her the Boring Birth Award, which sounds bad, but it’s great. It’s actually amazing. It’s all she ever wanted. Every time we would say, how’s it going? She’d say I’m just hoping for a boring birth.

And she is now successfully breastfeeding her baby. We talked a lot in the first couple of days postpartum, she was dealing with some pain and latch issues and using a shield and guys, she totally used the shield how you’re supposed to. She used it when she needed it and then got off of it and still has it if she needs it. It’s so great. Yup. And we got to hang out with her and see her sweet new baby. And um, if you want to be a patron of ours, you can join us at Patreon.com/MilkMinutePodcast and hang out with us monthly and, you know, get our insider tips and tricks and videos and all kinds of fun stuff we do in there.

Yeah. All right, guys. Thanks for joining us today. We’ll see you next week. Yes, we’ll see you again in one week. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Milk Minute. If you haven’t already, please like, subscribe, and review our podcast wherever you listen. If you’d like to support our podcast, you can find us on Patreon at Patreon.com/MilkMinutePodcast.

To send us feedback, personal stories, or just to chat, you can send us an email at MilkMinutePodcast@gmail.com.

patreon_logo

Get behind the scenes access and exclusive perks when you support us on Patreon!