Transcript:
*We apologize for any typos, misspellings or incorrect grammar. Our transcript is auto-generated by software that’s trying its best, just like all of us.*
Hey everybody! A big warm welcome back to the Milk Minute. We are here with new episodes, finally! We’re back! Thank you so much for hanging with us throughout our Encore episodes and giving me some time to enjoy my new baby and to figure out what life is now.
What is life? Yeah, what, what is life now? I think that’s the big question, but you know what, today we’re just going to do some updates and kind of bring in the new year, but before we get there, I want to thank a handful of patrons and just say that We are, of course, behind on thanking patrons since we just did a bunch of reruns.
So if you are a patron out there waiting for your thank you, I promise it’s coming. It just might come in one of the upcoming episodes that we are doing but it’s there. It’s going to happen because we love you. Yes, we do love you. Thank you so much. It is. It actually helped a lot. It helped to keep this podcast going because, you know, the production costs money.
And it’s really nice to have the support as I’m, you know, taking some time to enjoy my family. And we just kind of slid back in seamlessly. Thanks to you guys. And we really appreciate it. Absolutely. So today I want to thank our new patrons, Megan Lacy, Kristen Talerico-Smallwood, Taylor Saylor, Celine Varkey, and Lindsay Cruickshank.
Thank you guys so much for joining our Patreon. Truly, it is what makes this entire podcast possible. Yes, thank you again. So, I know like some of y’all out there listen to Beyond the Boob and some of y’all don’t because like maybe you’re not pregnant right now, but let’s do a quick recap of, you know, what’s happened since like October.
I had a baby in my living room. It was awesome. 10 out of 10, recommend that if it’s available to you. We had some tongue tie situations, some poor transfer issues. That led to some lower milk supply issues, which led to a week and a half of triple feeding. And we’re back! You know, I had some nipple injuries.
I’m not immune to this stuff, you guys. Just because I, I can identify it and I know how to fix it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen to me initially. So, please don’t think that we’re special over here at the Milk Minute. We, But still have the baby that we have, you know, you don’t get to choose what your baby’s mouth looks like and what they’re capable of doing energy wise.
So that’s kind of something that we worked through and we’re in a better place now. Yeah, and, and I want to just point out and commend you for making it through this far because you, this is not the first time you have had breastfeeding issues with one of your children. But I do feel like it’s the, the first time you like totally rocked it and you, you’re, you came out on the other side with like a very normal breastfeeding relationship, normal milk supply, like no long term issues here.
Yeah, I think it does help that I know what normal is supposed to look like and more than two days of abnormal and all of my red flags were going off and I was like, no. Like something’s up here, like a little bit of nipple stuff, fine. Nipples blistered and bleeding, absolutely not fine. Not wetting diapers more than six a day, like sleeping for six hours and waking up with a dry diaper, not normal, you know?
So stuff that persisted, we really were able to get on it. And also I think the biggest thing I learned was I. Do not need to be my own provider. And so I phoned a friend. I was like, yeah, Maureen, this is not normal. I know it’s not normal. Walk me through this, help me with this, tell me what to do. And she was like, well, here’s your options.
Absolutely. You don’t need to be your own provider, but you do sometimes have to be your own advocate. And I think that. You catching those issues early, like between our scheduled appointments, was a big part of your success. Advocating for extra observation and testing with your other providers, like your pediatric care providers, big part of your success.
So, definitely, like, your hard work has paid off. Thank you. And the other thing that I think really made a difference was, my husband knows a lot about lactation because he hears me. Talk to people and we’ve been doing this for years now, but when we were going through the situation with our child I Sat him down and I was like, hey just FYI the next seven to ten days are gonna be really hard and I’m gonna need you and this is what it’s gonna look like and He was down like he was in for it and that was really helpful because sometimes when you end up with a more difficult feeding plan, even though it’s temporary the partner kind of checks out because they’re like I Can’t see this happening long term or they start saying things like are you sure this is what you want to do?
Because they can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel or what it’s gonna look like on the other side So it was really helpful to sit my husband down and give a timeline I was like listen, we’re not gonna do this for more than seven days because that’s what Maureen said She’s like remember this is only a little bit of time and if it’s not working after seven days We’re getting a new plan and he that Clicked in his man brain and he was like, yes.
Okay. I’m down. Seven days. Let’s do this. Yeah. And I think that’s a really important part. And we’ve mentioned this before, but of any intervention that is like wholly disruptive of your life to talk about when, like what the end date is. And also if it’s not working by X date, what will you do differently?
Super key for sanity and just. You’re like moving forward in a way that makes any kind of sense. Right. Yeah, absolutely. And You know, I ended up kind of overshooting the mark a little bit and ending up with a little bit of an oversupply. Which is fine, because then I just down regulated over time. And I understood that that was part of it too.
And so I have a lot of people that are worried that when they’re fixing whatever issue they’re fixing, they’re afraid to cause an oversupply because they don’t want more issues. And I totally understand that. But in my situation, I was like, nope, we’re catching it early. We’re hitting it hard. And then if I end up with an oversupply, I’ll just down regulate a little bit later.
And that’s worked for me. And also a key part of your knowledge and hard work was seeing when you got to a point where you were like, okay. Any more than this amount of oversupply will be a problem. Now we’re going to back off. Right. When it got about like seven or eight ounces a day over what she was eating, when she was eating a normal amount again, cause that’s the thing you don’t know when you’re going through that.
It takes a little bit to figure out what amount is actually getting her on the right weight curve, like, you know, especially she was having some issues, even just like. It’s not like she was hungry asking for more. She just wasn’t asking for more, right? There were no feeding cues. So I was like, yeah, all right, but once she was eating normally and I knew she was transferring milk eight ounces a day over I was like, okay.
Consistently eight ounces a day over is gonna be too much for me. I’m, my freezer is filling up, I’m waking up uncomfortable, my baby’s on a healthy growth curve, it’s time to let this go a little bit. So, yay. Yeah, well at this point Marty is three months old. I know, she rolled over yesterday. Oh, it’s so fun.
And I mean, it’s wild. I’m really glad, even though I know you’re already back to work, that we did manage to carve out some like actual maternity leave from work, some maternity leave from the podcast. And now you can come back. You’ve got this three month old who’s like a whole different human than she was way back last year.
So cute. She is the cutest, most wonderful office child. People love her. I mean, if they don’t love her, they don’t tell me that. So that’s good. Well, all right. So now you are back to work. You are doing lactation consulting back full time here. What I’m wondering, and we really didn’t hit too much on this in the other podcast either.
I feel like this is our niche right here. How do you feel like your very recent lactation experience and difficulties have influenced the way that you’re talking to your patients now? Okay, so I would say the biggest thing that, the biggest takeaway for me is that prior to having a baby, when I would ask people to take me through their day, and it was, sometimes it’s hard to say like, yep, the baby ate this many times, and I pumped at this time and this time, and I would get frustrated occasionally because I’d be like, man, I just wish they knew these numbers or like, I, I kind of just wish they had a better grasp of this so I could help them better.
You know? And now when they look at me and they’re like, I pumped at four o’clock today, but I pumped at three o’clock yesterday and the day before I didn’t pump. And I’m like, yep, I get it. So what I always tell people is you have a different baby every day, But that also means, and this is my new understanding, you have different boobs every day.
Yeah. Because there are gonna be some days where you’re like weirdly full at 2 p. m. And other days where you’re not. And then you’re like, hmm, I wonder what happened and my kid’s asleep. Should I pump? Like, there’s always a weird question mark where it’s like, I don’t know, there’s some things that come up more frequently in the beginning.
So, I’m just a lot more laid back now about those random one offs that are just like, and then I randomly pumped once last week, and it’s like, okay, instead of me just being like, oh, tell me more about that. I’m just like, alright, sounds good, and I just kind of like let it You know, it’s not part of the plan.
So there’s just a lot less, a lot less concern about one offs and numbers and schedules because I’m now realizing that although we have to shoot four A particular direction, my OCD and perfection does not have to have everything line up because it’s just not going to be that way. Yeah, and it is really easy to like lean harder into the numbers when your most recent experience is only clinical and you’re just like following the chart over and over and over and you’re asking the same questions and you know, it’s great to have those reminders, whether they come in the form of your own baby or like a very special patient or whatever it is that there that there are other ways to be assessing the situation and other conclusions you can come to and all of that.
So yeah. And then also, it’s just very clear in my mind how difficult triple feeding is, and doing it, doing it for 10 days was plenty for me. Just plenty. Too much. It’s too much for anyone. And so I knew that before, but I guess I’m just, I empathize now because especially when people don’t have a supportive partner or they’re very isolated and don’t have friends that can come over and help them do other things, that’s literally all you’re doing.
And if. Your life just like crumbles around you. Laundry, dishes, everything. It’s like nothing but feeding and it’s, it’s scary. I cried, you know, I, I cried. Oh yeah, of course you did. No, truly, like it’s really not a recommendation I make lightly and having like questions about a support system typically precede my recommendation for triple feeding because it’s, It’s simply not doable if it’s just you.
Yeah, or you have to work in smaller chunks. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so I guess, you know, I, I like to think that I was empathetic before, but now I feel it deeply. To the point where I’m like, am I feeling this? Too deeply? You know, That’s okay too. It’ll that’ll all even out. I find myself telling myself in my head, like, Don’t bring up your baby.
Don’t bring up your baby. This is not your visit. This is their visit. Well, and that’s always a hard balance when. In like lactation and midwifery fields, you know, where, especially in these private practices, like, part of what makes it appealing to people is us being personable and being very intimate with them in a way that, you know, hospital providers aren’t.
However, it’s like, is it useful and necessary to bring anecdotes in? Like, does that serve the person I’m working with? Even though, of course, like most of them do want to know about us and our kids and our families, it’s like, well, this is also the time they’re paying me to talk about them. Right. That’s true.
And then also, like, what don’t I care about? You know, like, how much shit can we just let go of? Because now that I’m currently breastfeeding, there’s just a lot of stuff I don’t care to fix. Like, her latch is a little shallow, but she transfers well and it doesn’t hurt me, so I don’t care anymore. And just giving people permission more to be like, no, really, don’t give a shit about this.
It’s fine. Ha ha ha. Yeah, absolutely. It’s, it’s really good to have those perspective shifts again where you’re like, Oh, yeah, all those little things don’t matter. Even though I have a checklist for that on my chart, we can just skip that. Right, exactly. It’s, it’s been a really nice refreshing reminder because I hadn’t breastfed in five years.
And a lot changes in five years, and I’m different than I was five years ago. And I swear the patients are different than they were five years ago. You know, sure, because their, their lives are different. Their jobs are different. The practice standards that their other providers are following are different.
Like the equipment’s different. The pumps are different. The equipment is different. It’s just all a brand new game. So. You know, I have people come in now and they’re just like, okay, so should I worry about this? And I’m like, dude, I don’t, I’m not going to worry about anything. I just want you to be happy.
Like if it’s bothering you, let’s fix it. If it’s not, then good job. See ya. Yeah. Often I like to ask what made you worried about that at first? Because my follow-up question is often, if you hadn’t read that online, where would you be worried? Yeah. I don’t know. And not, not to say that it’s bad to be Googling or to be doing your own reading on health conditions and on what’s going on with your kids, like you absolutely can and possibly should be doing that, but there’s just such an unfiltered mix of information coming at us from all angles all the time, you know, where Like sometimes we have patients come in and we’re like, holy cow, you caught that really small, very important thing for your kid’s health condition.
Good job catching it with all your reading. And sometimes it’s like, oh my God, I’m so sorry that TikTok and Facebook and your friends all made you think that this was a problem because it’s not. Yeah, it was a problem for that person, but it’s not a problem for you. Yeah. So I guess. That’s just kind of where I’m, where I’m at right now.
It’s been nice also to, to be able to bring Marty into the appointments sometimes and show them. Like, this is what her latch looks like, and I’m telling you, it does not look like the picture on Google. So, do you think that she looks happy? Yes, you know, so I brought her into a prenatal the other day, and I was like, here, hold her.
I was like, this is, here’s the different positions and what it feels like to hold a baby. This is a baby. This is a baby. Yeah, so, and Marty loves it. She’s just like. Whee! So that’s been fun and it’s a precious time because she’s changing so fast, like I can’t keep up with all the, the changes. I mean, I walked out of my office just a little bit ago and Julie had been watching her and she was like, she started giggling and I was like, what?
I missed it. Yeah. But you know what? You won’t miss the next one. It’s fine. Oh, the next giggle. We’re not having another baby. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We’re all good with that. Yeah, yeah. How’s your what kind of headway you’re making on that situation? He’s, he just keeps saying, I just need to call. And I don’t know what that means.
Like you call them and they snip it or You sure do need to call. Yeah. Don’t worry. I’m, I’m not having sex right now. I just can’t, I don’t need to. Yeah. That’s fine. That’s good. It’s not what I need right now. And maybe it’s what he needs. He knows how to get it. He can get it. He knows the path. I don’t care where he gets it.
I’m so tired. No, no. The path to that is clear. It involves, like, two doctor’s appointments and you know. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So yeah. Priorities are different nowadays. I’m fine with it. Yeah. I don’t feel guilty. It’s good. Well, I’m so proud of you for this whole experience. Like, I feel like you were just really giving yourself what you deserved in this pregnancy and postpartum and all of that.
You know, you’ve always been proactive about your health and, you know, making the right choices. But I feel like this is one of the first times that I saw you, like, prioritize. The kind of care you deserved and really wanted and like saw you create that experience for yourself with your birth and your postpartum.
Hey, thank you. You know, and one thing I just, I want to say, I don’t take for granted that I was able to curate that team because I mean, it’s taken me this long doing birth work to meet the right people, to have those relationships, and know who to call for what. So if you’re out there pregnant with your first baby, and you’re like, how do I get that team?
The answer is a lot of communication. So it’s not just gonna fall in your lap. I, me, being who I am, I still had to go out and Curate it. It’s not like a ready-made package deal that you go buy at the store. I wish it was, but it’s just not. So if you’re pregnant, start thinking now about like who you can line up for birth, who you can line up for, you know, pregnancy massage, who you can line up for pelvic floor stuff, you know, just you deserve it.
You really do. Absolutely, yeah, and if you don’t know all those people, somebody else does. Right. There’s somebody in your community who has their finger on every single resource, so just find that person. Yeah, find the person like me or Maureen, who like, has already cultivated those relationships and just be like, what’s the recipe for success here?
Wow. I mean, honestly, I have a lot of consultation calls with people who are like, I don’t want a home birth, but I just need like your advice and everything else. And I’m like, yeah, no problem. Like here’s the providers I recommend. Here’s the person to see for your chiropractor. Here’s the person to see for massages.
Like start writing it down. Yeah, exactly. And happy to do it because that’s why we do what we do. We want you to have a good experience. And now that I have had that good experience, there is not. One part of me that feels like anyone should have less. So, you know, like, I loved it before. But now that I’ve actually been able to achieve getting the kind of birth that I want, and postpartum that I want, not without hiccups, of course.
It wasn’t perfect, but it kind of was because I was able to fix it. You know, that’s, life isn’t perfect. We just need to have the tools and resources to fix it. So now I desperately want that for everybody. I love it so much. It’s so empowering. I hate that word. I know it’s so overused, but This is, this is one of those times where it’s like, yeah, I did that.
Like, I frickin had a baby in my living room and it wasn’t even that hard. Can I say that? Yes, you can say that. I know that a lot of the time because of the plethora of birth trauma and negative experiences, a lot of folks feel guilty for talking about good experiences, which is a very empathetic thing, and it’s okay.
But it’s also okay to move past that and to say like, yes, I did have a good experience and I loved it or, you know, I had a normal experience. I had an uncomplicated one. And, and that’s an essential part of changing. How we experience birth and moving forward is making sure that those positive narratives do exist and that we do, you know, have an accurate representation of how often that happens and who that happens to and all of that.
Yeah, I mean, and it was so clear to me this past week. I had a patient say, I had a great birth. I did really well without pain medication up until I was eight centimeters. I think she said. And then they. Asked to do a cervical exam, I said yes, and after the cervical exam, that pain was crazy, so she got the epidural after the cervical exam because of that.
And she said, so, she asked me about my cervical exams, and she was like, how long did it take you to get to 10 centimeters? And I was like, well I don’t really know, because I don’t recall having a cervical exam, and I said, I said, to be honest with you, I don’t think she could have caught me and held me down to do one.
At the time, I was kind of running around the house with my pants off, just And she said, Oh, you had a, you had a whole labor with no cervical checks. And I was like, as it turns out, I did. Yeah, we did some in the very beginning for you when we were kind of trying to assess, like, is it early labor or not?
But once the train gets rolling, you don’t usually have to do much else. Yeah. So I started thinking and you could tell both of us were looking at each other, just thinking about how her experience could have been different. If she was doing so well without the pain medication and they just, like, didn’t do a cervical exam for no reason, like, she was at the hard part.
That’s what I wanted to tell her. I didn’t say this, but like, girl, that was the hardest part. Like you were, once you start pushing, it feels good. It feels better. So I think she said, well, next time I would totally try it again. And I said, listen, dude, like if you got to eight. You can go all the way. That’s the hard part.
Absolutely. Yeah, like I, I, it really is an essential part of, you know, changing the system. Which is kind of this whole podcast, right? Changing the system is really highlighting what works. Right? Is making sure that we, yes, focus on the problems, absolutely, and fixing those, but in order to do that, we have to find where people are having these empowering birth experiences, these normal experiences, uncomplicated.
We have to look at those too. Yeah, and I just want to say for the record, she loved her epidural that she got, this patient, because she was able to, she took a nap, she woke up, 10 centimeters, and pushed out her baby, and it was totally fine, and she was a first time mom, so like, she probably needed that nap, you know, so, she felt empowered in her experience, but what I’m saying is, she was considering for her next one, like, I bet I could do that.
You know, and so seeing her be empowered in this birth is already casting forward another good one later. Absolutely. Well, I’m just so glad we’re back. I’m so glad that your baby’s here safe and sound and that she’s growing into just like a hilarious little double chin cherub. Oh my gosh, her head is so sweet and soft and downy.
She’s got goopy eyes, but other than that, she’s just delicious. I mean, she’s so wonderful. But yeah, so we have a lot of exciting episodes coming up for you. So we haven’t actually taken time off. Let’s just be clear. During those reruns, we took it a little bit slower and recorded some interviews for the upcoming months and took a little bit of a brain break, though we didn’t do a lot of the, like, our own original content, you know,
Yeah, it did not feel slow to me, but that’s for obvious reasons. Well, we got other stuff to be doing. Yeah, so stay tuned for some really cool interviews that we have coming up, and then we have even more content coming on the heels of that, so. If you want more information about my birth and postpartum, all of those details are broken down week by week in Beyond the Boob, and we’re just now wrapping that up.
I think we only have a couple more weeks to go on that, right? Yeah, yeah, we’re very close to being done because we are going to end that I mean, maybe like this week or next week. It’s really soon. We’re going to be done with that. We’re, we’re kind of creating a time capsule with that podcast where it has a very definitive start and end.
And, you know, we’re going to let it That’s right. Gosh, it’s crazy to be, it feels crazy. Does it feel crazy to you? We’ve been doing this three and a half years. We’ve had two babies. Yeah. And a baby podcast. A baby podcast and two businesses. Like I’m proud of us. I’m tired. I am too. But you know what? I have to say it feels really good to be letting Beyond the Boob go soon.
Like, I love it. I’m so enthralled by that project. I’m really proud of what we’ve created. And I’m ready to be done with it. Me too. I mean, gosh, that feels like giving birth. It really does. It’s like we pushed it out at 12 weeks. So and that podcast a little bit behind real time as it’s always been, but yeah, it’s.
It really has been like having a very interestingly interesting baby. I’m not sure what species that is. And now it’s just going to go live its own life. Yeah. I mean, God, how long will the internet last? I guess it’ll just be there.
Oh, well, I hope it helps you guys at least to not feel crazy as you’re going through the process of. Creating life and bringing it into this universe. And we really appreciate you being along the ride with us and just giving us some space to figure out who we are as practitioners, as podcasters, as women, people, moms.
I mean, we’ve changed a lot too, I think. We, we really have, and I hope we’ll keep changing. Me too. Let’s never be done. All right, friends. Well we will see you next week with just all new, super exciting episodes. I really can’t wait to share with you some of the guests we have because like, they’re so exciting.
Yeah. And I’m going to go ahead and give the award in the alcove today to Abigail and Julie and Meredith, who, who work at my office and they are raising this baby with me. Because there is no way we could run a healthcare practice and raise this child fully breastfed without all of these aunties around.
So there’s always someone holding the baby, there is always someone working on tummy time, they’re doing interactive play, they are smiling, they are, I mean, it is, I feel so blessed, truly, and I don’t say that lightly, or maybe even ever. But I truly feel so blessed to have these women in my life and in Marty’s life.
So I’m going to give them the award for raising this baby that’s not theirs. The Sister Wives Award is that we’re going to go with? The Sister Wives Award, the Auntie Supreme Award. Something like that, yeah. All of it. I’m super thankful that you have the community you need to thrive right now. Maybe we’ll call them the Red Carpet Aunties.
Love it. All right, well, thank you so much for listening to our first episode back on the Milk Minute. Yes, the way we change this big system that is not set up for lactating families is by educating ourselves, our loved ones, and sometimes our providers. And if you want to hear our episodes early, ad free, and you want to get all of the beyond the boob episodes, you should join our Patreon at Patreon.com/MilkMinutePodcast. All right, love y’all.
