Breastfeeding Essentials with Diana West

Welcome to Mama Goddess. I'm your host, Alexandra J. Johnson. This podcast is all about rocking your goddess life, creating vibrant health and celebrating motherhood and family life. It's about living an authentically awesome life. Let's have. Hello and welcome. I'm Alexandra J. Johnson and today's guest is Diana West. Diana is an international certified Lactation Consultant, co author of the eighth edition of Le Leche League's International's the Womanly Art of Breastfeeding. She is also the co author of the Breastfeeding Mother's Guide to Making More Milk and Breastfeeding After Breast and Nipple Procedures and the author of Clinicians Breastfeeding Triage Tool and Defining youg Own Breastfeeding After Breast Reduction Surgery. She is the Media director for La Leche League International and has a bachelor's degree in Psychology and is a La Leche League leader. Welcome Diana.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you for being here. Very excited about talking about all of your goodness and breastfeeding and it's such.

An important topic, breasts. It sure is. Absolutely.

So I'd love to start off with. Yeah, I'd just love to dive into a little bit more about the La Veche League organization, just your role in that. So women have that for a resource and why it's so great.

Absolutely. I'll even start with my own story about how I got into it because that kind of gives a little context for where I'm coming from, but also helps your listeners understanding a little bit about how moms are helped by the organization and how they can turn around and pay it forward. So I started, I started out as a mom who had breast reduction surgery. I was just really skinny and I had gigantic breasts and I couldn't fit into anything. I found out that at that time my insurance, back in the heyday of good insurance companies would actually pay for my reduction surgery. Just totally. I didn't have a single penny out of pocket. So for me it was kind of a no brainer. I really wanted to be more comfortable in my body, not feel like everybody was always looking at my breasts. It just seemed like something I had do. So I did. I had the surgery and it went great and I was really thrilled with it. But I was young, I didn't have any idea really about implications. I remember when I met with my surgeon, he said to me, so do you know you're not going to be able to breastfeed? I said, well what does it matter? There's plenty of formula in the world because, you know, I Didn't know any better. That's what everybody always thinks, that if you don't have milk, there's formula. And that was something that has come to haunt me since, because I really now understand a whole lot more about breastfeeding. But at the time, that was where my brain was. So had the surgery, then met the guy that I wanted to have a family with, and we got married and had kids and the first child I was pregnant. And I just kept reading all these books and they would have a chapter about breastfeeding and I would just completely ignore it. Skip that chapter. Not going to do it. It's not possible. The doctor said it that I would never be able to breastfeed. I didn't even begin to learn anything about it until I picked up a book by Dr. Sears. And that book told me so much about being pregnant, but it also wove in a lot of information about breastfeeding. There was no way to escape it because he made it really sort of a continuum. Breastfeeding is what you normally do when you have a baby. So I kind of picked up stuff even though I didn't want to. And my baby was. And oh my gosh, here I was, not planning to breastfeed at all. Had a highly medicalized birth. Three hours of pushing with an epidural all the way through. And yet when that baby was born, something came over me. And I remember just tearing down the snaps of my hospital gown and just saying, bring him to me. I need to have him at my breast. Wow, that I did. And he latched on and it was great. But then they took him away to the nursery to clean him up and told me to go to my room and give us some sleep and rest after this hard labor. And I remember lying there just thinking, I want my baby. My husband had crashed. He totally fallen asleep. And I just wanted my baby. So I went down to the nursery. I actually shuffling along, you know, I just gave birth. But I was so pulled to my baby. I needed my baby on a really visceral level. And I got there and they said, oh, thank goodness you're here. He's been screaming for you. I took him and I sat there. They had a little rocking chair and I sat and I nursed him. At that moment, I think I realized I might just give this thing a shot. So I nursed him. As it turned out, I didn't have quite enough milk and I ended up having to supplement. And going down the whole supplementation route, I learned all about doing at breath supplementation. But also learned about bottles. He became severely nipple confused because we used the worst bottles. Nobody knew anything about how to get bottles back in the early 90s, as it turned out, he didn't want the breastfeed after three months, and I didn't know how to get him back. But I did know he still needed my milk. So I pumped exclusively for 14 months. During that period of time, it was actually about six months in, I discovered the Lechi League. I heard about them early on, and actually when I first realized I might be doing this breastfeeding thing, I sent my husband to the library to get me any books he could on breastfeeding. And he came back with the Womanly Art of Breastfeeding. Which is kind of ironic that I ended up being one of these future authors of it. But that work is what gave me so much information about how to do it, how to get things on the right start, and really just listening to my heart about what felt right. But I'd always heard that La Leche League was a group of really radical women. And don't go near them because they'll force you to breastfeed. So I didn't part of that. But then I was having problems, and a friend of mine said, wait a minute, I know Lecheli. They're not like that. They're really nice. They might be helpful. So I kind of nervously went to a meeting, and here I am with my baby, who will not latch. I'm feeding him bottles of pumped milk and formula in the meeting. And I was. I mean, you can imagine. I was just petrified that I'd be totally judged. But what I got was everybody surrounding me afterwards telling me what an amazing heroin I was. It was the most incredible thing. It blew me away. And they were just incredibly supportive. What they saw was the value of. I was fighting tooth and nail to give him every bit of my milk that I could. I had a baby who wouldn't latch, and I didn't have a full milk supply, but I was still lactating for them. They really saw that. That kept me involved in the group, and I became a group mom and helped other moms. And then I ended up having a second and third baby. I did exclusively nurse the second and third. I even had full milk supply, miraculously. Totally. I'll never know why. I just got really lucky during that period of time. I decided I wanted to become a Lola Chittic leader, which is a volunteer mother who breastfed her own kids, who helps other people. And that's what Laleche League is so La Leche League is an organization started in 1956 of mothers helping mothers. It's really just as simple as that. It's mothers who breastfed their own kids, who share the wisdom that they've learned themselves, but who also have the resources of a larger organization with lots of evidence based information to share for more complicated cases. So they're not like patient consultants. They're not meant to come in and solve the really complex situations. They're meant to help moms through the normal course of breastfeeding. So when there's little hiccups in the road, this is a person you call who just kind of helps you get over the bump in the road. When you have a huge train wreck problem, then you go see someone who's more specialized, like a lactation consultant. But Valencia League has really blossomed. It's in all, just about every continent, every country in the world, people being helped in every language. And it's truly a mother to mother organization with focus on breastfeeding with your heart and soul as a way to just really develop a true connection with your baby. And I think that's probably the thing that has drawn me to it and kept me involved all these years. A long winded answer.

That is fantastic. That was awesome. It's also free, right? I mean, I know I went to a free meeting, so it's like everything is free.

The organization has, throughout its history, always struggled with funding because it doesn't charge for anyone to come to meetings. There's the option of purchasing a membership. They're always doing fundraising drives. But really it's not something that anyone ever needs to feel compelled to pay anything for. It's not meant to be about money. It's meant to be about helping mothers breastfeed. So if one can't get to a meeting, there's always the womanly order. Breastfeeding, which is the book that the seven founding mothers started back in 1950s and it's been rewritten eight times. And most recently we actually threw out everything and started from scratch because it kind of got old fashioned. And we brought it into the new millennium and put in all sorts of new challenges and new answers and really try to make it reach the moms of today.

Yeah, it's great. I loved it. Thank you for writing it, for redoing it for the modern woman. So I'm curious on what, because you were very much into the formula and then you read Sears and then realized breastfeeding. Why is breastfeeding so important for women to do for their babies and why is it so important for their babies?

I love how you phrased that. You said, why is it important? You didn't say why is it better? When you say it's better, you're just accepting that formula feeding is the norm. And I love that perspective that you brought to it. Why is it important? There's so many answers. It's kind of hard to know where to start. But I'm going to start from the place that I found it to be most important for me. And I think for a lot of moms, it's really that we know, everybody knows intellectually that the milk is great. The milk is so much. It has so much more than formula does. So that's good. It has anti infective properties. It has living cells that are anti inflammatory, that kill viruses, that kill bacteria. It establishes a normal gut environment with the bacteria in the gut, in the intestines, because that turns out to be critically important for the immune system. Most of our immune function is actually in the gut. When our intestines have the right mix of good and bad bacteria, we have a much, much stronger immune system. That's one of the main things. None of that was in my mind as a new mom, there's so many other things I could say. None of that was in my mind. What was in my mind is I want my baby to get food. So there's that. But also, as soon as I had a non painful latch, I had a pleasurable latch. I realized, wow, this is kind of cool. This is a really beautiful way to connect with my baby on a level that no bottle can do. And I'm sitting there, I'm holding, holding my baby, I'm nursing, I'm feeling the milk flowing from my body into his body. I can't even describe that. It's just once you experience it, it's something that really is kind of hard to articulate to another mother who hasn't experienced it. But it's also something that you realize breastfeeding is much more than about the milk. It's even more than the bonding. It's a way of mothering. And it really turned out for me, I'm a little bit of a lazy mom. I mean, it turned out to me to be a way to learn how to be a mom without having to read books and take classes. It taught me how to be a mom. My baby's upset, My baby's crying for any reason. It could be a diaper problem. But I picked my baby up and I put my Baby to breast. If that doesn't solve it, then I look further. It's a lazy way of mothering. But your baby's not crying, your baby's happy, your baby learns that the needs are immediately met. I can tell you that, you know, every situation is different, every family is different. I would never make this as a universal claim, but I know a lot of women who breastfed and have older kids. And I will say that I've really observed, and I'm observing this in my own kids who are now teenagers, the kids who grow up with that deep connection early on. And it doesn't have to only be through breastfeeding. It's just that breastfeeding makes it a lot more automatic and easier. That connection really translates into kids who have higher emotional depth, emotional eq, emotional quotient. They have just a sense of kindness and empathy that a lot of times kids who don't have that deep connection don't get as easily. And I have to tell you, I'm really enjoying the teen years. We certainly have nothing perfect, but my kids are so sweet and so nice. And I really think that a, a lot of that does come from those early, early years of just deep connection that I was able to do through breastfeeding. That's so great answer.

I love it. It's so great. You're such a great storyteller too. So I love the connection to like starting that early and then there's like a bond with your child and your child trusts you, right?

I mean, it just, it is, absolutely. And there's. You're building that trust, you're building that, that connectedness and that's something that just doesn't go away. You can't undo it. You really can't. But I do want to say the flip side. I'm sure there's some listeners listening right now who are saying, oh yeah, that's nice and rosy, but that's not the way it happened for me because I had a lot of pain or I had this happen or I had that happen. I really want to be realistic here. I mean, there are, and this is funny, I'm a board certified lactation, so I have a really busy practice in New Jersey and I work with moms who have really difficult problems. It happens a lot. There's a lot of reasons that it happens that we don't necessarily need to go into. But the realistic scenario is that everybody knows somebody who had problems breastfeeding because it doesn't always go easily because there's so many things set up in this world to go against it, including people who just don't even know how to help moms when they have troubles. So it's not rosy and glowy for everyone. And my first situation wasn't necessarily rosy and glowy. I didn't have pain, but I had other problems. So it's something that until you get to the point of knowing the joyful breastfeeding, when it's really just not painful and easy and pleasurable and fun, then you really can't feel what I've been talking about. So I guess I want to be realistic for some people that it's not always like that, but it can get that way if you have right help.

So you think that because there's obviously, which I definitely want to get into the low milk supply and then there's this challenge with latching. But is there once you are educated and you maybe work with somebody like you or another lactation consultant or someone, can you kind of help that in that there's usually not that many challenges that you can't work through breastfeeding wise?

Well, there's a lot of complexities to the question that you asked. So let me just put it this way. Anytime that you have any kind of physical problem, there are specialists out there who can help you. Is that specialist the person who is the best at helping you in your backyard? Sometimes yes, sometimes not. But usually there's somebody who can at least take you one step further than you are now. Mother to mother support is the first place to start league or other mother to mother breastfeeding support group. Because other mothers first of all will empathize and say, oh yeah, that really, really is awful and it shouldn't be that tough. And then they might know the resources in the area to point you to because especially the low lecture leaders, they'll know who are the better lactation consultants. There's a lot of people who are better. Just like any discipline, there's people who are better than not and they'll point you to the good resources. Also keep in mind that anybody can call themselves a lactation consultant. There's no law that says that they can't. There's laws that say that you can't call yourself a doctor unless you really are one. But there's no law against being a lactation consultant. What you're looking for is someone who has board certification in the ibclc, that's International Board certified Lactation Consultant certificate. And that's the person who generally will have the highest level of training and expertise to be able to help you through problems. So if anybody is looking for an idclc, the easiest way to find one is to go to the ilcailca.org website. There's a listing there of lactation consultants throughout the world. You can look it up by your zip code or country for oled. You can find a local leader in your area by going to L or. And you can find again, local by years of code in the US or anywhere in the world. If I can just back to your question about can we fix everything. There's so many variables here when we're talking about breastfeeding, because it's the only system in the human body that is really made up of the dyad. You have the mother and you have the baby, and there could be problems going on on the mother's side. There could be problems with going on on the baby side. And sometimes it takes a lot of detective work to uncover the layers to figure out what's going on. And sometimes it's both sides. And there's also a lot of variables when it comes to personalities. Some babies are willing to try more and do more than others. Sometimes we have other physical problems that really get in the way, like reflux and things like that. Sometimes there's moms who just, you know, they're only willing to do so much because they've got older kids or they've got a situations. So can we fix everything? No, not really. That wouldn't be realistic to say. But what we can do is generally figure out what's going on. That's what my consultation process is about. We try to uncover what's going on, find out the underlying problem, make a treatment plan to get you from one point to the next so we can really address what the underlying problem is and make it better. And then we just keep working together until we get to the point where the mom's goals have been met. And that's an important point too. It's really about the mom's goals. Her goal very well may be just that she wants to breastfeed for another week and then she's done. And my goal is to honor that. It's never about my agenda, it's about hers. And that's how most lactation consultants and the lecture week leaders work. It's not about pushing anybody to do anything. It's just about helping the mom reach what she wants to do. And that's a really important thing to understand.

And then also educating mothers as well, because I would imagine like, like you said in Your story too. There's something like, I'm just going to do formula, I'm going to do formula, I'm going to do formula, and that's what I want to do. But then you get this whole level of education, right?

And then I don't think there's any lactation consultants or really anybody who's a breastfeeding advocate who comes in and just hammers into them. This is what you need to know. Here's why it's so much better. Because that's not really going to make anybody do anything differently. Sometimes what helps is the kind of education where people have misunderstandings. For instance, the person who keeps waiting for her breasts to fill up before she feeds. And then she finds over time that she has less and less milk because she doesn't understand that the more empty the breast is, the faster the milk is made. But when the breast is kept full, it slows down milk production. So sometimes the kind of education we do is just helping moms to understand basic principles, but not really too big about beating people over the head about, here's why it's so much better for your baby. I think most people really know. They know it's better. And really it's just a matter of understanding what can we do to get where we are. It's not selling people on the value. That's almost never an issue. It's much, much more about helping people figure out how to get over the problems. Most people are more motivated than they're able to make it work.

Right. Well, then I just, I was just talking to a friend the other day and she was saying that her friend gave birth and then the doctor gave her home like a package of formula or something. Like it was like a go home package with formula.

Yeah. Okay, well, I didn't know that.

I'm just saying, how do we navigate this? You give birth in a hospital and then you're like, wow, I have a whole formula.

The first place to understand the navigation is that it has been well known through extensive research and practical understanding that when a health care professional gives a sample of any product to a consumer, to a patient, it makes that patient more likely to use that product. It could be a sample of toothpaste that your dentist gives you, or it could be formula. It has also been known that formula samples in particular are likely to make people stop breastfeeding and go to formula feeding. So why is it that formula companies give out those samples? They don't do it out of the goodness of. They do it because it's very cost effective for them. Doctors and healthcare givers, they're not trying to undermine breastfeeding most of the time. They're trying to keep the baby fed and they're trying to do a good thing by giving something free. But what they don't realize is that they are in many cases jeopardizing breastfeeding when mothers really, truly intend to breastfeed, that taking home that formula sample is something that's sitting on their shelves that they then either feel compelled to use because they don't want it to go to waste, or they reach for when they're in doubt, which may not be an appropriate time to supplement, but they're just not sure what's going on. So that is something that's been well known. So well known that in 1990s, the World Health Organization, a major health organization throughout the world called the World Health Organization who came up with a policy statement that they call the International Code of marketing of breast milk substitutes, meaning formula. And what they were talking about is not that formula shouldn't be available, but how it was marketed. And one of the specific things that they addressed was doctors and healthcare professionals giving out samples. Those bags that you get in the hospital filled with formula, all of that is meant to turn you into a form formula consumer. It's very, very cost effective, extremely clever marketing. But it's also prohibited by the World Health Organization's biology statement. Now, the way that the World Health Organization's code, as we call it capital C, is implemented, is that certain? It was recommended in the code that countries make the code part of their law. And many, many, many countries around the world, world have signed up for it, have pledged to abide by it, and also have made it part of law. The US has never done that and they have never done that. Many people think because we have a strong formula lobby in this country, so we are not pledged to it and we are not, it is not part of our law. However, there are many healthcare professionals who do feel very strongly about abiding by the WHO code. And that includes ibclcs, and it includes doctors and many doctors and many nurses and other disciplines. So a doctor who does not abide by it maybe isn't aware of how he's undermining breastfeeding. And this is something that a mother could let him know about. And that's actually a really effective way to clue him in. And I do see, I'll see a lactation consultant coming over and beating him over the head with it. Probably wouldn't be Nearly as effective as a mother saying, you know what you did really undermined my efforts to breastfeed. And it's also prohibited by the World Health Organization and sharing with them that information.

Wow. Very cool.

That's awesome. Very cool.

I love that too, of like empowering us as women to know our choices and know and being able to communicate with our doctors and feedback.

You know, I think a lot of times doctors, doctors don't know what the ramifications are of their recommendations. And when we come back to them and say, you know, when you recommended this to me, this is what happened. I've actually started doing that with my own doctors and I've been shocked at how open they are to hearing it sometimes. Really, really surprised. I had one doctor change his whole practice of the way he did a certain thing based on my feedback, which I had no idea I had that much power. I think they really do care. I think they really do want to do best practices. They're trying to do the right thing in most cases. They just don't know. That's where moms can really, really make a huge, huge difference. That's what we moms have been doing in breastfeeding for a long time. Many, many, many of the changes that have come about in the world about breastfeeding, around the topic of breastfeeding are from a single mom making a stand and making a stand difference. So never feel that you're too small, you're too alone. A single voice carries a tremendous amount of weight because a mom is much more powerful when she gives birth than she ever was before she had kids.

Beautiful.

That's awesome.

So I'm curious on the actual process of breastfeeding. I was also having conversation and I might be the only one, but I don't think that I am with one of my girlfriends and we were like, how does it even work? How does it create the milk and how does it come out of the milk? How does the whole thing work?

I don't want to bore you with a whole bunch of technical stuff. I'll see if I can boil it down for you. Yeah, yeah. The components that make up milk actually come from our blood. Our blood comes in contact with cells called leukocytes. And so inside a larger cell called the alveoli inside the breast, and these are the milk making glands. Those cells come in contact with the blood, take out the elements from the blood that they need. That's why when you take a drug sometimes small, they're usually very small portions of it that can pass into Your milk. And that's how it happens. So then those cells, leukocytes turn it into milk. And then the milk at those at the alveoli level that looks like little grapes, and they have little tiny muscles around them that squeeze when they get filled, that squeezes the milk through the ducts, which also have muscles. And when we have a milk ejection that squeezes it out and propels it very forcefully into the baby's mouth. Most of the milk that a baby gets, they get during our milk ejections. And some women feel that as a sensation inside the breast. Some people feel it as a strong feeling of thirst. Not everybody feels it, but usually what you see is your baby starts gulping, or if you're pumping, your milk starts spraying really fast. And that's when you're getting that really good milk ejection. As I said before about the rate of milk production, the faster the milk is made, the rate of milk production is in direct proportion to how full the breast is. So the more full the breast is, the slower the milk is made. When the breast is more empty, the faster the milk is made. So keeping your breast more empty, feeding your baby more frequently, actually increases the rate of milk production. But milk is always being made. So it's absolutely impossible to have an empty breast. So if your baby is nursing, nursing, nursing, late afternoon, early evening, it's a typical time for this to happen. All your accumulated stores during the day are pretty much tapped out. So your breast is making milk at its highest rate because you're most empty, but you don't have any backed up milk. Your baby is nursing, it's getting that full tap force, but it's not as strong a milk ejection because you don't have pressure in the breast because there's not backed up milk. Does that make sense?

Yeah, totally not making enough milk. How do you know if you're not making enough milk?

Excellent question. This is a really, really important point because there's a lot of women who. Well, the number one reason for giving up breastfeeding is the perception that you don't have enough milk, which sometimes is real and sometimes not. Some people think that they don't have enough milk because in the early evening, the baby cries and buzzes a lot. And that may or usually is not case that you don't have enough milk. You may not have huge backed up milk stored in the breast, but you're making milk at full tap and your supply is fine. But there's other things that babies can do. They can Cry, they can be gassy, they can be fussy. A lot of things like that will lead a mom to think she doesn't have enough milk. But none of that really, truly indicates that she doesn't. The only thing that truly, truly shows that a mother does not have enough milk is a baby who does not gain adequately. A baby. After the first three to four days, a baby should start gaining at the rate of one ounce per day. That's 30 grams per day for the first four weeks or so. At that point, really, we should basically see a baby begin to plump up, look nice and healthy, kind of growing out of his newborn diapers. For most babies, they're stooling a lot. Most babies who are gaining well will stool at least three stools bigger than a quarter. If you're not seeing that in the first four weeks, it's a sign that maybe there might be something to look into. But weight is definitive. Now, having said that, we a lot of times as lactation consultants have moms told to supplement when it turns out that the way the baby was weighed was actually a mistake and there wasn't as big a loss as they thought. Either they didn't weigh the baby naked or they just wrote down the numbers wrong, or any number of things can happen. So we always kind of want to double check, too. One thing that a lactation consultant can do during a consultation in a mother's home or at a clinic is to actually weigh the baby before and after feeding so we see how much milk transfers. That gives us a snapshot so we know how much milk the baby's getting on average. Sometimes we don't get great feedings during that time, but we kind of have a feel for what's going on. But really keeping in mind that weight is your most reliable indicator. And if you average it over a number of days, it's even more reliable than looking at just one single day's gain. In general, it most babies will do just fine once they've begun gaining weight. They'll generally keep it up. But if you're in doubt, it's really, really worth talking to a lactation consultant before you jump into supplementation. Supplementation with formula is entirely appropriate if the baby's not gaining well, the first thing we've got to make sure is the baby's getting enough food. But feeding a baby formula when he doesn't really need it is the fastest way to really undermine breastfeeding, and things can go downhill pretty fast.

Yeah, and I love that you shared in your story as well that you didn't have enough milk and you were supplementing with the formula, but that you were so committed to it, because I think so many women just get frustrated with it and then their doctors are telling them formula, and then they just stop doing it. So I love that you're giving a bigger picture and more options for women of what they can do still getting their baby breasts.

I think what I learned from my own experience was I learned to value, and maybe this is going to the group. I'm not really sure how it evolved, but I learned to value whatever milk I did have instead of beating myself up for what I didn't have. And I also realized that just because you don't have a full milk supply doesn't mean you can't be a breastfeeding mother and doesn't mean that your milk isn't valuable. Even a tiny, tiny, tiny amount of milk is tremendously valuable for a baby because it has living cells and immune factors, things that are not in formula. So over the years, I've really, really tried to help moms celebrate what they can do. Seeing their breast as half full, if you will, rather than because we're so hard on ourselves as moms. We feel guilt, we feel regret. We just get ourselves so worked up because we see ourselves as imperfect. And to think that you can't give your baby what your baby needs for food, oh my gosh. There's nothing that's more primally wounding. But if you can really feel good about what you can do and know that, yeah, a lot of moms don't even bother doing, I don't want to judge, but a lot of moms can't for any number of reasons do that. Then that really puts it in a whole new perspective. And I found for myself that was helpful. That's what I try to pass along to my clients.

Yeah, it's beautiful. It's such a great, empowering story. So what do you think? How do we prepare if there is a preparation to get a good milk supply off to a good start? You know, that's such a good question.

That's really just excellent. The very first thing that I would say is get to know some other breastfeeding moms while you're pregnant. The easiest way to do that is to go to a la Leche link meeting. We humans learn best how to breastfeed by watching other babies being breastfed. That's true of all primates. There's a great story, if you don't mind my telling it, and this actually happened at many different zoos. It's not just one zoo. This story has played out several different times throughout the recent decades, and I've heard it from a couple of different cities. But here's the general way that it goes. A baby, excuse me, a mother gorilla born in captivity, never having hung around other gorillas, is inseminated and has. And her little baby gorilla is born. And she holds it up the way that she has always seen other primates holding their babies, which is the back to the mother facing out, because everybody holds her babies up to see the gorilla. So that's how she's always seen them being held. So that's how she holds her baby and tries to feed it. And as you can imagine, not a lot of milk transfer. What they realized is, is she needs to see other mothers nursing their babies. So what they do is during the next baby, when she's pregnant, they bring in a whole group on a regular basis of nursing moms sitting in front of her cage, casually nursing their babies. Sure enough, when the next baby comes, she turns it toward her the right way and latches easily. And that's become the case study that really helped us understand that we primates learn by watching. And it's. So when you have any mom who goes and hangs out with other nursing moms, she doesn't have to stand over the mothers with a magnifying glass. All she has to do is just be in the same room. She's going to pick up stuff she doesn't even know she's seeing. And then when the baby's born, she really is going to have more of an instinctual ability to latch the baby. But speaking of instincts, we kind of have this impression that we humans don't have instincts, instincts and reflexes when it comes to feeding like other mammals do. Any other mammal, maybe, except for the poor gorilla in the zoo, but any other mammal, we expect that when the baby's born, it's going to be able to latch and get milk, and there's not going to be any problem. The mother's not going to have to make it happen. Right here we are thinking we have to become experts and educators and learn everything and know it all. We really don't. What we need is the right circumstances. And generally what that means is we need to stop overthinking it. We've been overthinking it for way too many years trying to figure out, do this. When you do that, it gets the right latch. It just doesn't have to be that complicated. What we need to do Is one get moms comfortable like any other mammal would do out in the field. They just make themselves comfortable. And in most cases that means the mom just leaned back if she just gave birth. In most cases, she's already leaning back on a bed. So just leave her in that position and then the baby gets put face down on her chest. And most babies within about a half an hour will self attach. She doesn't have to do anything except stroke his back and talk to him and the babies will self attach. And frankly, what we're doing nowadays is lactation films throughout the world. We've really kind of clued into what's happening in that dynamic when the baby's first born. And we're using that technique to help moms nurse all over. So no longer are we having moms sitting upright with a poppy pillow and straight back and pulling the baby in tight. We're just leaning mom's back and letting the baby face down, tummy to tummy, his tummy flat on the arm, just get near her breast. I mean, all he has to do is really get near her breast. And most babies will latch by the. Sometimes it takes a few minutes. Some babies will kind of talk loudly or cry while they do it, but then they latch, they really latch well. So the mom's outside arm, the arm that is on the side of her body next to the breast that the baby is feeding on, is kind of the rail. I talked about it being the rail. It's what keeps the baby from going too far on the other side, rolling off her body. And that arm just kind of holds the baby's bottom and strokes his back. The baby's feet need to be free so he can push, touch her legs and touch something so he can push up and down and raise his body to get it in a good position. His head needs to be a little bit higher than his bottom. That's how you know if you're leaning back at the right incline, you shouldn't be perfectly flat, just a little bit at an incline. So the baby's head, again, as I said, is higher than his bottom. And the other thing is just that his tummy is flat against the. If you've got that going on, most babies are going to latch just fine. Usually the latch is a whole lot more comfortable and it's just so much easier. You can do this sitting in a chair. You can do it in a booth at Applebee's. You can do it just about anywhere. If you're in a chair, just scoot your bottom to the edge of the chair so you can lean back, just kind of slouch back a little bit. What you're doing is you're using gravity. Gravity is doing all the work of keeping the baby plastered to you. And a gravity is also helpful helping the baby tap into his natural reflexes. All babies have natural reflexes to latch, and moms do too, all the time. I see every mom I work with just about doing the same exact motion. You get them in this position, the arms start stroking the baby's back. She starts talking to them. Actually, there's a researcher who has written down a series of reflexes that both the mother and the baby go through in this position. So it's something that we're really beginning to understand is what our natural reflexes and instincts are geared toward as humans to latch our babies. And again, it's just about making it simple and comfortable. It doesn't have to be too complicated. That's so great.

I love the wisdom that you just shared on the self attach for the baby and that the baby has. Because I think as moms, we want to do it all right and get it perfectly and help him feel the.

Pressure to make it happen. Right?

Yeah. Like put his mouth on it. And it's like, baby is a human being who has its own instincts. It's like, I know that I need to get to the breast because that's how I survive.

Exactly. It's survival. And they do, they do. You don't have to control it. You really don't. The babies will do it all by themselves, and they'll do it better than we can do by screwing them on ourselves. So, you know, a lot of times moms talk, I'm not latching. Right. Well, if you're taking a really active role, sometimes that's the problem. Sometimes babies just need to do it all on their own.

That's so great.

That's so awesome.

I love that.

At the same time, I do want to point out that we as moms also take responsibility for the latch. And we sometimes feel guilty or bad if it never feels comfortable. We think we're not doing it right. If no matter what you do, you and your baby cannot get a comfortable latch, get to a lactation consultant as quickly as you can. Try to find the best one in your area. Because the chances are really good that it's not the way that you're latching. The chances are really good that it's something going on in your baby's mouth. It could be tongue restriction or tongue tires. Any Number of things, really. But if a mom and baby can't figure it on their own, most of the time, it's not their fault. It's because there's something else going on. We're meant to be able to figure it out.

And then also on that, just so women know when this uncomfortable, you don't want to wait till you're bleeding or.

Well, bleeding can happen really fast. To be honest with you, I see moms bleeding after six hours. Six hours after birth. I've seen babies just open a huge wound. I've seen it happen. That's not necessarily possible always to avoid that. But, yeah, as soon as it hurts, it should never hurt. Now, could it feel tender? There is a difference that most people intuitively understand between tenderness. Kind of like maybe when you step on your ankle wrong and it kind of hurts a little bit, you know, just kind of tender for a minute or two, versus, oh, my gosh, this hurts. I want to curl my toes. I can barely stand this. Big difference there. So a little bit of tenderness is not really all that unlikely in the first few days. That's what we kind of consider within the realm of normal, because this is tissue that's not being used to being sucked on. And, you know, you kind of have to get used to the feeling of it. Big difference between pinchy, hurdy, clampy pain. If you feel like this is really getting into the realm of pain, even if you feel like you're a wimp with pain, it probably is too much. And that means something needs to be looked at. Nobody can look at how your baby's nursing and tell you if it's going all right. A lot of moms will say, can you just check my latch? I couldn't possibly, because I can't see what's going on inside the baby's mouth. That's where a lactation consultant needs to do a really thorough assessment. They need to assess the baby's oral function and take a look at how the baby's moving his tongue, because that's how we know if the baby's truly able to move milk effectively without hurting a mom. Sometimes it's the mom's nipples. Sometimes moms have different problems with the nipples, inversions or diploma or all sorts of things that can happen and that can cause pain, too. So this is again where a good lactation consultant is looking at both the mom and the baby, trying to figure out what the underlying problem is.

Right. Awesome. And then also, I have another question on what do we need for breastfeeding? It seems like there's so much. I mean, there's more with formula and bottles and things, but it just seems like you need to have nipples, pads and nursing bras and nursing clothes.

That's the thing we say that you need a whole lot. And there's a lot of times moms have more stuff going along with breastfeeding than they ever would with bottle feeding. What do we really need? I was going to be facetious and say a baby, but you don't really need to have a baby. You could exclusively pump and you don't really need milk. You could breastfeed a baby with formula and abduct supplementation. So I think kind of there's not a perfect answer to your question in practical terms. I know what you're getting at. Do we need pillows? I really think pillows undermine us. I think the best pillows are the kinds you find on your couch and you put them underneath your arms on the side of your body when you're leaning back. Most of us do not need a pillow on our lap to nurse a baby because it just puts them in a really not great position. Our bodies really do generally make the best pillows. The postpartum tummy. We all hate the way it looks, but my goodness, it's perfect for babies. It makes them curl around us. Exactly right. That's where I kept mine all these years.

That's awesome.

Really. Pillows, not so much. I think probably a stool sometimes can be really helpful because some of us. I'm one of those people. I've got really short legs compared to my body, and I needed to raise my lap up a little bit when I was sitting more upright. Even if you're leaning back, if you're sitting in a chair leaning back, your legs really need to be up in some way. They could be on the coffee table. But a lot of people think a stool works really good. An ottoman can work fine. But having your legs up a little bit, sometimes you want to have a burp cloth around because little dribbles can happen in the early days. Some moms find that they're leaking so much they need to have breast pads. But that's really pretty much the length of my list. I think the best thing that any mom can get is a sling. A sling so she can carry her baby and go about her day. Have her baby with her and connected and not just sitting in a car seat somewhere. Slings just to me, for me as a mother, just made it absolutely doable. I don't know really how other mothers do it because it's so much harder to have to carry your baby around in a car seat. And your arms get so tired, and the sling just makes everything so, so, so much bigger. And babies cry less when they're carrying slings. So I'm a big fan of slings.

Do you have a favorite sling?

No, I think it's very individual because.

There'S so many of them.

There's so many of them. When I had my. I think there were two brands out there. Now there's a gazillion. So you find what you. The only thing to stay away from is the kind that have the elastic edges, and you don't want your baby lying like in a hammock in them. The best way to carry a baby in a sling is really upright against you, kind of the way that they do in some traditional countries, so that your baby is facing you, head up. Your baby's legs could dangle out or they could be curled in the sling. Either way works fine. But the point is that the baby's upright until they're older. They really should not be in a more reclined type position because that can make them compress their airways. That's the only caveat I have. You find what works, find patterns, find a design that you like. There's a gazillion kind, from really fancy silk ones that are washable silk to really basic, just a piece of cloth that you tie around yourself.

I think I have probably seven saved in my baby registry. I'm like, oh, my gosh.

Exactly. And that's good because, you know, if you've got a lot of different kinds of different colors and things you can wear with different outfits. My husband wore one. I mean, he's a pretty macho guy, and he. I didn't always like my flowery ones. He did kind of like the more solid colors, but he did. He was a Cusco leader, and he led many Cub Scout meetings with a baby in a sling while he was doing other things. Yeah, sometimes not when they were babies. He had one of our youngest until he was about three, he'd carry them in the sling. They're just incredibly helpful because the kids not running around getting into stuff when they're in the sling and they're perfectly happy, they just ride around, happy as can be.

They have. The most important thing is their parents.

Right. So it's a thing for dads, too. I mean, things are not just for moms. And I know that some dads kind of take a little bit working into them, but truthfully, they're easier on the back than the snuggling. And truthfully, they can come in some really cool patterns. There's all sorts of sports teams and black and stuff that looks a little bit more manly, and it's pretty handy.

That's a good idea for us women as we're picking out our sleep, right. To be like, okay, we need to make sure that our husbands are going to wear them.

There's a lot of people who make slings that will make a custom sling with a pattern with a fabric that you like. So if you find something, you know, the guys. My husband's really into trains. If I'd had a train sling, he would love it. So, you know, you find whatever they're into. There's, you know, probably some fabric out there that's got the, you know, whatever it is on there. It's a sports team. But you know what? Trains whatever it is, and might make it seem a little less girly, a little less little babyish. Right?

That's awesome. I love that. It's great advice. My husband's super excited about wearing it, but he'll be even happier. I'm sure, if I didn't. It wasn't all flowery and stuff.

Yeah. I mean, I think there's certain things that we can ask of these guys. And, you know, not every woman wants something flowery either. There's plenty of us who just really would prefer something a little bit more sophisticated. So there's lots of options. Yep. Awesome.

Fantastic. Okay, so I'm curious on, because you had talked about it and you've had the experience, too, for women that are listening that might, you know, they really want to breastfeed, but then there's a point where they want to start introducing the bottle. What is your thoughts on, you know, the pros and cons of pumping milk and bottle feeding and things like that? How do we. How do we maneuver that?

It's a great question. It's a really complicated question because it depends on why she's doing it and what she needs. For moms who are going back to work, which is the usual scenario, it's really different. In the U.S. we often go back to work within six weeks. In Canada, they get up to a year. So the answer there is very different than here. In most cases, you really can't wait too long to introduce a bottle or the baby won't take it. That is something that many of us have found over and over again. And at the same time, if you introduce it too much too early, sometimes babies have difficulty going back and forth. So it's a fine line. The general thing that I like to say is wait until breastfeeding is fun. Now that sounds really ambiguous, but you know it. When it happens. When you have an afternoon when you've just been nursing and kind of enjoying it and not thinking about is my arm positioned right or is the baby getting enough? And you're not thinking about any of that, you're just kind of having a good time, then you got it. It's good. It doesn't mean you won't ever worry. It doesn't mean you won't have a moment when you question things, we all do. But when you get to the point where you really feel like you're having a good time, and some people that happens earlier than others, then you probably got the swing of things. And by that point, then you can just kind of wait just a little bit longer, maybe a few more days. But that's really when you can start introducing a bottle. If you're going to need to go to work within the next. Well, really no matter when you need to. I'm really kind of looking at generally the two to three week time frame. If you're going to need to be going back to work at any point, then you might want to introduce a bottle. Maybe once a week, once every few days, not too often, too often. And again, a baby really might like it better. But let me give you a few tips. This is very, very important. If you're giving a bottle, it's important to do it in a way that as closely as possible uses some of the mechanisms of breastfeeding so that we're not having as much competition between the two. So that means keeping the flow slower. One of the reasons the baby like bottles better is because the flow is faster. We all like to chug a drink fast versus having something that comes through a tiny little straw. Like, you know, when you have an alcoholic drink, you know, not that I would know or anything. So you want the baby to be able to not feel like there's a competition between the two. One of the ways to do that is I started slowing down the flow. And that happens when you keep a bottle horizontal. So picture having the baby sitting more upright than how we fed our baby dolls when they were cradling our arms and the bottle was mostly inverted. When the bottle is horizontal, the baby can stop and start and take as much of the milk as they want without feeling like they have to keep swallowing to avoid drowning. Interesting. The thing that people usually say When I bring this up is they say, oh, but all the air, the baby's going to get air. You know what? This whole air thing, baby's getting air, turns out to be a big marketing thing. It's been totally debunked. You'll see it on every bottle saying, less air, less air. But it's just really effective for marketing. In practical terms, the air goes up the soft palate and out the nose. The kind of air that causes gassiness and fussiness is the kind from maldigestion or from formulas that you isn't being accepted very well in the baby's gut. So this is the best way to keep the milk flowing slowly. The other thing is of course, to make sure that the nipple is the slowest flow. You want the newborn slow flow. And as far as the type of bottle and the type of nipple, you're looking for something, skip the orthodontic ones. Those tend to make babies thrust their tongues forward and that's really, really bad for breastfeeding. Other than that though, just look for something that generally has a fairly good articulate. This. Well, a transition from the nipple to the base is more gradual. The more abrupt the transition, the more like a 90 degree angle the transition. Generally the less steep the baby will go onto the nipple. So the more gradual the transition is, the deeper he'll go. And that's a good thing. We want him to learn to take the nipple deeply into his mouth because that's what we want with breastfeeding. A baby who's more deeply attached to the breast is typically going to be nursing less painfully or more painlessly than a baby who is not getting as much breath. So those are some of the basic things that we want to try to do with breastfeeding. So let me recommend a fabulous book to your readers. I have no financial interest, but I find it to be absolutely fabulous. It's called Balancing Breast and Bottle by Amy Peterson, P E T E R S O N and it can be found on Amazon. And it's really, really good about the different kind of bottles that are good, when to introduce and just really about the whole dynamic of balancing breast and bottle feeding.

That's fantastic. That's so great.

We also have a considerable amount of information in the womanly art of breastfeeding, about pumping and about breasts and bottles and going back to work in those.

Kinds of situations, how to do all that and navigate it.

Exactly.

So I'm also curious, how do we know when our babies are getting enough food? Like there's the hindmilk. How do we know when they're getting the hindmilk?

I know, that's such an interesting thing. As it turns out, there's no such thing as hind milk. What there is, we only make one kind of milk. Those little lactocytes only make one kind of milk. But if you've ever pumped your milk, you've probably observed the dynamic where you let it sit for a period of time and the cream rises to the top. Cow's milk does this too, except that we homogenize it so that it stays always mixed the fat to the other parts of the milk. The way to the curds. I mean the way to the. It's not curds the case into the whey. So what we're looking for is what happens in the breast is that same kind of separation. So the fat actually does separate inside the breast when it sits. When your milk accumulates and you haven't nursed for a while, the fat begins to actually float up the ducts toward the back of the glands and it will just kind of gather in the back there because it's naturally separated even inside the breast. If a baby starts nursing, the first thing they get is the less fatty milk that has been separated. That's one of the reasons why, if you've ever seen any old fashioned films from the traditional cultures, one thing that some people do in other cultures, traditional cultures, is they shake their breasts before they breastfeed. Something that we Americans would never be caught dead doing because it would be bizarre. Just shake your breath. But that's exactly why they do it. I mean, they just learned along the way that baby's got fatter when they did that. The other thing that can happen though is letting your baby nurse long enough on one side because then that milk starts to remix. As you have milk ejections, the milk starts to remix. There's not really hind milk and foremilk. What there is is higher fat and lower fat milk. And there's milk that just needs to get remixed as you can do when you shake a bottle after you pump. You remix the milk.

Yeah, totally. So do you recommend that we shake our breasts? It sounds like it makes sense.

I don't think it's a bad thing to do at all. I think that you kind of wouldn't want to do it in the middle of McDonald's maybe, but sometimes in the early days. Yeah, why not? If you're pumping, that's definitely something a lot of people have recommended for a long time is shaking your breast before you Pump. You don't have to shake them so it hurts or anything. Just a little. Kind of a jiggle back and forth really can remix the milk. And that's going to help your baby get the higher fat milk faster. But again, if your baby stays on one side, every time you have a milk ejection, it remixes the milk so the baby's going to get plenty of milk. The more frequently you feed, the less time the milk has to separate, too. So not going long periods of time in between feedings is one way to make sure that babies get as much fat in their milk as possible.

And then do you recommend feeding your baby whenever they're hungry?

Yeah.

Not scheduled feedings.

I strongly recommend avoiding scheduled feedings. Scheduled feedings have been shown in many, many, many research studies to be very dangerous for babies. Babies have gotten to some very scary situations because they just stop feeding very well if they don't get enough food. And they often don't get enough food from scheduled feedings. The way to make sure that your baby is getting enough is to watch its cues. Babies will give a lot of cues before they go to crying. They'll do fist to mouth, or they'll kind of pull to one side really strongly, or sometimes they'll make an eh, eh, eh sound. If they cry, that means, I've tried everything and you still didn't get the cue, so I'm going to cry. And that works too. Some babies, especially babies who are born at 37 or 38 weeks, they'll just go straight to crying. That's sometimes just a personality thing. But feeding a baby when they show that they're hungry, and no matter how long it's been, sometimes babies do want to feed again quickly because they have so much growing to do, and that's okay. And sometimes babies want to nurse for reasons beyond hunger. They're thirsty or their bottom hurts, or they're just kind of lonely, or sometimes they're bored. And that's all fine because it helps build up the strong milk supply. It helps increase that relationship of trust. It really keeps things going very easily when you can just pretty much forget about the number of feedings a day. Just feed your baby for even short periods of time, many times a day. Generally, things feel very much more easily and less. You don't have to think about it as much. And frankly, for those moms out there, like me, who want to keep it as simple as possible, the less you have to remember, the less you have to think about. Just nurse the baby whenever he asks for it. And generally it goes well. You're just looking for those three stools a day. It doesn't matter how many wets. Wet stools don't matter at all. They really don't. It's just, I mean, wet urine, diapers, three stools a day is what we're looking for. That's so good. In the first month after that, schooling slows down. That's great. So much information. Your head's probably reeling, but no, I love it.

It's so great. And I love your intensity around the schedule feedings because I've known. Yeah, I've just had numerous conversations and it just intuitively does not feel right to schedule your child's feeding. So I appreciate your enthusiasm about that.

Let me add one more layer of that. One thing that makes a difference in milk production is storage capacity. We all have different amounts of storage capacity in our breasts, sometimes even difference between one breast and the next one on the same woman. If your breasts cannot store a lot of milk, what happens is your rate of production slows down. Because remember we talked about how the more full the breast is, the slower the production. If your breast gets really full, you slow down production. If you've got bigger storage capacity, which is not related to the size of your breast directly, although larger breasts tend to have more storage capacity, you have a little bit more leeway. For someone who's doing scheduled feedings, if they don't have very much storage capacity capacity, then their breasts can't go three and a half hours, four hours in between feedings or just even no feedings except every three hours. That's not going to be enough leeway for them and their production is going to slow down. What we very, very, very commonly see is babies start to have altering growth about two to three months. When mothers schedule feedings, they go to formula feeding. That's a very, very, very common.

That's amazing. So it's, it's so these, you know, so it just makes sense. But it's so great to hear it, you know, and realize that how that could happen to a woman. She's scheduling a feeding, thinking she's doing the right thing, and then she's not producing enough milk. And then you can just kind of see the cascade of events happening.

Well, I think that, you know, trying to do the right thing is certainly at the, at the. That's the underlying reason that people do it. But the underlying premise is that your baby is trying to control you, and babies are not trying to control us. They're trying to eat and Survive. They don't have demands, they're not bullies, they're not having behavioral problems, they're not having tantrums. They're just trying to eat because they're hungry. Their tummies are hungry. And when we meet those needs, what we do is we create babies who are secure. There's a neurologist, Dr. Niels Bergman, who has taken a look at babies brains when they are separated from their mothers. Babies who are always near their mothers, especially in the very, very beginning, have very different brain compositions from babies who are not. The babies who are separated from their mothers, even though they may show no outward signs of any difference, have higher levels of stress hormones like cortisol. And their brains are wired differently, so they can never handle stress as easily throughout the rest of their lives. So keeping your baby with you is one way to help your baby grow up into being a resilient adult who can handle stress more easily. It's not something that is going to make him be dependent. In fact, the research shows the opposite. Babies whose needs are met, who are kept with their mothers, who know that they are loved and can trust their caregiver to meet their needs, grow up to these very, very secure adults. The insecure people are the ones who've been left alone, who've been left to doubt that they're being cared for. The baby doesn't think, oh, you're in charge, I understand. I will be compliant. No, they're just thinking, oh, I give up, no one cares. Right.

Amazing.

Wow. I think that that's not a dynamic that's well understood, but the neurological science is showing itself so very, very clearly now. And it really does kind of open our eyes to all the sleep training and behavioral training that's been done over the years through many different parenting programs, have a bigger negative effect than we ever realized. And the lazy parenting, where you just kind of answer your child's needs and you really just stay close to your children, turns out to really have a very positive effect on children's development. As I said, I'm seeing it with my teenagers. Really?

Yeah.

Pretty nice kids.

Oh, that's so great. And I love to at the beginning, like you're saying, like you had a visceral reaction in your after giving birth and you're like, I need to be with my baby. And women, you know, as you're saying that, like, I just feel like us women need to trust ourselves and trust our intuition, like being close to our babies.

And I've even seen women feel guilty for feeling that they're being selfish because I need my baby so much. No, this is how we're hardwired. Nature or God, or whomever you want to call it, has given us this as a way to keep our babies safe. We feel driven to be with our babies. We have a deep desire to be with our babies. And it's a very good thing because our babies feel the same thing for us. They are so, so in need of us. Not any mommy will do. They need us. Babies know the difference from one mommy to the next. They can smell the difference between one mommy and the next. They know the difference between the nurse in the hospital and the woman that gave birth to them. They can smell the difference. And they really do have a very basic need to feel safe in a mother's arms. Babies don't care about the nurseries we build. What they care about is really just being in their mom's arms. That's all that's important to them at first.

Yes. Amen. I love that. Very cool. It's just so inspiring. I could talk to you forever on this.

But just so I know, it's so funny, I gave a class once where a guy came in. It was a three hour class. He said, what are we going to talk about for three hours? And I just laughed because I could probably talk about breastfeeding. No. For the rest of my life. It's endlessly fascinating. But I think you'll find that with most people who are so intent on a given topic, it's something that we do find so much rich about it. And mothers tend to very often find that breastfeeding is again, more than food. It's a way to be connected with your babies that just really changes how you understood your day to day life before you gave birth. Birth. So it's that transformational.

Definitely. Well, fantastic. Thank you. Thank you. Can you please share where people can find more about you, buy your books and just connect with you more?

Sure. The Womanly art of breastfeeding is probably where I just downloaded most of my brain. It's available through the Leleche League on Amazon. The eighth edition. Very, very different from the earlier editions. Also a book, the Making More Milk. Actually the Breastfeeding Mother's Guide to Making More Milk I co authored with Lisa Marasco and that's also available on Amazon. That's for moms who are having trouble making enough milk. I have a website, bf as in frank, a as in apple, r breastfeedingafterreduction.org and also lowmilksupply.org and I'm also you can read individual things about me on the lack speak l a c-t s p e a k.com website, have a speaker page and I'm also on Facebook and all of that. Great.

How beautiful.

I love it. Such a pleasure to talk to you. Are we at the end now?

Yes, we are. We are complete. Thank you so much.

My pleasure. Thanks for inviting me. And I wish all of your listeners could Good luck with breastfeeding. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing for both you and your baby.

Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. Have an awesome day. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Mama Goddess. Sending you lots of love and blessings. If you'd like to connect more, go to mamagoddess.com until next time. Keep rocking it and have an awesome day.