Speaker 1: San Francisco, the s s K treat Yes, San Francisco, Oakland,
Speaker 1: the entire Bay area and dare I say, all of
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley. Yeah, we love you. And we're coming back
Speaker 1: to Sketch Fest this year in January. Yeah, we're gonna
Speaker 1: be there on Sunday, January at one pm, a very
Speaker 1: rare afternoon show. Uh, and we will be ready to go.
Speaker 1: So you guys better be drunk from the night before
Speaker 1: or getting drunk for that evening. Yeah, however it crosses over,
Speaker 1: I think it'll be proof positive that uh we endorse
Speaker 1: afternoon drinking. You know, yeah, you know, a couple of drinks,
Speaker 1: maybe i'd be bloody Mary. What were we talking about. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're promoting our show. Oh, that's right. So we're doing
Speaker 1: that show on January. Uh. You can go to the
Speaker 1: s F Sketch Fest website to get tickets and it's awesome.
Speaker 1: It's a great, great comedy festival. Lots of awesome shows
Speaker 1: that weekend and for the following weeks. So I I
Speaker 1: encourage you, like to buy lots of tickets just by
Speaker 1: our first Yeah, and hurry, hurry, because they're selling out fast.
Speaker 1: No joke, that's not a ploy that's not as a
Speaker 1: marketing ploy. They're really selling fast. We get emails every time. Guys,
Speaker 1: you told me to hurry, I didn't hurry. I'm shut out.
Speaker 1: And since this promos petered out, it ends right now.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should Know front House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Speaker 1: Clark and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and this is
Speaker 1: stuff you should know. Just two of us again, that's fine, yea,
Speaker 1: two dudes. We're nipples, right, totally useless nipples though, Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: we did a show why do men have nipples? In
Speaker 1: um By the way, I think we should change the
Speaker 1: name of the show to two dudes, four nipples. Okay,
Speaker 1: might be onto something. Uh, And that factored in not
Speaker 1: much to this podcast, but it just's worth mentioning. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And you have been wanting to tackle breastfeeding as a
Speaker 1: topic for a long time. Yeah, And as I got
Speaker 1: into it, I was like, we can't just to uh
Speaker 1: how breastfeeding works. It's just too unwheeldy. It's got to
Speaker 1: be too party. And I realized that it would be
Speaker 1: folly to also name it how breastfeeding works, So we're
Speaker 1: calling it how feeding Babies Works Part one in part two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we may friendship up though and call the second one
Speaker 1: part who knows? Uh Yeah, And this one is, um
Speaker 1: you you have been reticent to do this one because
Speaker 1: it is fraught with anytime you're dealing with babies and moms,
Speaker 1: it is fraught with differing opinions. Differing Ah, not just
Speaker 1: among people listening and how they feel about everything, but
Speaker 1: from the medical commune, any differing different recommendations. So like
Speaker 1: there isn't really one set way ever, and people think
Speaker 1: like their way is the way. Your way is not
Speaker 1: the way. There's a straight up culture war going on
Speaker 1: over it. Yeah, and that's an easy way to say it.
Speaker 1: So I see why you waded into this gently and
Speaker 1: with some trepidation. But I feel like once once we
Speaker 1: got in there, you know, we can we can talk
Speaker 1: about anything agreed. But I think I said some of
Speaker 1: that is a way of just saying, hey, if we
Speaker 1: get some stuff wrong, if you if you disagree with
Speaker 1: some of the stuff, we're just throwing it out there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And we're also we're going to try our best not
Speaker 1: to man spain because this very easily could end up
Speaker 1: being the very definition of man spaining what two men
Speaker 1: doing a two part show on breast belt So we
Speaker 1: we try not to do that. So if we do,
Speaker 1: you can hold us accountable. But yeah, we're just trying
Speaker 1: to deliver information that we found. Yeah, I'm none of this.
Speaker 1: I have no opinion on any of this. Actually, ready, okay,
Speaker 1: So to start. Actually, one of the things that inspired
Speaker 1: this was a really great, um, a really great article
Speaker 1: by a woman named Angela. I'm not quite sure how
Speaker 1: to say your last name, Garbage, maybe I'm It was
Speaker 1: in The Stranger and um. She she was breastfeeding at
Speaker 1: the time and was just fascinated by it. So she
Speaker 1: wrote this really great article in The Stranger about breastfeeding
Speaker 1: and um. One of the things she points out is
Speaker 1: that when women breastfeed, they literally, she they quote literally
Speaker 1: dissolved parts of ourselves, starting with the gluteal fomoral fat
Speaker 1: a k a R. Butts and turn it into liquid
Speaker 1: to feed our babies. In your mind was blown. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's just a lot of um, a lot of really
Speaker 1: amazing stuff. When you start to look in the breastfeeding,
Speaker 1: breast milk, what what the body is doing, it's pretty
Speaker 1: mind blowing. Actually every single aspect of human reproduction. To me,
Speaker 1: it is mind blowing, and not just human just period reproduction. Right.
Speaker 1: Making a little thing inside of a body PEPs and
Speaker 1: wee wee's cps and we's coming together to make another
Speaker 1: living thing is just one of the most amazing, miraculous things.
Speaker 1: It is pretty neat, just unbelievable. So with breast milk, right, um,
Speaker 1: there's different stages of of of breast milk production. There's actually,
Speaker 1: I think, as far as I know, three stages of
Speaker 1: what's called lacto genesis. Right. Stage one, um is the
Speaker 1: basically the pre milk stage that happens before birth. Stage
Speaker 1: two is what's called colostrum, which is a kind of
Speaker 1: milk and not what you think of his breast milk. No,
Speaker 1: it's it's basically and I'm going to accidentally use the
Speaker 1: word designed a lot, but it's basically specifically designed to
Speaker 1: feed of a baby for the first few days after
Speaker 1: its birth. And then there's the third stage, which is
Speaker 1: called milk maintenance. But the but the milk is made
Speaker 1: this is pretty nuts. So you've got these little tiny
Speaker 1: cell clusters called al viola, right, and that's where actual
Speaker 1: milk production occurs and in these alveola, they basically they
Speaker 1: have something called lacticites, and lacticites go into the bloodstream
Speaker 1: and gather nutrients it needs to form the milk, right,
Speaker 1: and depending on what is needed at any given point
Speaker 1: in time, it will retrieve those nutrients and antibodies and
Speaker 1: all that stuff and put them together and then create
Speaker 1: the milk. That's pretty awesome. So the milk is literally
Speaker 1: made from the woman's body. Okay, it's not delivered my
Speaker 1: guy in a white hat, right, but there's no like
Speaker 1: milk store or anything like that. At any given point
Speaker 1: in time, the the actual components of a woman's breast
Speaker 1: milk is different from maybe what it would be the
Speaker 1: next day or later that night or a week before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. It's its own recipe on a day
Speaker 1: to day basis. Um, which we'll talk more about that
Speaker 1: cool stuff later too. Uh So it is uh low
Speaker 1: and fat, but really high in proteins and carbohydrates. Well,
Speaker 1: the the calostroum is Yeah, that that first yellowish um
Speaker 1: thick as you call it, a thick golden liquid, which, um,
Speaker 1: that's a good way to describe it. If you've ever
Speaker 1: seen it. Like you know, you can just type it
Speaker 1: in and images and that'll that'll have pictures of it
Speaker 1: next to um breast milk, and you can it's a
Speaker 1: pretty stark difference and it looks like But the whole
Speaker 1: point is that is it's super easy to digest for
Speaker 1: a newborn baby and gives that baby exactly what they
Speaker 1: need two get going in life. Uh, including you know
Speaker 1: that it gives them a head start, including having lacks
Speaker 1: of effect to get rid of that first poop, which
Speaker 1: is called the maconium um, which is as a waiting
Speaker 1: on that first poop is a very big deal because
Speaker 1: then you know things are moving as it should, and
Speaker 1: then you know then it's nothing but poop. Um. And
Speaker 1: a breastfed baby has a little bit different poop than
Speaker 1: a formula fed baby. Um. It's a little more yellowish
Speaker 1: than brown, and supposedly doesn't smell quite as bad. Um.
Speaker 1: That's what they say. I've seen that it actually smells
Speaker 1: a bit like buttermilk. I don't know, altogether unpleasant and um.
Speaker 1: Because the breast milk is well absorbed. Babies who are
Speaker 1: breastfed are very rarely constipated too. Yes, so you got
Speaker 1: that's the colostrum, and after several days, the colostrum um
Speaker 1: goes away and is replaced instead by what's called mature
Speaker 1: breast milk. The good stuff, the yeah, the stuff you
Speaker 1: think of when you think of breast milk. So um.
Speaker 1: It's about three to five percent fat and is chock
Speaker 1: full of minerals and vitamins UM, sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus,
Speaker 1: vitamins A, C, and E long chain fatty acids uh
Speaker 1: that are both omega three's and omega six is UM.
Speaker 1: And then you also have lactose. It's the principal carbohydrate,
Speaker 1: right and um. Liketose is important because it's just a huge,
Speaker 1: wonderful energy source. Um. And it also has the proteins
Speaker 1: in it are a specific kind of protein their way proteins, right, So,
Speaker 1: in in cow's milk or in um livestock milk, the
Speaker 1: proteins usually casein, which isn't as easy to digest. In
Speaker 1: breast milk, the protein is way, which is extremely easy
Speaker 1: to digest for human babies. And then even more interesting, chuck,
Speaker 1: there's something called oglio sacc rides. Yeah, this is amazing.
Speaker 1: These are sugars uh, like a hundred and fifty or
Speaker 1: more and they are only in human milk. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: pretty astounding, right, So you're thinking, well, it's neat they're
Speaker 1: they're nutrients that are only found in human milk, which
Speaker 1: is for human babies. Makes sense with The weirder thing though,
Speaker 1: is that these oglio sacarides can't be digested by the baby.
Speaker 1: They're not actually for the baby. They're actually nutrients for
Speaker 1: the gut flora in the baby's guts, in the baby's
Speaker 1: stomach to help it digest food. Even better, so it's
Speaker 1: actually food for the microbiome of the baby in the
Speaker 1: breast milk. It's amazing, man, I just keep wanting to
Speaker 1: drop this mind. I think you're saying oglio sacarides. What
Speaker 1: was it? What is it? Oh? Yeah, that's all right,
Speaker 1: I misplaced the g That's okay, that happens, um. So
Speaker 1: I know one of the big things too, that that
Speaker 1: um has been amazed amazing you for a while because
Speaker 1: you've dropped this fact a lot lately, is that the
Speaker 1: the human body. Uh, we know how the human body
Speaker 1: fights off immunity, but something really unique happens when a
Speaker 1: mother's breastfeeding a baby is it's a bit of a
Speaker 1: two way street. There's a vacuum created um when the
Speaker 1: baby is breastfeeding on the nipple, and if a baby
Speaker 1: needs uh some sort of immune immunity response boost, then
Speaker 1: the baby's saliva will actually enter back into the woman
Speaker 1: through the nipple and Mommy, all of a sudden her
Speaker 1: body says, oh, you're telling me that you need this
Speaker 1: to fight off some sort of sickness perhaps, so now
Speaker 1: my body will produce that and then render it back
Speaker 1: to you in the breast. Unbelievable. Yeah, it's pretty pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: There's like receptors in the memory gland that analyze the
Speaker 1: saliva for pathogens and then produce antibodies as a result.
Speaker 1: That's crazy awesome. Yeah, So the breast smoke is chock
Speaker 1: full of nutrients. It's chuck full of um proteins and
Speaker 1: fats and all this great stuff, as well as antibodies.
Speaker 1: So the baby being breastfed has um this uh, this
Speaker 1: established um microbiome, thanks in large part to what the
Speaker 1: mom's breast milk is giving it. Yeah, and like you said,
Speaker 1: like her despite all the things in the breast milk,
Speaker 1: a woman's body can also say, oh, you need this
Speaker 1: to let me whip some of that up, right, because
Speaker 1: I deliver that to you as well. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty cool um and even cooler. Well, I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's even cooler, right, I'm gonna keep saying that.
Speaker 1: But there's when when UM a woman nurses, there's basically
Speaker 1: two stages of the actual nursing. The first stuff to
Speaker 1: come out is called four milk. It's kind of Finnish
Speaker 1: and bluish and it's mostly water and it's meant to
Speaker 1: look like for the baby's thirst had for hydration, right,
Speaker 1: because a baby can subsist for the first four to
Speaker 1: six months of his life solely on breast milk, doesn't
Speaker 1: even need water, it's getting it from that fur milk.
Speaker 1: And then the stuff that comes out after the four
Speaker 1: milk UM is called hind milk, and that's the creamier
Speaker 1: stuff that's higher and fat, and that's what fills the
Speaker 1: baby up. Yeah. And so if if all this talk
Speaker 1: of immunity of building and UH and stuff like that
Speaker 1: makes you think that a breastfed baby might potentially be
Speaker 1: UM less susceptible to illness than a formula fed baby,
Speaker 1: some studies show that that is possible. UM every situation
Speaker 1: is different, of course. Uh. You you can have breastfed
Speaker 1: babies that get sick a lot. You can have formula
Speaker 1: fed babies that never gets sick. There is no like
Speaker 1: across the board thing. But the World Health Organization and
Speaker 1: the American Academy of Pediatrics both recommend exclusive breastfeeding for
Speaker 1: at least six months because they do think it can
Speaker 1: lead to fewer illnesses, fewer hospitalizations, or at least milder illnesses. Right.
Speaker 1: And it's not just those two, the the UM, government
Speaker 1: of the UK, Australia, Canada, Ireland, India, Japan, all of
Speaker 1: them recommend that women breastfeed exclusively for six months. Right um.
Speaker 1: But as Angela Garbas pointed out though this those health outcomes,
Speaker 1: those positive health outcomes, they're relatives. Right. So, if your
Speaker 1: baby is born in the West, in a developed nation
Speaker 1: UM with state of the art technology, and is born
Speaker 1: a relatively healthy baby, the the benefits from breastfeeding are
Speaker 1: going to be much less than if you compare that
Speaker 1: baby to a baby that's born in a developing nation
Speaker 1: where the water um, the water available is um impure,
Speaker 1: a lot of disease perhaps um and uh and and
Speaker 1: the country is generally poverty stricken, that baby will benefit
Speaker 1: tremendously more from breastfeeding, uh than would the kid born
Speaker 1: in the modern, developed, richer country. Yeah. Absolutely, um. And
Speaker 1: also we'll see, we're gonna get into it for sure.
Speaker 1: We we can't avoid it. But there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of conflicting studies on breastfeeding and health outcomes and the
Speaker 1: benefits of it. But we'll wait into that later. Yes,
Speaker 1: with our kevlar vest. Uh. So let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about some of them, the benefits of breastfeeding. Um.
Speaker 1: One of them is, if you just want to look
Speaker 1: strictly at numbers, Um, if a woman's body produces something
Speaker 1: for free that you would normally have to purchase in
Speaker 1: a store, in the form of formula, then it's just
Speaker 1: gonna be flat out cheaper. Um. This four number in
Speaker 1: here is way low. Oh really, Yeah, it says in
Speaker 1: the US, families can save an average of four dollars
Speaker 1: a year even with the cost of a breast pump. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's gotta be low because because you spend I think
Speaker 1: the average cost of formula for a year is closer
Speaker 1: tous um. And then subtract, of course for the breast
Speaker 1: pump and stuff. But let's just say you'll save some money, right.
Speaker 1: You'll also save having to get up and go to
Speaker 1: the kitchen to make some formula or um, having to
Speaker 1: uh wash out bottles, sterilized bottles, stuff like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: although I think most women probably do pump and dump
Speaker 1: in bottles yeah these days. Yeah, so um yeah, saving money,
Speaker 1: maybe saving a little inconvenience, that's one positive. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: funny thing is that this little section this that comes
Speaker 1: from the house stuff Works article on breastfeeding, it makes
Speaker 1: it sound like breastfeeding is just so easy and convenient,
Speaker 1: you know, like there's definite to it. Stop complaining. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we should talk a little bit about these two
Speaker 1: hormones that are super super important uh to breastfeeding and
Speaker 1: period in life. Yeah, because these are definite benefits of breastfeeding.
Speaker 1: It's it's just not you can't argue with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're talking about oxytocin and prolactin and um. Prolactin. Prolactin
Speaker 1: tells the milk hey make more milk, tells the glands
Speaker 1: that it basically makes that production happen. Oxytocin is what
Speaker 1: gets the breast milk to your baby. Milk let down
Speaker 1: is what it's called. Yeah, which is kind of a
Speaker 1: let down. Sounds like something bad, it does. I don't
Speaker 1: know how they called it that, but yes, let down
Speaker 1: is good in this case. But as long as you're feeding, breastfeeding,
Speaker 1: or you're pumping, then your body is going to continue
Speaker 1: to release that prolactin and it's just sort of a
Speaker 1: feedback loop, right exactly. And and there's there's this neat
Speaker 1: kind of um. It's all hormonal, right, prolactin, oxytocin, the hormones,
Speaker 1: but there's this neat like hormonal balance where when your
Speaker 1: breast gets full, milk productions throws down and then when
Speaker 1: your breast empties, milk production speeds back up. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: It is so Oxytocin specifically is really amazing. Uh. That
Speaker 1: is a chemical messenger and it releases um released from
Speaker 1: the brain and a lot of it. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not just something that happens with women. Oxytocin. We all
Speaker 1: have it. Yeah, it's a social, promoting, promoting hormone exactly.
Speaker 1: And skin on skin contact is where things is where
Speaker 1: things get really interesting, right. It actually triggers the release
Speaker 1: of oxytocin. Right, and there's if there's one thing that
Speaker 1: a new mother's brain is primed to um to experience
Speaker 1: its floods of oxytocin. And there they actually believe that
Speaker 1: this is the the basis for the the incredible mother
Speaker 1: infant bond that occurs. It's this huge surge of oxytocin
Speaker 1: that takes place during labor after birth and is sustained
Speaker 1: through skin to skin contact including breastfeeding. Yes, uh, and
Speaker 1: this happens. This is another pretty amazing fact. In those
Speaker 1: early stages of that that flood of oxytocin, nerve junctions
Speaker 1: and parts of the mother's brain actually reorganized and it
Speaker 1: becomes like, uh, maternal instinct becomes hardwired at that point, right, Exactly,
Speaker 1: like the oxytocin receptors start to um to spread all
Speaker 1: over the place in vast numbers. Right. And so when
Speaker 1: the when the um these maternal behaviors, I guess you'd
Speaker 1: call it if you want to talk about a woman
Speaker 1: like you're a biologist, right, Um, the the oxytocin is released,
Speaker 1: and so the the pattern is reinforced and it's like
Speaker 1: you said, like the brain is structurally reorganizing into motherhood. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's pretty astounding. Yeah, and they recommend, Like I've said
Speaker 1: that after everything we've said, Um, let's say you don't breastfeed.
Speaker 1: Let's say you uh aren't able to breastfeed, let's say
Speaker 1: you have adopted your child. But there's all sorts of
Speaker 1: scenarios maybe where you don't breastfeed. They still recommend that
Speaker 1: skin on skin contact as soon as possible and as
Speaker 1: much as possible. Um, and not just for mom. Um,
Speaker 1: Dad's get in on that action. Uh. There's nothing better
Speaker 1: than than laying chest to chest with a newborn baby.
Speaker 1: And that skin on skin contact works the same way
Speaker 1: with men. It's just not quite as a robust release
Speaker 1: of oxytocin, right, But that there have been plenty of
Speaker 1: studies that have shown that children who um don't have
Speaker 1: that skin to skin contact, don't develop um as securely
Speaker 1: in their brains, don't necessarily develop as robustly or at
Speaker 1: least socially um as kids who do have the skin
Speaker 1: to skin contact. A lot of people take that to
Speaker 1: mean that breastfeeding is what's responsible for that. That's not
Speaker 1: the case. Breastfeeding allows for that skin to skin contact,
Speaker 1: so it does allow for that oxytocin release and the
Speaker 1: child to develop more securely. But you, like you were saying,
Speaker 1: you can also get the same thing from holding the
Speaker 1: baby skin to skin without even breastfeeding. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: and the When this insecurity and underdevelopment occurs, it appears
Speaker 1: to be from neglect, maternal and paternal neglect rather than um.
Speaker 1: The fact that the breastfeeding is so great at it
Speaker 1: the breastfeeding forces that essentially. Does that make sense? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so there's even more on oxytocin, right, the the oxytocin
Speaker 1: prevents I saw a study that showed that mothers who
Speaker 1: breastfeed had about half the levels of stress hormone release
Speaker 1: as um mothers who didn't breastfeed. Um, it allows for
Speaker 1: imprinting odor imprinting, yeah, for baby and mom. Right, so
Speaker 1: I recognize your smell. Right. The baby um became accustomed
Speaker 1: to the smell of its amniotic fluid in the womb
Speaker 1: thanks to oxytocin. Well, the mother's breast smells similar to
Speaker 1: the smell of the amniotic fluid, so the baby is
Speaker 1: able to um find the mother's nipple after being born
Speaker 1: just from that smell. Right. All of this is fostered
Speaker 1: from oxytocin, and it's it's um hardwired through oxytocin as well.
Speaker 1: But our understanding of oxytocin and how it does it
Speaker 1: is we basically you can replace oxytocin with saternal magic. Right,
Speaker 1: there's like we just don't understand how it's doing all this.
Speaker 1: We just know that it does thanks to rodent studies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounded funny, but it's true. Yeah. Um, and it
Speaker 1: also reduces the your baby's stress hormone responses. So they've
Speaker 1: done studies where they found it in um. Like let's say,
Speaker 1: and I'm a continent of Africa where mothers tend to
Speaker 1: carry their babies a lot more than like here in
Speaker 1: the United States. Maybe that there the babies tend to
Speaker 1: cry less and are able to soothe self soothe more,
Speaker 1: and are just more suitable period because they're just simply
Speaker 1: um held more. Yeah. Well, there's also supposedly studies of
Speaker 1: i think children in Eastern Europe who are raised from
Speaker 1: infancy and orphanages that were had had tremendous like social maladaptations,
Speaker 1: and they traced it back to not having been held
Speaker 1: as children. Like that's huge, it's huge. And apparently skin
Speaker 1: skin on skin holding is the solution to that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we amly. I call it ski wee skin to win.
Speaker 1: That came from our friend. We didn't make it up
Speaker 1: except he was talking about like Friday night in the
Speaker 1: hot tub. You guys just adapted it. Yeah, exactly, one
Speaker 1: of the other amazing things. And then, um, we'll probably
Speaker 1: take a break after this. But finishing up on oxytocin.
Speaker 1: I feel like we could almost do a whole podcast
Speaker 1: on oxytocin. Yeah, we really should. The wonder hormone. Um,
Speaker 1: but with that high level, that big rush of oxytocin,
Speaker 1: Mom's priority has actually become altered. And the brain says,
Speaker 1: you know what, you don't have to uh groom yourself
Speaker 1: and and try and make yourself look a certain way
Speaker 1: to obtain a mate anymore. Now your priority is feeding
Speaker 1: this little babe. And so it literally kind of switches
Speaker 1: that off in the brain. So Mom's like, great, I
Speaker 1: don't have to, like now I groom my child. I
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about myself as much. Why is
Speaker 1: my hair so long? I'm gonna chop this off stupid necklace? Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty much. And it's I don't know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: funny when you think about it. But uh, it's almost
Speaker 1: like the body saying, take a break from that stuff,
Speaker 1: focus on babe for a little while, and uh maybe
Speaker 1: later on once the oxytocin goes down, once you want
Speaker 1: another baby maybe. So uh. And prolactin is similar in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. We don't want to sell that short,
Speaker 1: but um, it's in the maid in the pituitary gland
Speaker 1: in the brain helps people sleep, helps maintain reproductive organs,
Speaker 1: your immune system, and it's what prepares the mommy's breast
Speaker 1: to make breast milk. It also, um, while the mom
Speaker 1: is nursing, it is released and it has this kind
Speaker 1: of relaxing effect so that mom's just happy to sit
Speaker 1: there and breastfeed, not after like worry about getting up
Speaker 1: and doing something else. She's just content doing that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all it's all of this is design to keep
Speaker 1: mommy kind of doped up and happy to just take
Speaker 1: care of a baby and like to love that baby.
Speaker 1: Her brain is physically rewired by oxytocin to love that
Speaker 1: one baby right there, all right before we say amazing again,
Speaker 1: We'll take a break. We'll I'm back right after this.
Speaker 1: So um, chuck. A lot of the talk of how
Speaker 1: magic this is and how natural it is, and how
Speaker 1: hormonally driven all of this is has led a lot
Speaker 1: of people, um, and I'm sure there's a lot of
Speaker 1: women out there who have experienced a lot of difficulty,
Speaker 1: um with breastfeeding right from the get go and probably
Speaker 1: felt a lot of um, frustration, shame, rejection, yet rejection, resentment,
Speaker 1: all sorts of like seemingly horrible feelings because breastfeeding didn't
Speaker 1: come naturally. That's right. Apparently breastfeeding is as natural a
Speaker 1: thing as it is. It's actually not like no one
Speaker 1: walking around just naturally knows how to do it. It
Speaker 1: takes some practice. You have to learn how to do
Speaker 1: it first. Yeah, Like sometimes the breast milk won't come
Speaker 1: in for a few days. Like ideally you want to
Speaker 1: be breastfeeding, like within a few hours if you can
Speaker 1: one hour, within the first hour is what's recommended. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and if that doesn't happen, at least get that
Speaker 1: ski wee going. Um yeah, yeah, but sometimes it takes
Speaker 1: a few days for the breast melt to come in.
Speaker 1: There are conditions where breast milk may never come in. Um.
Speaker 1: What I would advise is to stay off the mommy blogs. Uh,
Speaker 1: they can be helpful, but they can also really be
Speaker 1: tough on a new mother. Yeah, if you feel like
Speaker 1: you don't measure up to breastfeeding ideal, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of judgment going on. Um. Even if you just look
Speaker 1: up like breast milk didn't come in, you'll find some
Speaker 1: women that say, yeah, you know sometimes that happens, and
Speaker 1: their women say like, you just gave up, you got
Speaker 1: lazy with it, and you didn't work at it right. Apparently,
Speaker 1: the recommendations that I found, and I didn't find them judgmentally,
Speaker 1: they seem to come from non judgmental place was keep trying. Basically, Um,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that there is some line, and every mother
Speaker 1: has her own line. Once she gets to that line,
Speaker 1: just done. But apparently, if your if your milk isn't
Speaker 1: coming in the best way to get it to come
Speaker 1: in is to keep nursing, to keep getting the breast
Speaker 1: milk flowing, because it's eventually going to get the prolactin going,
Speaker 1: and the prolactin is going to get the milk in,
Speaker 1: and it's going to get the oxytostin going, and the
Speaker 1: oxytocin is going to let the milk down. So just
Speaker 1: trying to breastfeed apparently is the best fixed for breastfeeding problems.
Speaker 1: Another thing to do is to reach out to what's
Speaker 1: called the lactation consultants. Yeah, there are professionals out there
Speaker 1: who will um advise you. I mean, they're all kinds
Speaker 1: of services that can help you with everything from advising
Speaker 1: you are counseling you UM to literally um showing you
Speaker 1: um different methods which will get to on how to
Speaker 1: literally physically breastfeed, like how to hold the baby, how
Speaker 1: to do all that stuff. It's just it's sort of
Speaker 1: like a coach in a way. Coaching counselor I think
Speaker 1: is a good way to put it, and they can
Speaker 1: really really help. And don't don't hesitate to reach out
Speaker 1: Like it doesn't mean that you're not a good mom
Speaker 1: or or that things aren't coming naturally to you. So
Speaker 1: something is wrong with you. This one that that shame
Speaker 1: needs to get out of your head. I know, it
Speaker 1: needs to get out of society. Yeah, but it's it's tough,
Speaker 1: you know, right if you have a baby, there's you know,
Speaker 1: I mean we should do one on postpartum depression too.
Speaker 1: It's um. Sometimes you are at the whims of what
Speaker 1: your body and your hormones are doing, you know, and
Speaker 1: someone who might normally not feel those things feel those
Speaker 1: things right. Um. And then you add on top of
Speaker 1: these social expectations and friends and neighbors and the nurses
Speaker 1: and the doctor and everybody will just showed up. You know,
Speaker 1: Oh you're not breastfeeding. Yeah, there's this really this is
Speaker 1: great article that um Hannah Rosen wrote. It was published
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic in two thousand nine, called the Case
Speaker 1: against breastfeeding controversial, and she um, just some of the
Speaker 1: stuff she she mentions just some of the casual vibing
Speaker 1: out that a mom encounters when she says she doesn't breastfeed,
Speaker 1: and just there's a lot of um, a lot of
Speaker 1: social pressure to breastfeed. If you if you've chosen to
Speaker 1: breastfeed and you're having trouble with it, what we're saying
Speaker 1: is there's yeah, go find a lactation consultant. That's fine.
Speaker 1: At the same time, make sure you're also in close
Speaker 1: contact with your doctor, your child's doctor, because if your
Speaker 1: breast milk isn't coming, your baby still needs to ate something, right, UM,
Speaker 1: So you're doc, you will be able to tell you well,
Speaker 1: you might want to go buy some some human milk,
Speaker 1: or you might want to introduce your baby to formula
Speaker 1: while you're also nursing too. We're trying to nurse to
Speaker 1: get your breast milk coming so that your baby has
Speaker 1: enough nutrients and calories and everything, or um, if it's
Speaker 1: not coming in as much. Uh. Like, some women might
Speaker 1: not go to the doctor, like because they're producing breast milk,
Speaker 1: but they're not producing enough on a daily basis. So
Speaker 1: there are cases where a baby is like hospitalized and
Speaker 1: they found that the baby is actually suffering some from
Speaker 1: a form of dehydration hypernatrema, which is like a slute
Speaker 1: imbalance that that a baby can die from. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it comes from basically women being so so thoroughly scared
Speaker 1: off from formula or shamed away from formula that their
Speaker 1: their baby is not getting enough milk, but they they
Speaker 1: are afraid to supplement it with anything like formula, so
Speaker 1: the baby ends up in dire straits. Uh. I want
Speaker 1: to take this chance to recommend another podcast. We're talking
Speaker 1: about Judge e um people um One Bad Mother, Great
Speaker 1: Great Mom actually parenting podcast. It's called One Bad Mother,
Speaker 1: but plenty of dads listen as well, uh. And it
Speaker 1: is on the Max Fun Network and our friends, my
Speaker 1: friend Teresa Thorne and biz ellis her co host. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's just a great, fun, funny podcast, very supportive, not judgmental. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I was a guest and told a bit of
Speaker 1: my adoption story a while ago. I can't remember what
Speaker 1: it was his last year. I remember that it was
Speaker 1: obviously it was sometime after Yeah, Midsummer last year. Do
Speaker 1: you remember the name of the episode or the number?
Speaker 1: Now people are gonna want to know. You can google it,
Speaker 1: google that junk. But anyway, one one Bad Mother is
Speaker 1: great and find if it's not them, just find some
Speaker 1: good resource that is trustworthy and that you feel good about. So,
Speaker 1: with all that said, here's how you breastfeed. It's easy,
Speaker 1: all right, Josh just took a shirt off. It's a
Speaker 1: little weird, you know, it's funny, Like some of these
Speaker 1: I was going through, like making the actual the can
Speaker 1: motions and everything. Yeah, some of it's tough to visualize,
Speaker 1: but others. And you may walk through and she's like,
Speaker 1: why are you cradling a loaf of Rye bread? And
Speaker 1: why is it crying? You could make Rye cry. It's
Speaker 1: pretty powerful. So apparently the latch is everything right. The
Speaker 1: baby's got a latch on, and like you said, that
Speaker 1: vacuum has to be formed, and to form the vacuum,
Speaker 1: the baby's got to get a big old mouthful of
Speaker 1: boob nipple specifically, So when you're getting the baby to latch,
Speaker 1: you grab the breast around the nipple, around the aerial eye,
Speaker 1: and you basically um tickle the baby's mouth with your nipple,
Speaker 1: and she's like, okay, I'm opening wide, and you take
Speaker 1: her the bottom of her jaw and put it underneath
Speaker 1: your breast. Apparently are underneath your nipple. I'm sorry. Also,
Speaker 1: don't listen to me. And then you you move her
Speaker 1: head forward onto um so that the top of her
Speaker 1: mouth is now on the nipple and taking in at
Speaker 1: least one to one and a half inches of airy
Speaker 1: od I as well. Yeah, isn't the idea that baby
Speaker 1: comes to mommy? Mommy doesn't like kneel down or lean
Speaker 1: over to baby. Isn't that the how it goes? That's
Speaker 1: what I saw. Uh. There are various types of holds.
Speaker 1: The suplex, the figure four now sorry, that's wrestling, sleeper hole,
Speaker 1: the cradle position that is one of them. That's when
Speaker 1: you you have the baby on your forearm, her head
Speaker 1: and the crook of your arm and support the bottom
Speaker 1: with the other hand. Then pull a little baby close
Speaker 1: to you belly to belly, which is a great thing,
Speaker 1: with her ear, shoulder and hip in a straight line. Ye.
Speaker 1: So that's the cradle the football, Yeah, I call it
Speaker 1: the heisman. So you're you're laying on your back, right,
Speaker 1: Is that what I'm getting here? Right? Well? The mom
Speaker 1: and then there's a pillow very close to your side
Speaker 1: with your baby on top. And I think you're both
Speaker 1: facing in opposite directions, right, or you're facing one another,
Speaker 1: but you're pointing in opposite directions. Yeah, okay, and um,
Speaker 1: you just lift the baby's your baby's head up to
Speaker 1: your breast from the side, and that's really good if
Speaker 1: you had a cesarean section, because I'm guessing you don't
Speaker 1: want a baby anywhere near your belly after that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the football, and I couldn't picture in my head as much.
Speaker 1: That was less clear. Okay, baby's facing this way, I'm
Speaker 1: facing that way and nothing's coming out. It's getting very
Speaker 1: disturbing here. Then you have the old sideline. Poor babies
Speaker 1: is getting a lot of hair in her mouth. Oh god. Uh,
Speaker 1: the sideline not the anything as a side eye. That's
Speaker 1: much different. Um. This is also good if you've had
Speaker 1: a c section or if you want to rest, if
Speaker 1: you're worn out, um, while you nurse. So this is
Speaker 1: when you lie on your side, Uh, place your head
Speaker 1: on a pillow as mom, and pull the baby in
Speaker 1: close to you and use your arm to support her
Speaker 1: little baby bottom, which is adorable, and use your other
Speaker 1: hand to bring your breast up to the baby's mouth.
Speaker 1: So I think that would make sense to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all of it made sense to me. Well, you're I
Speaker 1: practiced that you had to look for bread. I did not.
Speaker 1: So again, if this isn't working at first, don't worry,
Speaker 1: don't be discouraged. Don't take it like your baby doesn't
Speaker 1: like you or is rejecting you. That it's not the case.
Speaker 1: Try try again, Try try again, but also again if
Speaker 1: you reach your point. If you reach your limit, well
Speaker 1: then come up with plan B or go with plan
Speaker 1: B like no judgment. Yeah, and here's a pretty amazing fact. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you have adopted your baby, or if you use
Speaker 1: the surrocuate, or if you're female partners and new mothers.
Speaker 1: You can Actually the point is if you didn't give
Speaker 1: birth to the baby. It's a long way of saying
Speaker 1: that you can actually induce lactation with a lot of
Speaker 1: time and patients not always, but it is possible to
Speaker 1: breastfeed a baby that you did not bear, which is astounding. Yes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of techniques you can use. Hand
Speaker 1: massages help quite a bit. You want to try UM
Speaker 1: hand expressing uh like eight to twelve times a days,
Speaker 1: basically squeezing shadow puppets UM. And you can also take
Speaker 1: something called UM. I love this word. Galactagogues. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: totally sounds like a video game from the eighties. It's
Speaker 1: a type of chemical um that crew that's that spurs
Speaker 1: a woman's body to start creating breast milk. Right, And
Speaker 1: there's some that have been proven through scientific study, drugs
Speaker 1: like meta clodpromide. Right. Then apparently there's herbs that anecdotally
Speaker 1: work wonders, including fenny Greek. They don't have quite as
Speaker 1: much evidence based efficacy, but they may still work for you.
Speaker 1: It's worth trying. Yeah, And I think if you watch
Speaker 1: a lot of Gilmore Girls that might help. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: popping steel magnolias any mother centric plot line, right, Actually,
Speaker 1: mommy dearest, I was about to say, psycho, Mommy dearest,
Speaker 1: you might want to stay away from those. Um, should
Speaker 1: we take another break? Oh? But sure? All right, let's
Speaker 1: do it. So, Chuck, let's say you've decided to breastfeed. Yes,
Speaker 1: how long should you breastfeed for? Well, that's up to
Speaker 1: you as an individual, obviously. Like we said, they experts
Speaker 1: do recommend that first four to six months is pretty key. Um,
Speaker 1: And that doesn't mean it has to be exclusive. You know,
Speaker 1: if you want to augment with formula, you can do that. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's everyone's decision to make on their own. And then
Speaker 1: there was that lady. Remember that one lady made a
Speaker 1: lot of news because she was on the cover. I
Speaker 1: should have looked this up. She's on the cover of
Speaker 1: some magazine at the time or news week. Yeah, with
Speaker 1: a much older like a four or five year old.
Speaker 1: I could remember the age of the of her sun
Speaker 1: that was breastfeeding and got a lot of flak for that.
Speaker 1: But um, it was like an article on attachment parenting,
Speaker 1: and I think that stuff. I can't remember exactly. I
Speaker 1: should look that up, but I'm pretty sure it was
Speaker 1: either Time or news Week, but anyway to make the point,
Speaker 1: like some women have done that where they breastfeed, like
Speaker 1: to their point where their kid is coming up and saying, hey, Mom,
Speaker 1: I would love some food. Sure breast If you're doing that, Um,
Speaker 1: you want to make sure that your kid is eating
Speaker 1: plenty of other stuff as well, because the point of
Speaker 1: breastfeeding or breast milk is that it can sustain a
Speaker 1: child exclusively for the first four to six months of
Speaker 1: his or her life. After that you have to start supplementing,
Speaker 1: either with formula or solid foods. And the rule of
Speaker 1: thumb that I saw um when knowing whether or not
Speaker 1: the baby was ready to start trying solid foods is
Speaker 1: if he or she is coordinated enough to let you
Speaker 1: know when she's full, then you could try to start
Speaker 1: supplementing with solids. But you you can breastfeed exclusively up
Speaker 1: to four to six months. After that, you just physically can't.
Speaker 1: There's not enough nutrients for you to produce to sustain
Speaker 1: your kid with breast milk alone after six months of age.
Speaker 1: We've mentioned pumping a couple of times. We'll get more
Speaker 1: into that in Part two. But um, if you live
Speaker 1: under a rock you don't know what that is. That
Speaker 1: means you are just storing your breast milk. You're using
Speaker 1: a device, a machine. I guess you want to call
Speaker 1: it to um to store your breast milk for later.
Speaker 1: It means you like to have a drink once in
Speaker 1: a while, some layoff. Well we'll get to that too.
Speaker 1: But as far as storage goes, here's the deal. It
Speaker 1: depends on how what kind of fridge freezer you store
Speaker 1: the breast milk in and how often that is opened.
Speaker 1: That Yeah, So like if you have one of those Uh,
Speaker 1: if you have a small old school fridge that has
Speaker 1: the little freezer section in the top of it, that
Speaker 1: is the shortest amount of time. That is only two
Speaker 1: weeks of storage, even if it's in the freezer. Um.
Speaker 1: If you have a separate freezer in that same within
Speaker 1: that fridge, like the little freezer on the bottom or whatever,
Speaker 1: you can store it as long as three to six months.
Speaker 1: If you have a deep freezer in the garage right
Speaker 1: with the audience, keep your dead bodies like burning, keep
Speaker 1: your delivered steak subscription service and dead bodies of some
Speaker 1: guys pickup truck. Uh, you can actually store in the
Speaker 1: deep deep priests or six or twelve months, even though
Speaker 1: uh they say it's past six months, it's not optimal. UM.
Speaker 1: So I think, like, you know, if you were through
Speaker 1: the zombie apocalypse happen and you have some twelve month
Speaker 1: old frozen solid breast milk, you can try and use that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that we'll give our thumbs up on that one. In
Speaker 1: room temperature, apparently if it's a you know, coolish room
Speaker 1: and it's not the heat of summer with no a C,
Speaker 1: we're talking about six hours, which is longer than I thought. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then up to five days in a fridge, although
Speaker 1: that's not optimal supposedly after about three days, and you
Speaker 1: just want to make sure in the fridge in anywhere,
Speaker 1: really everything is super super clean. You got a bottle
Speaker 1: cap on there all. Yeah, everything is is really really
Speaker 1: especially early um, early in baby's life. You want everything
Speaker 1: really really really clean. So the UM one of the reasons,
Speaker 1: one of the big reasons that a lot of women
Speaker 1: pump is because they want a breastfeed, but they also
Speaker 1: either want to or need to get back to work. UM.
Speaker 1: And this raises a big issue as far as breastfeeding goes. Right,
Speaker 1: there is some really great New New Republic review of
Speaker 1: a book called l Activism, and the reviewer is named
Speaker 1: Katherine Joyce, and she points out that and it's great
Speaker 1: that the World Health Organization, in the American Academy of
Speaker 1: Pediatrics and all of these guys say women should breastfeed
Speaker 1: exclusively for at least the first six months, but that
Speaker 1: that demand it puts a burden on basically no one
Speaker 1: except for the mom. And then simultaneously we're saying breastfeed
Speaker 1: for six months and get back to work because we've
Speaker 1: got an economy to to uh to keep going, or
Speaker 1: you have rent to pay, or get back to work
Speaker 1: because you have your family need it right. And so
Speaker 1: Angela Garbas points out, like basically everything about breastfeeding is
Speaker 1: at odds with holding down full time work. That breastfeeding
Speaker 1: for the first few months can take eight hours a
Speaker 1: day of time easily, but hey, go work for eight
Speaker 1: hours on top of that, And she says, I think
Speaker 1: quite reasonably that if we're telling people, for telling mothers, hey,
Speaker 1: you should breastfeed exclusively for six months, then they should
Speaker 1: also be given six months of paid maternity leave at
Speaker 1: a minimum, and that that should just be um should
Speaker 1: be enshrined in in American law. It may sound radical
Speaker 1: to a lot of Americans. In fact, America is the
Speaker 1: only developed nation that doesn't guarantee paid time off for mothers.
Speaker 1: There's not a day of paid time off that a
Speaker 1: mother gets guaranteed under federal law in the United States.
Speaker 1: It's the only developed nation that doesn't have that law.
Speaker 1: It's one of only two nations that doesn't have it.
Speaker 1: The other one is Papua New Guinea. In Papua New Guinea,
Speaker 1: of the people who lived there make their subsistence off
Speaker 1: of agriculture, they don't need to have a law like that.
Speaker 1: It's pretty amazing. Uh, that's amazing too, But in the
Speaker 1: opposite way that amazing. Um yeah, I mean, these days,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of jobs that are way more
Speaker 1: flexible as far as working from home or having lactation rooms, um,
Speaker 1: flexible scheduling. Like a lot of companies have made it
Speaker 1: much easier for you with a combination of pumping and
Speaker 1: dumping to uh to still be able to do that.
Speaker 1: But if you're not lucky enough to be in one
Speaker 1: of those scenarios, and if you've got a job that's
Speaker 1: like nope, don't do that here, well then you gotta cut. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: they have to do something. They have to allow some
Speaker 1: break time, and um, they have to provide some private place.
Speaker 1: But there's no specifications that it can't be some old
Speaker 1: shower stalls. And of course that's just the law. Like,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean every company absolutely does this across the board. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are people that run a foul of the law.
Speaker 1: You're right, and it is getting better though, it is
Speaker 1: getting better among employers. But in the United States, there's
Speaker 1: the Family Leave Act and it does guarantee twelve weeks
Speaker 1: of unpaid maternity leave. Yeah, but your family might not
Speaker 1: be able to afford that, so that equals like no
Speaker 1: maternity time. Yeah. And they've found across the board that,
Speaker 1: um that higher income families breastfeed longer. It's just the
Speaker 1: way it is. Um. Here's some more stats for you
Speaker 1: if you want to talk about how long to breastfeed. Uh.
Speaker 1: Most women stop within the first year. Uh. In two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen, the CDC said seventy seven percent of American
Speaker 1: women breastfed from birth. Uh, at that rate since birth,
Speaker 1: and then after six months that dropped to six But
Speaker 1: you make a big point, Well, you didn't make the point.
Speaker 1: You source these points I I I arranged them to
Speaker 1: make point. Yeah. Yeah, Now you make a point that
Speaker 1: it's a it depends on where you live in the world.
Speaker 1: Uh in Africa, on the continent of women breastfed beyond
Speaker 1: twelve months, So it definitely depends on where you are.
Speaker 1: And you make the point, which is what I was
Speaker 1: getting to, is that a lot of these stats kind
Speaker 1: of stink because they're old, man, they stink and outnumbered, contradictory, contradictory,
Speaker 1: So it's really hard to kind of get great percentages
Speaker 1: on this stuff. But everything that we looked at does
Speaker 1: say that breastfeeding is on the rise, uh in what
Speaker 1: the last probably twenty years. Yeah, and that it's on
Speaker 1: the rise, especially among older, white, educated, wealthier women for
Speaker 1: all the reasons we talked about. Yeah yeah, So uh,
Speaker 1: let's pull out a Bummersville for a second, chuck, and
Speaker 1: uh talk about the food food, Yes, like what a
Speaker 1: mom eats. Um, If the mom is is producing this milk,
Speaker 1: it would make sense in turn that the milk will
Speaker 1: end up because we said each recipe each day can
Speaker 1: be a little bit different. And if you had um,
Speaker 1: General Sal's chicken, Yeah, the night before your breast milk
Speaker 1: might be a little spicier. Yeah, there's actually there's a
Speaker 1: study back in the the seventies at the University of
Speaker 1: Manitoba that took breast folk from breast smolk from women
Speaker 1: and had like a flavor professional tasting panel did an
Speaker 1: episode on those um sample and one of the women
Speaker 1: had eaten spicy food the night before and hers was
Speaker 1: described as hot and peppery. Yeah, pretty neat. It is
Speaker 1: pretty neat. Uh. And then this one woman, and she's
Speaker 1: not the only one, of course, but it's lady named
Speaker 1: Julia Manella of the monell Chemical Sense to Center in
Speaker 1: Philadelphia said that she thinks and a lot of people
Speaker 1: agree that these early flavor profiles that the baby experiences
Speaker 1: developed uh, taste preferences for later in life. Right, that
Speaker 1: makes sense to me. I see no reason why that
Speaker 1: should not be true. No, No, I don't know that
Speaker 1: it's proven though, but it does make a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: So when your breastfeeding, the rule of thumb that I've
Speaker 1: seen is that you want to eat about five more
Speaker 1: calories a day than you were before you were pregnant. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: potato chips, candy bars, you know, you want to avoid
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Man, You actually, um want to
Speaker 1: avoid junk food instead, you want to eat the good
Speaker 1: stuff that's right, the stuff that's good for you, the
Speaker 1: stuff that's whole, This stuff that's chuck full of like
Speaker 1: good vitamins and it's nutritious, aka the food you should
Speaker 1: eat period. But all that stuff is gonna pass right
Speaker 1: through you into your baby in the form of your milk.
Speaker 1: It's so it's the stuff you eat is like a
Speaker 1: gift to your baby. It's like passing that really great
Speaker 1: food along. That's right. Sometimes like uh, something that might
Speaker 1: give mom and baby problems if you eat like Brussels
Speaker 1: sprouts or cabbage, or things that might make you a
Speaker 1: little gassy broccoli. Everyone has different things that make them gassier.
Speaker 1: Whatever that is for you that could cause some trouble. Um.
Speaker 1: What else anything anything like heavy and additives or dies
Speaker 1: like we're talking about like non whole foods, um could
Speaker 1: produce a little bit more issues for you and baby.
Speaker 1: Both onions, garlic, citrus is no good or just all
Speaker 1: of these things can they can produce problems? Right, So,
Speaker 1: if you've noticed that your baby um after eating, shortly
Speaker 1: after eating, is um drawing her legs up to her
Speaker 1: her um stomach and screaming that's colic. It's probably because
Speaker 1: your baby has gas. You want to figure out what
Speaker 1: it is that you're eating that is giving your baby gas. UM.
Speaker 1: There's also other things that you can pass on to
Speaker 1: your baby that the baby doesn't want that can result
Speaker 1: in an unhappy baby. Caffeine UM that can pop up
Speaker 1: not just in coffee, but also things like coke and
Speaker 1: chocolate and all sorts of stuff. There's also worries that
Speaker 1: babies can actually develop food allergies UM, which is entirely possible.
Speaker 1: UM that usually is sourced back to milk. You might
Speaker 1: not be lactose intolerant, but your baby might be. All
Speaker 1: this stuff you can figure out on your own very
Speaker 1: easily doing a very simple at home experiment. Take whatever
Speaker 1: food you think is making your baby unhappy UM and
Speaker 1: remove it from your diet for about a week. See
Speaker 1: if that clears it up. If it doesn't, it wasn't
Speaker 1: that food. You can reintroduce that food. Yeah, it's UM.
Speaker 1: Like with any food allergy, it's just called an elimination diet,
Speaker 1: and you get rid of the stuff until you see
Speaker 1: a change. If it doesn't change, and move on to
Speaker 1: the next thing, and um, mom's usually pretty in tune
Speaker 1: with baby and UM ideally, and so it's um an
Speaker 1: elimination diet is is pretty I don't want to say easy,
Speaker 1: because it is time consuming and you should keep records
Speaker 1: of things. Um, but it's fairly intuitive. I think it's
Speaker 1: what I was looking for. So um. Apparently they used
Speaker 1: to tell moms drink a bunch of beer because it'll
Speaker 1: aid in milk production. That sounds so true. It's ridiculous,
Speaker 1: all right, so it must be true. Yeah, so they
Speaker 1: realize that, no, you should probably not do that. Not
Speaker 1: only does it not aid in milk production, but apparently
Speaker 1: the blood alcohol content uh that you have about the
Speaker 1: same percentage is past slong to your breast milk. The
Speaker 1: blood alcohol content of your breast milk is pretty much
Speaker 1: the same as your blood alcohol level at any given point,
Speaker 1: which is super low. Unless you've been drinking. Then it's
Speaker 1: super high, and then you're getting poor baby blitzed, well
Speaker 1: breastfeeding drunk. You would have to drink a lot. I
Speaker 1: don't know that that's the case, man, No, it's absolutely
Speaker 1: the case. Like your blood alcohol content, even if you're ripped,
Speaker 1: is still super super low. As far as a percentage
Speaker 1: of alcohol in your blood. But we're talking about like
Speaker 1: that way like eight pounds. Oh no, no, no, I'm
Speaker 1: not recommending it. I'm just saying it's not like you're
Speaker 1: giving your kid a shot of booze. If you've um,
Speaker 1: you know it's it's And this is another one of
Speaker 1: those things that like if if you look at ten
Speaker 1: different places, you're gonna get ten different opinions, even from doctors.
Speaker 1: I saw one doctor was like, you know what, this
Speaker 1: is one of those things that just makes it even
Speaker 1: harder for a woman is to tell her she shouldn't
Speaker 1: even have a glass of wine um when she's breastfeeding. UM.
Speaker 1: So really, I like, I literally looked at like four
Speaker 1: different things and they all said something different. What I
Speaker 1: did see what is there's a direct correlation between the
Speaker 1: amount that you're drinking and whether or not you're drinking
Speaker 1: it with food. UM. Just like with the blood alcohol
Speaker 1: tenant UH levels. It has to do with the mom's
Speaker 1: weight um, and like the amount of fat like where
Speaker 1: alcohol is stored. So there's a lot of factors that
Speaker 1: go into it. UM. The American Academy of Pediatrics Committee
Speaker 1: on Drugs considers alcohol compatible with breastfeeding. So they said
Speaker 1: you don't have to abstain, but everything I read says
Speaker 1: like keep it in check and maybe don't like drink
Speaker 1: the wine while you're breastfeeding or within a couple of hours,
Speaker 1: like maybe have the glass of wine after you breastfed
Speaker 1: and put baby down for the night. So the rule
Speaker 1: of thought myself is two hours uh for the alcohols
Speaker 1: out of your system, which means, um, if you're breastfeeding
Speaker 1: every two hours, you've gotta either pump and dump or
Speaker 1: hand express or yet time it so that it's not yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not passing it along. And this is after you know,
Speaker 1: nine months of probably abstaining from alcohol. Two yeah. Yeah, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm I mean, I don't blame anybody for being like,
Speaker 1: I'm having a glass of wine. You know, Um, people
Speaker 1: always say a glass of wine. Why didn't see people
Speaker 1: say I'm having a scotch. I'm having a fifth of Scotch. No,
Speaker 1: don't have a fifth. Do you have an institution attitude
Speaker 1: towards smoking and breastfeeding? Hum? Well, I mean I think
Speaker 1: you shouldn't smoke a period. I think that's true. So
Speaker 1: I guess you could say that in keeping with that
Speaker 1: I would say you shouldn't smoke and breastfeed. Yeah, but apparently, um,
Speaker 1: the nicotine is not good for milk. Milk production, It
Speaker 1: diminishes milk production, yes, just on practical level. You're not
Speaker 1: doing yourself any favors. It reduces the amount of vitamin
Speaker 1: C president in your in your breast milk. Um, it
Speaker 1: can increase nausea in the baby. That alone, that's sad
Speaker 1: um and plus not to mention if you're actually smoking
Speaker 1: around the baby, come on. Uh. And then there's that
Speaker 1: woman in Arizona. Do you remember her? The mom who
Speaker 1: got it just hugely, massively in trouble because she took
Speaker 1: her baby to the hospitals, like, something's wrong with with
Speaker 1: my baby and the doctor's tested it, and we're like,
Speaker 1: that's weird. Your baby has a lot of cocaine in
Speaker 1: his system right now, any idea, Why have you been
Speaker 1: doing cocaine? Well, yeah I did, But what's that got
Speaker 1: to do with my baby? Right? Are you breastfeeding? And
Speaker 1: she was like yes, I am, Well you pass the
Speaker 1: cocaine onto your baby. Yeah. Yeah. The old days of
Speaker 1: walking around baby on breast with a cigarette in one
Speaker 1: hand and a scotch on the other and a bump
Speaker 1: of coke in your nose. Those days are long gone.
Speaker 1: We know better at this point, I was not breastfed,
Speaker 1: by the way, I'm pretty sure I was actually, now
Speaker 1: that you say that, I'm not. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel securely attached. Yeah, my momy actually told me this,
Speaker 1: just like in the last six or eight years even,
Speaker 1: and I was like, huh, how did she tell you?
Speaker 1: I don't remember. I think it was on my birthday card,
Speaker 1: your birthday, Happy birthday. And by the way, no, I
Speaker 1: can't remember. It just came up and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that, and she said, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: She I was her third kid, didn't have a lot
Speaker 1: of help from my dad, so she was managing a
Speaker 1: three year old and a six year old, and I
Speaker 1: think had a rough time breastfeeding my brother. Um, because
Speaker 1: my brother said she just wasn't organized enough. No, I'm
Speaker 1: just joking out. Scott would have been like, let me
Speaker 1: hand express this for late there, I'll feed myself. Um.
Speaker 1: I think had a rough time breastfeeding Scott, and then UM,
Speaker 1: I think just sort of decided like, yeah, I got
Speaker 1: too much going on going with the formula for baby chuck.
Speaker 1: And it was also at a time in the early seventies,
Speaker 1: like starting in the fifties through the seventies and eighties,
Speaker 1: even to a certain degree, there was a bigger move
Speaker 1: toward formula feeding and away from breastfeeding, because the notion
Speaker 1: was like, this science has finally figured it out. You
Speaker 1: don't need to breastfeed because we have this wonderful new
Speaker 1: thing called formula, which the name formula just cracks me
Speaker 1: up that that's what it's called. That they didn't think
Speaker 1: of some name of it. I know, it's like the
Speaker 1: most generic clinical term they could have come on, like, hey,
Speaker 1: we came up with this formula that mem express milk.
Speaker 1: What should we call it? Formula? The originally is called
Speaker 1: formula X, but they thought that was too well, that
Speaker 1: makes more sense even than just formula. It's like, hey,
Speaker 1: we got this new recipe for chicken. What do you
Speaker 1: call it? Recipe? Good point, But that whole that whole
Speaker 1: um push starting in well as previous of the fifties.
Speaker 1: We'll talk more about it in part two. But there's
Speaker 1: a lot of push back that came out as a
Speaker 1: result of this um trend toward formulas, right, And there
Speaker 1: are actually groups that are called l activist groups that
Speaker 1: UM started beginning with the lech A League UM, which
Speaker 1: was established in the fifties and the States among a
Speaker 1: group of Catholic moms who decided that it was their
Speaker 1: their biblical right, their biblical heritage to breastfeed their babies
Speaker 1: and that like that was what God wanted them to do.
Speaker 1: And the League UH is still around today. It's one
Speaker 1: of the most prominent l activist groups around. UM. They're
Speaker 1: very active in in you know, public aware this, teaching,
Speaker 1: breastfeeding classes, all that stuff. But they grew out of
Speaker 1: this group of Catholic moms in the fifties who actually
Speaker 1: took their name from UM shrine down in Jacksonville. Oh really, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Jailorida, Jacksonville, Florida. Yet the name of the shrine
Speaker 1: is called Newest Dress Senora de la boene Parto, which
Speaker 1: means our Lady of Happy Delivery and Plentiful Milk. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And they published UH in night a very famous pamphlet
Speaker 1: called The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding that eventually became a
Speaker 1: book and it was very very popular. It's now in
Speaker 1: six languages and its eighth edition and also in the seventies.
Speaker 1: We've talked about Hannah Rosen before. She said, there were
Speaker 1: other groups that, um, we're a little a little more hip. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Then the the L L right that came out, and
Speaker 1: she said, notably one in Boston. Do you know the
Speaker 1: name of this one? I don't know that they had
Speaker 1: a name they had They created a sort of a
Speaker 1: move it. Yeah, they wrote a book called Our Bodies, Ourselves, right,
Speaker 1: and that was that was basically the foundation for what
Speaker 1: she calls the second wave of lactivism. Yeah, and she
Speaker 1: said they were just she said, quote were more groovy
Speaker 1: types than the L L L moms, h slashy jeans, clogs, bandana's,
Speaker 1: holding back their waist, lenked hair. She said, but the
Speaker 1: two movements grew out of the common frustration and anger
Speaker 1: of this condescending medical establishment, this paternalistic, non informative, judgmental
Speaker 1: group of men basically who are just like, just do
Speaker 1: what we tell you, you don't need to ask questions.
Speaker 1: This trust that pretty much in these groups came out
Speaker 1: and said, you know what, um, these are our bodies
Speaker 1: and our decisions. I don't think beer aids and milk production.
Speaker 1: They so they took their um there well, I guess
Speaker 1: they're they're womanly art of breastfeeding, and they they they
Speaker 1: kept it, they took it back, they young to back.
Speaker 1: And so the lacktivism has always had this kind of
Speaker 1: tinge of the moral authority because of the religious roots
Speaker 1: of the Light Cha League and radicalism because it was um.
Speaker 1: Both waves came counter to the medical establishment at the time.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of um. A lot of current
Speaker 1: understanding of breastfeeding is not necessarily based on accurate scientific information. Right. Yes,
Speaker 1: we already talked about how the benefits of breastfeeding are
Speaker 1: fairly relative, but there's also a lot of like misinformation
Speaker 1: or misunderstanding about how like what breastfeeding and breast milk
Speaker 1: can do for a developing baby. Yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of correlative effects that it's tough to put the hard
Speaker 1: science behind because um, as Hannah Rosen says, it's tough
Speaker 1: to do us really ideal study because what you would
Speaker 1: have to do for it to stand up to scientific
Speaker 1: rigor would be to divide up two groups of mothers
Speaker 1: and say you breastfeed, you don't, and then measure the
Speaker 1: outcomes for years. And you can't do that. You can't
Speaker 1: tell a woman not to breastfeed for the sake of
Speaker 1: this study. So what they end up doing is they
Speaker 1: just look at observational studies where they look at differences
Speaker 1: in the two populations over the years. And this is
Speaker 1: where you get that that skewed perception, or where you
Speaker 1: can get a skewed perception because they may be looking
Speaker 1: at us mothers of a certain social strategy. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of confounding factors that are variables, right
Speaker 1: that that you know, women who tend to breastfeed these
Speaker 1: days again tend to be um from a wealthier family,
Speaker 1: so they make maybe you can stay at home more,
Speaker 1: or they have more money available for preventative healthcare measures.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of other things that could be accounting
Speaker 1: for these better health outcomes that studies have found but
Speaker 1: have been able to say, yes, this is directly because
Speaker 1: these babies were breastfed. The problem is is that these
Speaker 1: studies that say, hey, these breastfed babies had these amazing
Speaker 1: um increases in i Q. That's what gets reported through
Speaker 1: lazy scientific reporting, and it hits the popular media and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, that's gospel fact. And if
Speaker 1: you don't breastfeed your baby, You're a horrible mom. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This In two thousand seven, the World Health Organization UH
Speaker 1: did a survey of all this literature and they looked
Speaker 1: at these the big five claims about benefits of breastfeeding
Speaker 1: lowers cholesterol, lowers blood pressure, lowers risk of obesity, lowers
Speaker 1: risk of type two diabetes, and increases cognitive ability. And
Speaker 1: they didn't find a lot of hard scientific support for
Speaker 1: one through four, but they did see, like you said that, UM,
Speaker 1: there was a correlation between an increase i Q right,
Speaker 1: but they found it was a relatively small increase. But
Speaker 1: if you're one of those like dog eat dog and
Speaker 1: role my kid in preschool before she's even born type
Speaker 1: of parents, you'd be like, I'll take those extra five
Speaker 1: i Q points. Sure. Yeah. UM. So this is part one.
Speaker 1: Uh but before we go, Chuck, do you have anything else? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know what for part one? Just since we talked
Speaker 1: about breastfeeding at work and stuff, UM, I feel like
Speaker 1: we would be remiss if we dot did not mention um.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump remember that in two about five years ago,
Speaker 1: he was in a deposition and one of them opposing attorneys,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Beck, went to UM went to pump okay, breast
Speaker 1: milk in this deposition. And he got up and said, uh,
Speaker 1: you're disgusting. You're disgusting, and he got out of the room.
Speaker 1: And this was a very I can't believe you don't remember.
Speaker 1: This was a huge deal or a huge deal. And um,
Speaker 1: what she says, Um Elizabeth Beck from her side said,
Speaker 1: you know he called me. You know, there's nothing disgusting
Speaker 1: about this. He can't say that to a woman who
Speaker 1: is breastfeeding or pumping or doing whatever, no matter where
Speaker 1: it is. And then um Trump and his uh general counsel,
Speaker 1: Um what was his name, Alan Garton, they contend like, sure,
Speaker 1: he said she was disgusting, he said, but like they
Speaker 1: didn't deny that. They said, but that this is not
Speaker 1: about breastfeeding. They said that she was in a deposition,
Speaker 1: right in the middle of a deposition. This is a quote,
Speaker 1: attempting to breastfeed, to pump in the middle of a
Speaker 1: deposition with five lawyers, and was not excusing herself. And
Speaker 1: he claimed that Beck orchestrated the stunt because she ran
Speaker 1: out of questions, didn't know what to do, and so
Speaker 1: she just like pulled this breast pumping move. Uh, the
Speaker 1: old breast pump um. So you know, those are the
Speaker 1: two sides of the story. I'm not going to comment
Speaker 1: one way or the other other than saying you should
Speaker 1: never use the word disgusting when a woman is bread, breastfeeding,
Speaker 1: or pumping or anything. He said, I'm gonna be president
Speaker 1: one day, and she was like, you're not, Like, I
Speaker 1: don't care what the circumstance. Don't say that even if
Speaker 1: you if you think it's inappropriate. I'm not even gonna
Speaker 1: say whether you know, I'm not even weigh in on that.
Speaker 1: But if if you think it's inappropriate, then you say, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe I think this is inappropriate. Don't say you're disgusting,
Speaker 1: not not right. I agree this is political as I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get on this one, and that is feeding your
Speaker 1: baby Part one. Man, this one is a robust. Yeah
Speaker 1: that's just part one. Uh so be sure to join
Speaker 1: us for part two. Do we have a listener mail
Speaker 1: or these things so thoroughly conjoined that they can't be
Speaker 1: separated by listener mail? Yeah, let's uh, let's skip the
Speaker 1: listener maail on this one. Okay, good idea. All right,
Speaker 1: we'll join us for How feeding Babies Works Part two.
Speaker 1: Come and at you soon and in the meantime, if
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us, you can
Speaker 1: tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You
Speaker 1: can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you
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