The Ordinary Doula Podcast
Welcome to The Ordinary Doula Podcast with Angie Rosier, hosted by Birth Learning. We help folks prepare for labor and birth with expertise coming from 20 years of experience in a busy doula practice, helping thousands of people prepare for labor, providing essential knowledge and tools for positive and empowering birth experiences.
The Ordinary Doula Podcast
E:59 Benefits of Prenatal Lactation Preparation
In this episode, we explore the importance of prenatal lactation preparation and how it empowers expectant parents to navigate breastfeeding with confidence. Learn about the benefits of early education, strategies for overcoming common challenges, and tips to optimize breastfeeding success from the very start. Whether you're a first-time parent or looking for ways to improve your breastfeeding journey, this episode provides practical advice and expert insights.
Key Topics Discussed:
- Why prenatal lactation education matters
- Common breastfeeding myths and how to address them
- Tips for preparing mentally and physically during pregnancy
- How lactation prep can boost confidence postpartum
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Show Credits
Host: Angie Rosier
Music: Michael Hicks
Photographer: Toni Walker
Episode Artwork: Nick Greenwood
Producer: Gillian Rosier Frampton
Voiceover: Ryan Parker
Welcome to the Ordinary Doula Podcast with Angie Rozier, hosted by Birth Learning, where we help prepare folks for labor and birth with expertise coming from 20 years of experience in a busy doula practice, helping thousands of people prepare for labor, providing essential knowledge and tools for positive and empowering birth experiences.
Speaker 2:Hello, this is Angie with the Ordinary Doula Podcast. I am so happy to be with you here today. I don't know what time of the year it is when you are listening to this, but it's getting close to Christmas time when I'm recording it and hopefully you can have a great holiday season with your friends or family or just by yourself, like I think, our own little private holidays are also some of the best things to celebrate and enjoy what we, what we feel and celebrate in our heart. Sometimes it's a hard time of year for folks too, so if that's the case, I hope you feel peace and connection that you'reation visits. So I do in-home visits as an IBCLC with folks at a variety of times. Sometimes it's the day they get home from the hospital after having a baby. Sometimes it's a few days after, when they're encountering some challenges. Sometimes it's two weeks or two months. I'm meeting with somebody tomorrow and the baby's a couple months old. I met with somebody last week. Baby was born, you know, three or four months ago. So it's a variety of times that we visit.
Speaker 2:But I want to talk about specifically the benefit of prenatal visiting with an IBCLC and what the value of that might be. So there are breastfeeding classes to take. I would highly encourage you to take a breastfeeding class, and this is something I did not used to feel that importantly about. I just felt if people had a tiny bit of knowledge of the basics, like a couple sentences worth in their head, then they would be fine If their goal was to breastfeed like all right, we know you want to breastfeed. If you know, you know, let's say there's not much milk in the beginning, it's important to latch the baby early and we'll see what happens. That's all you know. Great, there's so much more to know than that and as you do know things before you go into it, it helps take away some of that mystery and it helps you be more realistically and better prepared for what you face when the baby is born.
Speaker 2:So the reason I am bringing this topic up I have seen a couple of people lately. One of them, I think the baby, was a couple weeks old and they were in kind of a dire situation and it took them a while to reach out for support and I wished they had reached out a little bit sooner. The other situation was similar, but the baby wasn't quite as old. It was maybe five, six days old, not a couple of weeks old. But I could see, as I met with folks, there was some things they could have eliminated some challenges or negated them to some extent by some prenatal knowledge, by the things that they prepared themselves with. I don't know if you're sensing this too, but there are so many baby products out there and breastfeeding products and baby monitors and there's so many apps like it feels overwhelming all the things that you need quote unquote need to get when a baby's born. But as I've seen these last couple of situations that prompted this episode, people kind of got they purchased less helpful items, which was kind of interesting Along the lines of pumps. They got pumps that were not good for their goals. They weren't helping them meet their goals, nor were they a great pump or a good fit for them. They also had in one case they had some bottles that are some of my least favorite bottles on the market and it was creating some challenges that these people were facing.
Speaker 2:Another one I went and visited this this client and the baby had been drinking pumped breast milk diligently which was pretty cool from a bottle, but had not tried to breastfeed very much. So as we got into a visit. You know, we tried a latch and we kind of worked on a latch and had a position for that and I asked the mom how feedings had gone and we were probably five minutes into this latch, which with a baby, a newborn, you know these often take 10 to 40 minutes for a feeding and if you don't know that you wouldn't know that. But we were about five minutes in and I said, okay, is this kind of like it has been? She goes we've never tried this long, like they had never tried up to five minutes to get the baby on the breast and to stay on the breast. So that was like, oh gosh, that would have been really neat for them to know, before this baby was born and as they've been working with it for a couple of weeks now, that the feeding is going to be kind of a long time and a latch is an instant. It does take a little bit of time for some babies to get a good latch and this baby did marvelous. Like this baby latched on and gave a great feed, got a good amount out of the breast and for a baby that hadn't been practicing on the breast very much, I was incredibly impressed with what this baby was able to do.
Speaker 2:Not all babies will jump back and forth like that very easily, so the benefits of prenatal education with a lactation consultant can be incredibly beneficial. They can customize the preparation to you to what your goals are. I love meeting with my clients ahead of time. It's a good hour and a half to two hours and we will spend time talking about what to expect in the early days, why that first latch is important in that first hour and some positions we will. I bring a little baby doll and I let them kind of hold it.
Speaker 2:As I work in a hospital in lactation, I'll tell you one thing that's fascinating is that cross cradle hold is not intuitive to almost anyone. Everybody wants to do just a regular cradle hold, which that's what we see right. If you have had the privilege or experience to be able to see anyone breastfeeding in your life, they're probably doing a cradle hold which is a super advanced move Like that's in a mom and a baby who know what they're doing. That baby has some neck control. That mom can do it one handed, but in the beginning it's two to four hands. It seems like to help get a baby latched and stay latched, so helping them with that and helping them to know what to expect.
Speaker 2:You know a lot of people like, okay, awesome, my baby latched. Great, in the first hour. We're good to go, not realizing that baby's going to go pretty sleepy for a while for the next day and then the next day the baby's going to be pretty ornery, pretty grumpy, pretty hungry, wanting to latch what will feel like relentlessly. So just knowing those things can be helpful. And then product wise, right. So having someone I will do, even like a, an, assess a nipple assessment ahead of time and fit flanges for somebody ahead of time, and those can change slightly within millimeters after delivery and at some time at the breast. But, um, when people have a, a well-fitting flange, if they're going to be needing to use a pump, that's going to be helpful. Um, if sometimes I'll look at nipples, I'm like, oh boy you, you know, this might be a little more challenging. So people go into it with realistic expectations. I always, always, always, there's always hope. I promise, I promise.
Speaker 2:I've seen some really tough situations turn out beautifully. A few months ago I was seeing two different people. One everything was going fabulously Like. Her anatomy was the breast and the nipple and the baby's mouth were perfect for each other, like the breast was um long and or the nipple was long. The breast was, the nipple was very elastic, very supple, easy, latch. Um, and I was working with another client who had very short nipples, one flat, very firm breasts and the baby's mouth didn't help us out either. And as I worked with both of these I was feeling pretty confident about the one situation and feeling kind of anxious about the other, hoping that things could work out, knowing it would take a lot of time and dedication from that mom and baby. But they could do it, they could get it to work. And wouldn't you know it? It in the course of my time working with them they switched places. The mom, who I was worried about because of Anatomy challenges, and for both baby and mom, ended up doing beautifully where the mom and the baby, who had a perfect matchup of Anatomy and made it look really simple in the beginning, they ended up coming up with some unique challenges down the road. So they kind of switched spots. So there's always always hope that if something looks or seems frustrating, we can get past it, we can work through it If you're willing to learn about it and kind of put in the time and the dedication to make that work. Sometimes getting breastfeeding to work great does take a couple weeks or a few weeks. I've seen up to a couple months before it gets pretty or more easy. So that prenatal education is very helpful.
Speaker 2:I like to look at the bottles people have and sometimes like, oh, how about we switch to a different, uh, a different bottle in this situation? Or oh, that pump. Like, what are your goals with pumping? If they say I'm going to be an exclusive pumper, I'm like then we got to get a different pump for you, because not all pumps are created equal. There are companies out there who will sell the public any old thing, right, whether it's good, they market better than they research. So they're. You know, depending on what's marketed to you. Do a little of your own research. Get a good pump. If you're going to be pumping a lot, it's great to have a double electric plug-in pump, not a hands-freefree. I know hands-free sounds amazing and convenient, but if you're doing a lot of pumping that's not a great pump for you. Or if we need that to bring the milk in, it's probably not going to be strong enough to be used multiple times a day to bring milk in or if we're exclusively pumping.
Speaker 2:Same with bottles get a good bottle, and what I mean by a good bottle is a bottle that has a long, firm nipple and a broad base. So there are brands out there that have very soft nipples. They try to look like a breast. It's kind of short and babies can't quite trust those. They're kind of flimsy. They're soft enough that as the baby applies it's firm, suck to that and seal. It can kind of compress the nipple and milk doesn't come out as well. I've even seen babies compress the whole nipple into the bottle and then they're not even getting anything out at all. So do the triangle test, see if that nipple and the bottle that you have purchased can fit into that little triangle test that you may have seen online. I'm trying to think other things. Yeah, a lot of it is the equipment people get. So check in with your lactation specialist ahead of time, if you can, about what your plans are.
Speaker 2:And in a perfect world we don't. In a perfect breastfeeding world, we don't really want to touch a pump for three to four weeks or a bottle, or even a pacifier, if we can help it, because we want to get the milk regulated between the mom and the baby and not have a pump interrupt that. We want to get the baby really good at the breast before we introduce the bottle and sometimes even pacifiers I've seen that kind of knocks the baby off. I was just at a client yesterday. They have a pretty new baby three, four days old. The baby's doing pretty well at latching but with engorgement, got a little frustrated and so they gave it a pacifier during the night and the next few latches, they said the baby just didn't do as well. So again, in a perfect breastfeeding world, we avoid any artificial nipples or pumping for three to four weeks.
Speaker 2:And then there's real life. There's reality and we oftentimes need to use any one or all of those tools in certain situations, that we need to lean on them a little bit more in certain situations. So an IBCLC can help guide you through that. So make sure you work with one if you are able to, or go to those breastfeeding support groups. There's resources online. Maybe your pediatrician's office has a lactation consultant available. There are a lot of community resources. There's WIC, there's La Leche League. Maybe your family is a great source of support and knowledge for that. But look around, make sure that you have the information you need and the support and then, as everything in parenting, you're going to take all that information, that you have the information you need and the support, and then, as everything in parenting, you're going to take all that information that you're getting out there that you know sometimes contradicts each other and you're going to cipher through it and use what you need for you, your situation, your baby and your family. So hopefully that's a little tidbit on some importance of preemptively, like taking some initiation to get some lactation help before you even have a baby in your arms can be very helpful. Lots of things to learn there. So hopefully that's something you can use, take with you and it can help your situation or somebody that you know.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for being with me here today. I've enjoyed I always enjoy time together. I love doing this podcast and the people I meet through it, the connections that I'm able to make, and I hope I just hope. My hope is that this information can help someone somewhere. Hopefully you can reach out and make a great connection with someone else today. Go do a kind act of service in the world Could be simple. Those simple things go a long, long ways. Hopefully you have a good one and we will see you here next time.
Speaker 1:Thanks, Thank you for listening to the Ordinary Doula podcast with Angie Rozier, hosted by Birth Learning. Episode credits will be in the show notes Tune in next time as we continue to explore the many aspects of giving birth. Thank you.