E120: What If Messy Breastfeeding Is Normal

Breastfeeding can look like a sunlit photo shoot online and feel like a complicated midnight puzzle in real life. We’re naming that gap without shame. If you’ve ever wondered why it isn’t coming “naturally,” why your baby pops on and off, why you’re stuck in endless cluster feeding, or why you’re Googling in the dark with tears on your face, you’re not alone and you’re not doing it wrong.

We dig into why so many parents in the United States don’t grow up seeing much breastfeeding in everyday life, then get hit with pristine marketing images and highlight reels during pregnancy. We talk about the real early breastfeeding experience: awkward positioning, the learning curve of latch, sore or cracked nipples, fear about milk supply, and the relentless pressure of keeping a newborn thriving. I also share real client stories, including what it can look like months in when someone is still working incredibly hard, juggling pumping, topping off with bottles, and finding a sustainable combo feeding rhythm.

We also unpack the confusion that comes from conflicting advice from TikTok, family, pediatric providers, and lactation support, plus the expectations trap of comparing yourself to “freezer full of milk” content. The takeaway is simple and freeing: hard does not mean failed. Breastfeeding is a skill, every baby is different, and any amount of breast milk is a meaningful gift. If you’re struggling, ask for help early and keep what supports you.

Subscribe for more real-world birth and postpartum guidance, share this with a friend who needs a little grace today, and leave a review so more parents can find the support they deserve. What part of breastfeeding feels hardest right now?

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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

Transcript

Welcome And Why This Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to the Ordinary Doula Podcast with Angie Rojier, 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.

The Unreal Image Of Breastfeeding

The Unpretty Reality At 2 A.M.

Real Client Stories And Triple Feeding

Conflicting Advice And Online Expectations

Getting Help Early And Reframing Pain

Grace For Yourself And Closing

SPEAKER_01 0:56

I'm always curious where people are, what they're doing. Maybe you're listening to this as you drive, as you are up in the night with a baby, um, as you work, as you walk, whatever that might be. Welcome. Glad to have you. So today I want to talk about something um kind of a vision of what we have in our mind and then what it can be reality for us when we when we talk about what breastfeeding looks like. So I think in our culture sometimes, like we, and you know, this is we're based in the United States, um, so our culture, different than many from around the world, we don't see the average person doesn't actually see at a lot of breastfeeding in our culture. Um, many people can get all the way to adulthood and into parenthood, perhaps, without have ever having seen a lot of um breastfeeding with their own eyes. So we might not always get a good picture of what that looks like. Um other cultures around the world, it is very common in their culture to see that it's um much more prevalent in the public arena um and and and the way families approach it can be a little bit different. So speaking in the United States, sometimes we're not aware of what that looks like. However, we might get um from glimpses of media, um and and you'll notice when you're pregnant, you get a lot of things marketed to you, right? You're gonna start seeing um direct marketing to you about all kinds of products and um things that they're claim you need for your baby coming up. And people wanna usually want to do a pretty good job of parenting, so they're gonna look into that and get the stuff. So you might start seeing pictures, even if not in real life, but you might see um images of of breastfeeding at that point. And typically those images are gonna be pretty pristine, right? As most of our images are. We have a lot of ability to make things look really great. Um, I teach um breastfeeding classes at a couple local hospitals, and um, even in our um curriculum, whether uh our digital media, our print media that we're sharing with these classes, we have a picture of someone breastfeeding, right? And I like to address that with my classes very first day, because the biggest picture on our breastfeeding chapter is a woman um sitting in a chair. She has her hair done beautifully. I mean, it is a photo shoot. She's wearing jeans. Um, it's daytime. She's sitting in front of a window, her makeup's done. She has she's sitting in a white chair that's really white, and she has this lovely smile on her face. So a lot of times that's the image we have in our mind of what breastfeeding should look like, what it should sound like, what it should feel like is just this lovely, there might be some, you know, violins playing in this corner and some maybe butterflies flying in this corner. We have a pretty positive picture of what it should look like. And then a lot of times, if we haven't seen it a lot, if we're not um comfortable with that, the reality of that, then we get to it and it can be very, very different. So um I want to talk about the reality of what breastfeeding can look like and um in the media, especially, and then what it looks like in your bedroom at 2 a.m. So your experience might be different than what you see um online, right? And then social media for sure. So a lot of times it we we're led to believe that it should look easy, it should feel easy. We just sit there and we gaze lovingly at our baby and breastfeed our baby, and it's just happy and wonderful and positive. But that is probably um there are moments like that, I'm sure, but that's probably not everyone's reality all the time for sure. So we are sold certain images of a calm, glowing mother, perfectly latched baby. There's nice lighting, we're in a cozy chair, peaceful, it's intuitive, it's great. Sometimes it is like that, but a lot of times it's not, especially in the beginning. And I have a couple stories in my mind as I've been preparing this episode of some clients I've been helping recently who have had to work so incredibly hard for their breastfeeding experience, for their journey, for for what they have, and it's still not exactly what they want. And sometimes we're months into that, right? So of what we don't see is especially think of those first days, whether these are days spent in the hospital, your early days at home, if you've given birth at a birth center, it might be early hours at home. Um, and especially if it's your first baby, it can be super awkward, right? There's some awkward positioning things. I was helping um one mom at a hospital a couple weeks ago, and uh it was tough, even with her two hands and my two hands, like it was very awkward in that particular situation, um, unusually awkward actually, to get a good latch for the baby. And but awkwardness is a lot of it, right? When you're doing something for the first time, it does feel weird. And it's not like we can explain anything to the baby and have him or her help us. So it doesn't show the baby coming on and off. It doesn't show the um crying of the baby, right? The frustration that the baby might be feeling. It doesn't show the uncertainty of the mom and other parents who might be helping. So this is like a massive learning curve, and all these images don't usually portray that part. If we want to see a real image, we would have someone, um, if we could smell images, they probably haven't showered for a couple of days. Their hair's a mess. Like we're wearing odd clothes, if any clothes at all, right? We're just kind of a hot mess sitting in, plopped on our bed or um sitting on the couch. Like that's a lot of what early breastfeeding looks like, right? Um, this is a skill to acquire, and as you're acquiring that skill, it doesn't look pretty. So if you think of learning to ride a bike, right, you're gonna fall, you're gonna crash, you're gonna bump into some things. Um, I recently taught my fourth teenager girl to drive a car. Um, she's great at it now, but golly, is it weird in the beginning? I cannot tell you how many times we approached a parking space and how many times we got off. Like we'd get out of the car, look at the lines, where are we? Um, and and I just the other day she and I were driving somewhere and she just pulled into a parking spot and nailed it, as many people do who drive. And I chatted with her. I'm like, remember in this parking lot when we used to have to like park, park, park, and we'd like choose a parking lot to hit, or we have a parking spot to that was our aim, that was our target, and we didn't always get it. Sometimes we were half in another one or um overshooting. So that's the ugliness because sometimes the awkwardness that comes in the beginning of breastfeeding as we're learning that skill, right? Um, so it can be very unglamorous. The reality of it is it is very unglamorous. You you may or may not see this on your Instagram posts, on your TikTok reels, like there are sore nipples sometimes, cracked, bleeding. Like nobody's gonna smile in a ray of sunshine when that's going on. Um, there might be exhaustive cluster feeding hours or times that come through that. You might feel uh trapped, like nap-trapped under a baby you just got to sleep or you just got latched. So many moms I see them get the baby latched and then they freeze. They just freeze their body because, like, oh, we got the baby latched, don't move a muscle, um, don't move a single thing. Uh, it's so much um questioning and doubting about is the baby getting enough, right? Again, you're not gonna be just smiling in a white upholstered chair if you're not confident that your baby's getting enough. There's gonna be a different look on your face, right? Um, it doesn't show what's going on at 2 a.m. Um when you're scrambling a little bit, you're in dark light, dim light, red light, whatever that might be. You're crying with your baby, right? You're just crying right there. You might be Googling stuff at 2 a.m., feeling a little bit desperate. What product can I get to help? What information can I get to help? So that's more the reality of what breastfeeding looks like. It does not feel natural at first. So the images are advanced, honestly. That's an advanced skill that people are working with. But it doesn't mean something's wrong if it looks ugly in the beginning, right? It means that you're learning something new, you're working at something, and knowing that that is normal is super helpful, right? Um, there's one client I recently worked with. Um, I just saw her, her baby's about three months old, and I just saw her yesterday or the day before, and she just blows me away with her tenacity and her dedication and her efforts. Her breastfeeding journey has not been easy. It was very important to her, as it is to many people, to breastfeed her baby. Um, she wanted it to go well, she wanted it to be easy, and it has not been, despite all her efforts, despite um the work that we've done together, we had to watch her baby really closely for weight gains in the beginning. And at three months later, she's mostly triple feeding. Um, and her baby's at about 50% breast milk, 50% formula, um, despite incredible efforts. She, what I love about her is she has not given up. It's been hard, but she's settled with like, okay, that's okay. And um and seeing her just the other day, she's like, yeah, he, you know, I'll I love he'll like I can trick him into the nighttime, I can trick him into breastfeeding because he's groggy and sleepy. Um, but he'll fight it a little bit during the day. Um, so she's been a really dedicated um breastfeeder, and her journey looks a little bit different than she wants. She does have those lovely moments that I've seen her sitting in her, she has a white chair too, um, and breastfeeding going really well, but it doesn't show that she pumped after that, and it doesn't show that they topped off the baby with a bottle, and it doesn't show the 12 times that he tried to latch before that. Um, so there's a lot of pressure to get it right. I mean, we're keeping a little human alive, right? And that that pressure is consistent throughout every day and it feels relentless. And sometimes you we might feel frustrated or guilty if it's difficult. And but realizing that it may be difficult is is part of reality. Um, and then another thing I think people, you know, we might get a different look on our face of confusion because people do get confused when they're seeing or reading this online on Instagram, on TikTok, on from experts online, from influencers online, and then they're getting totally different advice from those same sources or their pediatrician or their lactation consultant or their sister or their neighbor. Um, that is difficult too. So, especially when you're trying to get it right, you just want something that will nail it, and you might get totally opposite opinions, totally opposite guideline points about the same thing. So this is all part of that um kind of messy looking early and sometimes later breastfeeding journey. And then just like my client, she um that I met with this week, she like there's a grief process too, right? It's some grief that it's hard, some grief that it's not looking how exactly how you want it to look, that things don't go how you totally plan them to go. Um, but what I want to reiterate here is that it doesn't mean that it's a fail. If breastfeeding has challenges, if it feels hard, if it looks ugly, it doesn't mean it's failing, right? Um, it means you're learning and providing any amount of breast milk for a baby is a phenomenal gift, an absolutely phenomenal gift. Um and I hope you realize that that you deserve like a huge badge of courage, badge of honor, like gold star on your forehead for making the efforts, right? Um, so why does what we see and what we feel and what we experience personally, where's the gap there? Like what why are we seeing that gap? Well, as we know in most things, especially online and in social media, we get the highlight reel, right? We're gonna get um, I mean, things are edited, we're gonna get just the best of the best, right? Um, the early struggles are often private. Maybe those picturesque experiences, um, they've arrived at that, they've achieved that. They don't talk about the learning curve once things have improved. And honestly, what's pretty remarkable, sometimes as things improve, you forget the hard times. Sometimes you're like, I'm like awesome. We were into a groove, and then some people never get into the groove that they wanted to be in. So realizing that every everybody and everybody and every baby is gonna be a different experience. There's another client I've been working with for a little while who um breastfed beautifully her first baby. Um baby was a champ, there was no issues with supply, with latch. It was just a wonderful experience. Now she has her second baby. He is um, gosh, he's probably two months old now. And it has been a battle with him, um, an absolute battle with him. So she is kind of befuddled, but she's like, oh, this worked well. Last time, by this point, I was in a different place. Um, and he has some special circumstances with um anatomy that's making it kind of challenging. And even though she breastfed confidently her first baby, she um didn't have the same issues, right? So she's dealing with something different. And breastfeeding doesn't look like or feel like it it was last time, and that's kind of frustrating to her. But she's working with it, she's dealing with it, she's come to be where she is and to accept where she's at now with this particular baby and breastfeeding. Um, so yeah, what what might what might work for one baby or one mom and baby might not work for another one. So as you're taking advice from well-meaning family and friends and neighbors and sisters-in-law and cousins, um, take that into account, right? Some people say, Oh, I did this and it worked, and I did this with my four kids, and um, but that might not be the case for you. So please, please take that into advice, take that into account. And also, what we see online is often shown with a lot of confidence, right? Um, maybe not a whole lot of credibility, depending on the source of it, but with a lot of confidence. So take that into mind as well. Um, one of my clients who's struggling with supply, she, based on what she learned during pregnancy and looking online, is that she was expecting to have a freezer full of milk. She's like, oh, look at all these people that have like a freezer full of milk. And um, that was her kind of her real, you know, her set expectation based on what she was um learning about. And that is not the case for her. She's lucky to have three extra ounces in the fridge to stay ahead of things. So um again, one person's experience is not gonna be yours necessarily. So please remember that. And if you're in the middle of this and you're the thick of it, stay grounded in a couple of things. One of them is it's okay to ask for help and ask for help early. A lot of people, I think when they're struggling in the beginning, they feel defeated. Like it shouldn't be this hard. Why am I struggling? What's wrong with me? What's wrong with my baby? What's wrong with my milk? Um, where nothing might be wrong. It might be a very normal experience and or time or small adjustments might can be made, um, some support here and there to make a big difference, right? Understanding that pain is common, but not something to just endure, right? So certain types of pain at certain times for certain amounts of time might be common or normal with breastfeeding. But if it's painful all throughout, that's that's something you need to get some support for and adjust a few things. That's not normal. And knowing you do not have to figure it out alone, um, and you can seek support that works for you, right? Maybe the TikTok videos are speaking exactly to you. Maybe what you're finding online is working just exactly for you, but maybe it's not. So look somewhere else, look for a professional, look for support and somebody who has an experience similar to yours. You don't have to do it alone. So support matters, right? It might be support from your partner, from your doula, from a lactation consultant, from your pediatrician, from your mom, from a sister, like find the support that works for you and be grateful for the other support, but say, hey, thanks, uh, even in your own mind. Like, ah, I'm moving on from that support. I'm gonna look for something a little bit different. So instead of like framing this as why isn't this easy? Like, what do I need to learn this? What do I need to support me in this and look for that? This is a learning curve, right? Um, it's not just an instinct, it doesn't come up super easy. Um, it's a relationship that develops over time. Now, for some people, breastfeeding is a piece of cake from day one. I remember um when I was having babies, and honestly, my breastfeeding journeys were pretty dang easy. Um kids' babies latched on right away, um, they nourished well, they never had weights. Now, my first baby was there was a couple sketchy days for sure, which were some of the most terrifying days of my life, honestly, to keep this baby alive when I feel like I couldn't. So I understand that, but my journeys overall were pretty, pretty simple. Um, but it surprised me in the professional setting how frequent it is to have problems. Like, and maybe it's small problems, maybe it's short-term problems, but problems are not even problems, they're just normal, right? Normal challenges are are very common in the breastfeeding journey. So please remember that. And it does take time. A lot of things kind of iron themselves out in time and support. So if your experience does not look or feel or smell or sound like what you see online, the images that are burned in your mind, um let yourself gently know that doesn't mean you're doing things wrong, right? It means you're having a real experience and it can be messy, right? Humans are messy, life is messy, and we learn as we go. So you deserve just as much space and validation and support and grace as that woman sitting in the white chair with a ray of sunshine and jeans with her hair done and a smile on her face. Um, that's her breastfeeding journey of that moment, that day. And it was a photo shoot where your journey might be a little bit different. You're gonna have those moments, but um realize that they may they may not be all um cupcakes and butterflies as we would hope. So hopefully something about this resonated with you. I want to give you all the space and grace to know that um it might not look how you think for a little bit. Get support, get the information you need um along your journey and stick with it if it's something that's gonna help you. Um a lot of times things will iron themselves out as time goes along. So please, if you're in a place of difficulty, seek for support. I know help exists wherever you are. It can make a big difference. You don't have to do this alone. But um I'm proud of you, I'm cheering for you. I wish I could give you a big hug as you um continue on your journey of breastfeeding. And maybe you'll have some of those easy moments. Um, maybe you have them all the time. Kudos to you. But knowing the reality of things is often helps it make a little bit easier and helps our expectations be um not disappointed. So, for what it's worth, there you go. Thanks for hanging with me today. Um, this is Angie Rosier again with the Ordinary Doolow Podcast, signing off today, and I look forward to our time together next time. As always, please reach out and make a connection with someone in your life. Um, it's super important. Super important uh to make connections with humans. Humans you know, humans you don't, but we all need each other so much. Have a good one. I'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Episode credits will be in the show notes. Tune in next time as we continue to explore the many aspects of giving birth.