00:00 - Avery (Host)
Hi, I'm Avery Young and this is the Nourished Young Podcast. From the subway train to the soccer field, everywhere I go, people have a story to tell me about their experience feeding and caring for their new baby, and so I decided it was time to amplify those voices so we can all know what's real and what's possible and make those who are beginning their parenting journey feel a little less alone.
Hi, Acree, welcome to the Nourished Young Podcast
00:46 - Acree (Guest)
Hi, Avery, thanks for having me.
00:51 - Avery (Host)
I am so glad you're here, why don't you start by just telling everybody a little bit about yourself and your babies?
01:00 - Acree (Guest)
Yeah, so you and I first met when I was nursing my first child, Lassiter, and she was born not long before the pandemic and she's now four. And then my second child, Lowry, is now eight months. And I have gone through a lot of transitions during that time and I left a job after Lassiter was born and have been self-employed and a freelancer since then, and then I decided to start grad school right before Lowry was born. So I just kind of like, after both children were born, just decided to kind of like, yeah, just like mess up my life completely in the best way.
01:53 - Avery (Host)
I love that you're a grad student because I think being a grad student as a parent brings a whole level of challenges to the mix. How has that experience been for you?
02:06 - Acree (Guest)
So it's been mostly great, also a little bit hard, I mean.
02:14
So I am in school for creative writing, so I'm getting my Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing, which was something that I've like always wanted to do but kept putting off, and this I don't know why, but I just decided to do it at the least convenient time of life possible, but it just felt like my writing was in a place where it felt like the right time to do it and I really wanted to do it.
02:42
And this sort of like stubborn aspect of me was annoyed by the fact that, like, structurally, it's not built for parents at all, and so I was like I'm going to do this anyway and like you're just going to have to work around me and like, thankfully, I found a program that was really supportive and I mean, I was definitely the only pregnant lady when I started, but there are some other parents in my program as well and I just decided that this was a degree. This wasn't going to be a degree that was going to like, earn me any money, this. I was doing this for me and for my writing and so I was going to do it the way that I wanted to do it and get out of it when I wanted to get out of it, and I was going to do it when I wanted to do it. So I was kind of like screw you guys, I'm going to do this now.
03:36 - Avery (Host)
How were you pumping? Have you been breastfeeding the whole time? How's that working?
03:44 - Acree (Guest)
The way that it works is it's like a mostly remote program, so I'm only in person for like 10 days out of each semester. We have it's called a low residency program and these are called residency periods, where I go up to Maine and I have 10 days of intensive programming. And so I have on the residencies, the last one I just brought my family with me and like pumped in some of the sessions and then like went back to the hotel room and nursed for other feedings but yeah, we were exclusively breastfeeding at that time. So it was like kind of intense. I definitely felt like a little bit of a diva because I like brought my posse with me to my residency.
04:34
My husband was there, my four-year-old, my baby and then my sister-in-law came to help out, and so it was a little bit odd. Like everybody knew us, everybody recognized my family around the hotel and it was like a little bit weird to just be like bringing them with me everywhere I went. But I just kind of like that was what worked for me and it worked for them too, and like I didn't want to leave them home alone for 10 days and have to just like pump around the clock and like be away from my four-month-old at the time, and you know that didn't really work for me. So we just decided to do it this way and thankfully it worked out.
05:17 - Avery (Host)
Yeah, and I love that. Anytime anybody does something like that, it normalizes that life can look a lot of different ways, and academia has such a stringent policy. It's very, very hard to be a feeding parent in any sort of academic environment, because, of course, that institution wasn't designed by women, right, it's a male design, male-dominated organization, and feeding babies has never been a problem that they've needed to solve. So I think anytime we can bring families into that, it really helps to normalize for other people what's possible.
06:02 - Acree (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with you and yeah, thank you for saying that. I mean, I think like it's been hard in the sense that like I don't like being the weird one who's doing something different, but you know, everybody's out there being weird doing something different. Like there's like trans people who have transitioned during the program, like everybody is, like, you know, in there, just like it's a place where it's like we've got to just come and be ourselves and like this is who we are as writers and like we have to embrace and celebrate that about one another. And you know, this is just my thing.
06:39 - Avery (Host)
So I mean, I feel like a creative writing program sort of would attract a variety of non-traditional folk to that program, just based on the curriculum.
06:52 - Acree (Guest)
Yes, that's very true. Yeah, but yeah, you're right. Like I mean, just I think that's so true of any situation is, you know, in wherever you can, just to kind of you know, I don't like to give prescriptive advice, but it's like I'm a person of like relative privilege and so I feel like I can kind of do these things without too much fallout. And it's like I try to just show up and like be the person that I am and it's like, yeah, I'm pumping.
07:17
Like I was on a work call the other day and it was with a new agency client working like advertising and branding, and I was pumping. There were like five people on the call and the creative director was like, what's that weird noise? And I was just like, oh, that's me, I'm pumping breast milk. Sorry, I'll go on mute and it was just like somebody. I told another mom about that and she was like, oh, she was like, oh, my gosh. And I was like, yeah, I was like I wasn't even embarrassed, like honestly, like he probably should have been embarrassed because like he was the one that embarrassed himself, like I did not embarrass myself in that situation, you know.
07:53 - Avery (Host)
Can we just talk about why that's even embarrassing? Because like if that guy's sitting there drinking a glass of milk, cow’s milk, like nobody's embarrassed that they're like oh yeah, sorry, I'm drinking milk over here from a cow that they pumped out of a cow Like that's not embarrassing, right? So even the fact that, like, we have this knee jerk reaction, that for some reason, like there is an embarrassing factor about using a pump when there is no embarrassing factor related to any other mammal milk, this also needs to be normalized.
08:26 - Acree (Guest)
Yeah, sorry, I'm over here making food with my body and writing your copy at the same time. Guess I'm just a superhero, right?
08:33 - Avery (Host)
Right, like you should get an award for that. Like I'm a multitasker. Hi, that's what we do. That's amazing. So you had one pandemic baby, correct? Yes, how different were those experiences?
08:56 - Acree (Guest)
Well, they were really different for obvious reasons, but I think they're also just really different babies and like I'm a different parent too and my first child, she I just was stressed the whole time she was a baby and it was either she was picking that up from me or maybe this is just like who she is and I was picking up her energy, but like she was just like an intense baby and like had a lot of needs and like cried a lot.
09:33
And you know, I mean I don't mean to make that like her whole personality, like she's more than just that, but like this baby and I hate to compare, but this baby is like really chill, and so I've just I've been a lot more relaxed, like she's been a lot more relaxed. And I don't know, I think like when I would hear people say, oh, like the baby period, it goes by so fast, like enjoy it while you have it, I was always like no, thank you, like I'm ready for the next stage, you know, and like with this baby I'm actually experiencing that, like, oh, I'm like enjoying the baby time and I am going to even though it's fun to watch her grow up like I am going to actually be kind of sad when this is over. It's like everything just has a little bit less stress attached to it.
10:24 - Avery (Host)
I think that's really interesting and I think it's a really good point that, like, some babies are really intense and really hard and it's okay if you don't enjoy them. It doesn't mean that you're not doing it right or that you don't love them or that you aren't enough or any of those things. Intense humans start off as intense babies and when you're a first-time parent and you don't know what you're doing, you're already nervous. You have a hard time co-regulating your own nervous system. You do not have the resources to co-regulate another intense baby and it creates this spiral where you guys both are just feed that anxiety, feeds off each other and it makes it so, so hard.
11:09 - Acree (Guest)
Yeah, and I think that I mean everybody has like hormonal changes with breastfeeding.
11:15
But, like for me, whatever hormones were like associated with breastfeeding for me, it caused me a lot of additional stress and anxiety, and so, like there was something hormonal going on too that I didn't even realize until I stopped breastfeeding and was like, oh, I like feel normal again and I'm realizing that I didn't feel normal for a year, and so I think there was like that thing that's going on when, like, your brain is changing because you're caring for another human being, like that was happening.
11:47
And then also there are sort of this hormonal layer of whatever was going on with like breastfeeding hormones, where I would just be like I would get really stressed out before a feeding and then, like, with my let down, it was like sort of that, you know, whatever that hormone that gets released that makes you feel like the love hormone. For me it was not like a love feeling, it was more like a release of emotions, like I would like cry sometimes, like it was just very intense and I don't know if that's like normal necessarily, but for me, like breastfeeding was kind of wrapped up in all of that too.
12:28 - Avery (Host)
So what you're describing is consistent with something called dysphoric milk ejection reflex. So the hormone that normally floods the body is oxytocin.
12:40
And like you said, it makes us feel really good. But some people and I'm glad you brought this up because I think it's really important. Some people don't. They feel the opposite. That release of hormones, instead of making you feel good, can make you feel really sad, or it can make you feel really nauseous, or it can make you feel like itchy or have other like very significant sensations that are opposite of what we're told. And not only does that feel bad, then we're doing it when we're feeding and then like we think it's us, when it's really just our body's inappropriate response to that reflex.
13:21 - Acree (Guest)
Yeah, I remember like Googling. I remember being like this is weird, right, and Googling, like you know, sad when breastfeeding or whatever it was, and seeing that and being like I think I have that thing, whatever that is. And it's funny because it's like you know, I talked to like a lot of birthing parents who, like, who experience this kind of like you know, imbalance or whatever, and it's like none of us are at the level where we get flagged for like postpartum depression or postpartum anxiety. It's like we're not at the level where we're getting flagged for PPD or postpartum anxiety, but there's something going on that's not right and there's not really a space to get that, to get like help for that or to talk about that.
14:11 - Avery (Host)
Really, yeah, absolutely not. And I think, like as you said, the other part of that that makes it really hard is that Postpartum depression, anxiety, even if it's not clinically diagnosable, all of that is sort of a slow simmer to like a boil right and you don't if you're, if you're in a slow simmer that gradually heats up your body, normalizes that heat pattern and you don't ever realize that you're not okay. Until you're not okay, there's not any stop, like checks along the way, for us to be able to check in, to say like, okay, but am I really okay? Because I forgot what really okay felt, like because this is how I feel and this is how I've been feeling for so long that we stop become, we stop being able to be a reliable predictor of our internal temperature.
15:04 - Acree (Guest)
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean, I remember having moments of feeling it and when my, when my milk started to dry up, like when I sort of decreased milk production around six months with lacer, and then, like what, later on around one year, I had like days of anxiety where I was like I'm feeling really stressed out about X, and then I was like I feel like I'm having an overreaction about this, and I’m really stressed about this or is there something else going on with my brain chemistry? And I never really had anxiety before, so I didn't know to kind of like what the flags were for that. And yeah, it wasn't until after, when I was feeling normal again, that I realized how abnormal those feelings were.
15:56 - Avery (Host)
Yeah, I think that's such a common story. We don't have a systemic way in place to screen for that. Did you have the same emotions with feeding, with Lowry, or was it different? The second time around?
16:20 - Acree (Guest)
Yes, both. Like I kind of knew to be on the lookout for it with Lowry, and I remember the first couple of months with her, it was really weird. It was like when I could kind of feel when my breasts would produce milk. I would feel sort of like a surge of anxiety or kind of like sadness, like a sort of negative feeling, but it was very passing, it would last for maybe like 30 seconds or something, and then it would go away and I would be like, that was weird, where did that come from, you know? And I just started to notice it was like every three hours, sort of every like feeding cycle, like a little while before she was supposed to eat. I would sort of have this feeling and I just I kind of just knew like, oh, I'm just having like one of those like hormonal surges again or something you know. And then as she got older, it started to kind of, you know, even out a little bit and that wasn't really happening as much anymore.
17:40
And now that she's eight months, like I would say, I still have that kind of emotional or sort of teary reaction when I feed, like during my letdown, but it's much more like I sort of know that it's going to happen and so I'm just like, oh, I'm just feeling a little bit sad right now, or sometimes it's almost of a positive feeling, of like catharsis, or like Feeling, maybe even feeling like excited about something or like nervous.
18:09
You know how nervous and excited or feelings that are kind of related and like sadness can sometimes feel good, like you know, as purely a negative feeling. It's like a little bit mixed and then it's been a little bit different, but still like some kind of odd emotional stuff going on, but like definitely much more manageable, that I know to look for it and it helps that like she's just a little, she's an, a baby that's easier to pacify and so she doesn't cry as much and like I'm getting sleep and stuff like that. So all of that kind of helps, you know, manage that kind of stuff.
18:52 - Avery (Host)
It sounds like your nervous system’s operating at a little bit of a lower state, and so even if the emotions are the same, your ability to rebound from them and absorb those moments is much greater than it would have been before if your nervous system was already taxed.
19:20 - Acree (Guest)
Totally, and I think being a second time parent helps with that a lot. And I also think there are just life circumstances that I put in place going into this child coming into the world that, like I knew, would make life a little bit easier. So, like when my first child was born, I was working full time. I had kind of an intense job with a lot of responsibility that was stressful and I was traveling. I was traveling on flights, going on overnight trips, pumping around the clock and then so when Lowry was born, I was just like I'm going to put some things in place that are going to make my life a little bit easier. So we like got a part time nanny to come help out when she was like six weeks.
20:21
So, instead of putting the burden on myself like oh because I kind of felt like, oh, well, I should have to like to watch her for the first three months, and I was like, well, if that makes me miserable and if we can like set aside some money to have some help, like I would like to get help. And so we were able to do that, which is like a very I feel very like lucky and fortunate that we were able to have some support and, yeah, just like not being in a stressful of a work situation and like even though I was in grad school, with stuff that I wanted to be doing, and so I think all of that helped me feel a little bit more like me, like I was doing things that helped me feel like myself, versus just sort of getting feeling lost in this, like around the clock, like breastfeeding, nursing, you know, nursing, rocking to sleep, like kind of mothering spiral, which some people really enjoy, but like it was really hard for me.
21:30 - Avery (Host)
And it is all encompassing, and I love that. You said that it was hard for you and it's okay to not love it, right? It doesn't make us less of a mother or less of a parent by not loving those things. It's okay, like you get to make it work for you, because we all get to define our parenting experience the way we want it to look. So if you had one final piece of advice for folks listening right now, what would it be?
22:01 - Acree (Guest)
So I was thinking about that a little bit earlier today and I think it would be that you know which kind of related to what we've been talking about, which need to like to formulate this into words. So I think that a lot of times we feel torn between like wanting to meet our own needs and then like needing to meet the needs of another human being, and sometimes it's sort of like you're trying to strike this balance between, okay, like is life about my child? Like am I going to just have a living room that like belongs to Fisher Price and like we're just only ever going to go do like Disney stuff and like I'm never going to get to go to an adult restaurant and like my life is just going to be all about my kids? Or am I going to have this life where I'm like traveling and like eating sushi and bringing the kid to like nine o'clock dinners and like it's going to be their world revolves around me, like is this my world revolve around them, or just their world revolves around me?
23:11
And I think like a way that as a family, we've been trying to do things that have been working for us is to like just to treat every member in the family equally and like they're a kid, they're another member of the family, like they get a say, but like it's not all about them and it's not all about us either. Like we can kind of all be equal people going into this and so like trying to kind of create that boundary of like meeting my child's needs is really important, but like meeting my needs is important too and those are equal. Like my needs are not more important than their needs, but also like their needs are not more important than my needs, and like let's look for ways that both can be met and that we can both help meet each other's needs and create. You know, if we need to sacrifice, like make sacrifices, but it's not all on one side.
24:12 - Avery (Host)
So I think that that that we're often given a narrative that we have to be a martyr as a parent, like mothers have to be a martyr, and that's sort of the traditional viewpoint of what motherhood looks like, and you sacrifice everything, and I think that every mother would sacrifice everything if they had to but what if we don't have to? I think that's your point, is that it doesn't mean that you have to sacrifice everything, and that actually doesn't really teach our children what healthy boundaries look like. Healthy boundaries look like everybody's boundaries are important and we all get to have boundaries for our bodies and our needs, and that's really important too.
24:53 - Acree (Guest)
Yeah, and like what if there are people who can meet my child's needs beyond just me. Because I can't as one person, I can't meet all of their needs all the time. So like there's another parent in our family who needs to help meet their needs too. There are grandparents and extended family members who would love to come spend time with them and help feed their needs. There are paid childcare workers. I think we can demand more of like our state, in our country, to meet the needs of children, like I think that they ought to, and like we can stand up for that too. Like it doesn't have to always be on us all the time.
25:34 - Avery (Host)
Yeah, I love that Well. Thank you so much for sharing your story and your experience with everyone listening today.
25:42 - Acree (Guest)
Thanks, Avery, it was great to talk to you. Thanks so much for having me.
25:48 - Avery (Host)
And I also want to thank everyone who's listening and I hope you'll tune back in next week.
Do you have a story to tell? If your feeding experience has been transformative for you and you'd like to share it with others, then please let us know. We're always looking for new stories to let other people know what's possible. Just send your name in a short overview of your journey, or even just your words of wisdom for new parents to stories at nourishedyoung.com, and if you need support or want to connect with other parents who understand what you're going through, then make sure you head over to nourishedyoung.com and check out the Nourished Young Community so we can help support you and your journey too.