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 there, I'm Avery Young and this is the Nourished Young Podcast, and today I'm talking with Frankie about her journey into being a parent, so she can share what helped her find her footing as a new parent.
01:00 – Avery (Host)
Hi, Frankie, it's so nice to meet you today. I just will introduce you: you have a two-year-old whose name is Casper, and why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and how hard this was for you and what made it easy or not?
01:06 - Frankie (Guest)
Yeah, oh God, I don't think we have enough time for all this. But so I am Frankie, I am 32, I have a two-year-old. Like you said, he is my only child. I am a NICU nurse, so I thought I knew babies and I knew it all and was so prepared. And, yeah, no, motherhood proves that you don't know anything about anything.
Avery (Host)
What was your biggest surprise?
01:52 - Frankie (Guest)
So many, honestly. I was surprised how much I liked breastfeeding, which I saw you for and that's how we met. I was surprised that I liked breastfeeding.
I was kind of nervous, like I see babies all the time and I'm kind of unfazed by them. That probably sounds a little bit weird, but like my job is to hold newborn, like you know, seeing newborns being newborns, holding newborns so I kind of just was like I don't know, is this how it's going to feel when I have my own baby? Just like repetitive and redundant. You know, I don't know.
So when I had my son, I was like, oh no, this is completely different. You just love them from the second they come out. I was worried that I wasn't going to be attached to him, because I'm not attached to babies at work, if that makes sense, yeah, so, like I see, the babies at work is like I care for them, as I would want my own baby to be cared for, but there's no attachment to them. So I think that was kind of my I don't know. I just didn't know how I was going to feel.
02:45 - Avery (Host)
So a lot of people, when they leave the hospital, feel really incompetent. Having a baby for the first time Like you walk home and you're like shocked that the hospital gives you permission to take this baby home.
02:54 - Frankie (Guest)
Yeah.
02:55 - Avery (Host)
But you had a lot of experience with babies in the hospital. Did you feel that way too, or did you go home with a little bit? No, not at all.
03:02 - Frankie (Guest)
No, I was so ready to come home, I was ready for them to stop coming in our room and the hospital and, like I did not want them to touch him, like this is mine. We need to go home now, we're good. No, I didn't feel like that. I felt so like in my element. There's nothing else I should have been ever doing in life than having my son, which I'm very glad about, because I know for some people it's not that instant bond which was one of my major concerns. But no, I definitely felt like I had it.
03:37 - Avery (Host)
That's awesome.
03:39 - Frankie (Guest)
Yeah.
03:39 - Avery (Host)
What was your feeding struggle? Was feeding hard for you or was that easy? Can you tell us about your feeding struggles?
03:45 - Frankie (Guest)
No, breastfeeding was super like from day one. The lactation consultants in the hospital were very like, oh he's doing good. There was no like breast refusal, anything like that. But because I was a NICU nurse, I bottle feed all these babies and I was like something is not right with his suction, like he was gaining weight. He was gaining weight, great. He was feeding at the breast great. I did have a really fast let down though, so he didn't have to work for it at all. And when I would feed him with the bottle we would do like one bottle a day. I would let my husband do a bottle a day, that kind of thing, but when we would feed him with the bottle he had no suction.
04:27 - Avery (Host)
What does that look like for a baby that doesn't have suction? What is that? What was going on?
04:32 - Frankie (Guest)
Yeah, so I would put the nipple in his mouth and he would suck on it, but I would go to take it out and like he'd never had his tongue curled around the nipple. He never had like a strong, you could just slide it right out, there was never like a strong seal on the bottle, And so that's when I started like I don't, I think he might have a tongue tie kind of thing, because I just knew he should have some sort of suction on this nipple, and even though he was breastfeeding great and 99% of his feeds were at the breast I still wanted him to be a functional eater and not to have like speech problems. He also couldn't hold his passi. He loved his pacifier, but he couldn't hold it.
05:15
Okay so that's when I started looking into like a lactation consultant outside of the hospital, and then that's when I found you. I found you on Instagram. The legendary milk. Legendary milk, yes, anyone who's a parent, anyone who has not even a parent yet, probably anyone who has boobs has probably seen or heard of legendary milk. And when I saw you on there I was like this is who I want and I'm not stopping until I get this person. And when I looked you up, I was going to do the virtual appointment. But then I saw you were in Atlanta and I was like this is fate.
05:52 - Avery (Host)
Did you talk to your pediatrician about the tongue tie? How did that go?
05:56 - Frankie (Guest)
No.
05:57 - Avery (Host)
So you didn't talk to them at all or didn't go well?
06:05 - Frankie (Guest)
How come I don't use my pediatrician for parenting advice?
06:10 - Avery (Host)
Yeah, cool, so tell me more about that.
06:14 - Frankie (Guest)
I don't know. I think I'm a little bit of like a medical rebel.
06:17
I love that I don't know. I'm a little crunchy. I would call myself scrunchy, maybe, and I just think I know my baby best and I know there's so many pediatricians that, diagnosed with the tongue tie, when there's not a tongue tie or say like if they're gaining weight, fine, you don't need to clip it, and like these kind of things, which I think could be true in certain situations, but I saw that there was a problem and I wanted to go a route that I felt most comfortable with and that was having him seen by someone who only sees tongue ties.
07:00
So you referred us to that like pediatric. Is it an orthodontist or something? A dentist usually? Yeah, yes, pediatric dentist. So that's the route that I knew I wanted to go, so there was absolutely no reason to reach out to my pediatrician at all.
07:15 - Avery (Host)
I love that, you know.
07:17 - Frankie (Guest)
Yeah, anything he said wasn't going to change my mind.
07:19 - Avery (Host)
So yeah, so you just trusted your gut on that. You use them for like medical issues, right? Our pediatricians are often sold to us as parenting experts as opposed to whether or not our child needs stitches, or has a broken bone, or has some issue that we actually need medical help for. So what changed after the release for you?
07:53 - Frankie (Guest)
He was able to hold his pacifier much better, as he definitely had to relearn how to use his mouth so it wasn't straight away where he was like suction was there? Still, nothing really changed that. The breast he's still fed fine. The bottle was just much better suction. He was able to hold his pacifier and that was it.
08:13 - Avery (Host)
Yeah, and are you still breastfeeding?
08:16 - Frankie (Guest)
No, regretfully it's probably one of my biggest parenting regrets is stopping breastfeeding.
08:22 - Avery (Host)
Are you willing to talk about that?
08:24 - Frankie (Guest)
Yeah, I actually tried to relax a bit, which I don't know. I feel conflicted about it, I don't know so little backstory. My son will be two next month. When he was 13 months old he was diagnosed with nephrotic syndrome, which is a chronic kidney condition that causes you to spill protein. He was diagnosed at 13 months. I stopped feeding at the breast at 11 months but he was still getting pumped milk at like 12 and 13 months. We finished our last bag of pumped milk when he was diagnosed and at the time I didn't know. There was even a thing of relaxation. I was like no clue. But now I, looking back, I wish I would have tried to relax, take them, because it would have been so easy after like a month.
09:17
Yeah, so I really regret because I think those antibodies could have really helped him in that time. I regret. I don't want to blame my mother-in-law, or maybe I do so that I don't fully put all the blame on myself. My husband is from the UK, so we went to England last year for six weeks when my son was like nine and ten months old and every single day there was a question about when I was going to stop breastfeeding, if I thought he was hungry still because he was breastfed, if he wasn't sleeping because he was breastfed. I'm not exaggeration. Every day it was some kind of like stop asking questions about my boobs now.
10:00
My son is fed, he's happy, he's healthy. So I think a lot of that, like a lot of that questioning put a lot of like self-doubt in my mind. I bet and I will never forgive her for that but be myself for allowing that could get to me in a way, I think.
I'm not breast as best. If you, however, you want to feed your body, go with it 100%. But she told me that breastfeeding was only beneficial for six weeks. She said after six weeks there's no point, and I knew that was not true. But she said after six weeks there's no point in breastfeeding.
10:48 - Avery (Host)
Wow. I think that that's such a good example of how even really strong and educated and empowered women can become undermined so easily when we have a new baby. Like you worked in the NICU. You know those things weren't true, right? You're such a great example of this, because you're clearly someone who is strong and independent as a woman, and yet we still hear those whispers from or screams in this case.
11:19
Other people, like it's really hard and it's not our fault, and then we blame ourselves then, because like that's kind of that, like we blame the victim mentality a little bit, because we should have done more, even though this is sort of like this wasn't a fault on your part. This was a byproduct of a society that doesn't really support feeding.
11:40 - Frankie (Guest)
Yeah, and even though he had breast milk for a year. Now the recommendation is like two years. I wish we would have made it to like a year and a half, because in my mind I thought like a year is good. I'm going to call it quits at a year, because he's a big boy now, like he's walking, and I look back at pictures of him as a baby, as a one-year-old. And again, like for people who can't breastfeed, like no shame in that whatsoever. But I don't know why, in my mind I thought that like once he was one, that was it. He was grown, he didn't need it anymore. But, to play devil's advocate, also, he is a huge mama's boy. Huge, yeah, huge. And I think that if I were to still be breastfeeding him right now, he would never stop.
12:35 - Avery (Host)
Well, I'm pretty sure that nobody is like 18 in their freshman year in college and breastfeeding.
12:41 - Frankie (Guest)
Well, I don't know, there's like seven-year-olds and I didn't want that to be me, but he is so, so attached to me. That part of me was like maybe it's a good thing that I wish I would have at least pumped longer. I don't know, I won't take up too much time with that, but I could go on all day. I feel like, because sometimes we'll be out in public and he loves his Pacifier and his sleep sack. He calls it his saka and that's his baby blanket, comfort thing. And when we're out in public and he is like over, simulated or like done with the activity, he'll say pasi, saka. And I say to my husband I'm like if I were still breastfeeding, he would be that like 18-month-old at the park demanding.
13:27 - Avery (Host)
Or asking right, or just asking right.
13:30 - Frankie (Guest)
Yeah, and that's okay, you’re like repetitively asking and that is okay, but I'm like, yeah, I don't know. I feel I'm very conflicted by it.
13:39 - Avery (Host)
Yeah, I think that's. The thing is that you know if we're coming from an empowered place and feeding like it can be okay and also not okay at the same time, like you get to say that doesn't make me feel comfortable and that doesn't mean that that's the right choice for somebody else either, that's the imperative place.
13:56 - Frankie (Guest)
Oh, yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah. For just the way like I feel as his mom, I'm like, yeah, I don't know, but I totally wish I would have continued breastfeeding in some capacity until two.
14:10 - Avery (Host)
I think, like your point earlier is such a good point and of like at one he's a baby and I remember when I was pregnant. I was like, oh, when they can talk, that's probably when I'll be done. Except there's not like a light switch, like when you're done and when you're not. Like my oldest was talking at nine months, clearly he was still a baby, so there's not like a clear place except the place that feels right for you, you feel most comfortable, yeah, and at the time it felt right.
14:42 - Frankie (Guest)
But looking back and honestly, not even at the time, I didn't even feel like it felt right. Part of me wanted my body back. But then I'm like, for what I don't know. It’s weird parenting, and you feel weird things.
14:57 - Avery (Host)
Right, and I think like it's because so much of that isn't from what's coming from the inside, it's what's coming from the outside. Like I'm going to be, I don't want to be at the park and have this baby demanding, because what I'm worried about, what other people may think- because it's really hard to not internalize those messages and judgment and how we're conditioned to be right, and that's the case for feeding all the way along.
15:22
So there's not this always this clear knowing, because especially when we're tired and we're stressed and we're sleep deprived and all of those things, it's really hard to know those things.
15:32 - Frankie (Guest)
Yeah, and I am not one, and I think maybe my point that I was trying to get at with this is I am not one to deny my son of his comforts.
15:40 - Avery (Host)
Yeah.
15:41 - Frankie (Guest)
So if he wants to rest in saka and he's ready to leave the park, or he's ready to stop doing whatever we're doing, then we go to the car and we like we'll sit and have a cuddle and like wind down, and that's just what we do. So if his comfort was me and he was asking for that I'm not, I wouldn't be able to deny that. So yeah, I don't know.
16:03 - Avery (Host)
But look what you've done. That's another really beautiful example that you don't have to breastfeed to connect with him either.
16:09 - Frankie (Guest)
Oh yeah.
16:10 - Avery (Host)
You created that same level of comfort and connection with him by listening to him and being with him and holding space for him, even when it wasn't with your body, it was just something else.
16:21 - Frankie (Guest)
Yeah, yep 100%.
16:24 - Avery (Host)
So you also mentioned something about well, you didn't mention it now, but were there any challenges that you have with your body? I think you mentioned chronic illness. Is that right?
16:32 - Frankie (Guest)
So the chronic illness is for our son. He with the nephrotic syndrome is ongoing chronic illness. So there is no, I don't know, there's not a lot of information about nephrotic syndrome. They don't know what causes it, they don't know how to stop it really. So he's on immunosuppressants to stop his body attacking his kidneys basically.
16:58 - Avery (Host)
Oh my gosh, that must be terrifying for you.
17:00 - Frankie (Guest)
Yeah, it's so. It's the worst thing ever. I don't want to get emotional, but it's awful. So he's on immunosuppressants, which kills me every day to give him, but he's doing really well, so I'm just very thankful that it's something that we can control and hopefully a lot of kids outgrow it, but not until like puberty. So hopefully, fingers cross. It's something about puberty kind of like resets their immune system and some kids outgrow it, which would be great. I hope we're one of those people. Some people need a kidney transplant like very quickly.
17:43 - Avery (Host)
Okay.
17:44 - Frankie (Guest)
You just don't know what you're getting with this. It's very tough to navigate.
17:54 - Avery (Host)
Did it require differences in feeding him? Would that have been a barrier for you feeding too? Were they worried about breast milk?
18:04 - Frankie (Guest)
I think, one or two breast milk bottles a day when he was diagnosed. I was down to like the last stack of frozen milk when he was diagnosed. So he does have to be on a sodium restricted diet, but breast milk was never even like a discussion for sodium content or anything like that. But yes, now he does have to be on sodium restrictions now.
18:29 - Avery (Host)
Okay, that must be so. Like I'm sure that, like a lot of your eating, like being able to eat out and being able to do things that you normally would do, it kind of probably drives how you guys as a family can operate.
18:42 - Frankie (Guest)
Oh, yeah, for sure the sodium drives a lot. We do eat out. We'll eat out a little bit. We just try to make healthier choices. Luckily, my husband and I make healthy choices anyway, so my son doesn't really get unhealthy options. Yeah, that often when he just discovered pizza and he's obsessed. So we like make our own pizza with no sodium, marinara and all that stuff. But we more so have to be careful about like viral illnesses, bacterial illnesses, because he's immune compromised. It takes him a lot more to get over a common cold and that could trigger his immune system and could trigger him to relapse. They call it a relapse when you go back to spilling protein, so we have to be careful about who are around and what we do and all of that stuff, because it could trigger him to relapse.
19:30 - Avery (Host)
I'm sorry that you guys are going to that. That definitely sounds tough. So one of the things that new parents do is lots of people will say I would never right as a when you're pregnant. Yeah, I would never do this, and so, as a new parent, you learn to eat a lot of crow because, like there's a lot of, I would never. Is there anything that you, as a nurse or as a parent, said I would never. And then it turns out like, oh, I actually would.
19:56 - Frankie (Guest)
Oh yeah, absolutely. I would never buy my kid a tablet. Amazon popped up that sale and I've never bought a tablet so quick in my life. I blame the doctors’ appointments that we have to have.
We don't only use it for doctors’ appointments. It like lives in the back. It lives in the car because he has hated the car since probably three weeks old. He's hated the car and he still hates the car. I don't know what it is. So I said never, I will never buy my kid a tablet. And I bought him a tablet. I said I wouldn't let him watch TV. I said watch his TV. In the moment when it happens, I'm like, oh, I said I was never going to do this, but whatever.
20:47 - Avery (Host)
Yeah, I think like that's the thing, right? You never see people who say that just haven't had kids yet.
20:54 - Frankie (Guest)
That's it. There are some that for sure there are some things. Oh, I will never just let my kids scream in the grocery store or something like that, but I'm like I'm not going to give in to his every single demand and request. Sometimes you just got to scream in the grocery store.
21:10 - Avery (Host)
It's embarrassing, right like that's the thing. That's the part of parenting is you kind of have to develop a fix again to not worry so much about what other people think because they don't have the whole story.
21:19 - Frankie (Guest)
I worry, more so for my child, see how I could jump down someone's throat is what I worry about. I don't want him to see the part of his mom that he doesn't really know exists, which is like what are you looking at? But yeah. So I'm like I don't want him to see this side of me arguing with strangers in public.
21:47 - Avery (Host)
So thank you so much for joining me today, and I want to ask you one last question. If you have words of wisdom, what would you tell a new parent who's pregnant and they're super excited, and what words would you give them to let them know? Or you think that you wish you would have known? That would have helped you just to trust your gut.
22:07 - Frankie (Guest)
You know your baby more than anybody else and you just have to trust that you are doing what's best for them and you know them and advocate for them. If we've learned anything through this whole medical process with my son, is to advocate for him and your pediatrician might tell you to sleep train at two months old, because they're sleeping through the night and you don't have to.
You know your baby best and I think when I came to see you I just feel guilty because I almost like carried a lot of shame because of how much we preach in the hospital like breast is best and don't co-sleep and that's dangerous, and you were like there are safe ways to co-sleep, and I kind of had to let that go because my son only wanted to sleep on me. I was not sleeping, but I felt so much guilt for being someone who preached breast is best and you know all these things, and I had to also give myself some grace with beating myself up all the time to take a step back and tell myself that you are doing your best and you're not out to harm your baby if they have to sleep on your chest for a minute. That's not the end of the world.
23:30
And when people say, oh, just wait until… I hated that. That would wind me up so bad. Just wait until you're not sleeping. I'm like, or you and your baby are the only two people awake in the world right now and like such a magical time to bond and that's great. So ignore the just waits and try to reframe it into something beautiful.
24:03 - Avery (Host)
I love that well. Thank you so much, Frankie, for being with me today, and
I really appreciate you sharing your story with everybody else.
Frankie (Guest) Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
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.