The Nourished Young Podcast

Ep 08: Triumphs in Tiny Drops

January 18, 2024 Avery Young
Ep 08: Triumphs in Tiny Drops
The Nourished Young Podcast
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The Nourished Young Podcast
Ep 08: Triumphs in Tiny Drops
Jan 18, 2024
Avery Young

Today, I'm chatting with Helen as she shares her story about feeding her two babies with a low supply. Helen bravely opens up about the challenges she faced with breastfeeding under less-than-ideal conditions and how that changed and shaped her entire journey of motherhood.

Episode Highlights:
(01:04 - 03:03) Helen talks about how she she as a nurse thought that she was pretty prepared with the surprises of motherhood

(03:07 - 05:39) Helen shares about her giving birth during COVID pandemic and her dealing with low supply

(12:44 - 15:37) How low supply is a common yet under-discussed issue and the necessity for a better support system for those who experience it

Mentioned in this episode: 

Do you have a story to tell?
If your breastfeeding 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 and a short overview of your journey, or even just your words of wisdom for new parents.

Also, if you need support and want to connect with other parents who understand what you're going through, check out the Nourished Young Community so we can help support you on your journey.

Visit www.nourishedyoung.com to learn more.

Show Notes Transcript

Today, I'm chatting with Helen as she shares her story about feeding her two babies with a low supply. Helen bravely opens up about the challenges she faced with breastfeeding under less-than-ideal conditions and how that changed and shaped her entire journey of motherhood.

Episode Highlights:
(01:04 - 03:03) Helen talks about how she she as a nurse thought that she was pretty prepared with the surprises of motherhood

(03:07 - 05:39) Helen shares about her giving birth during COVID pandemic and her dealing with low supply

(12:44 - 15:37) How low supply is a common yet under-discussed issue and the necessity for a better support system for those who experience it

Mentioned in this episode: 

Do you have a story to tell?
If your breastfeeding 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 and a short overview of your journey, or even just your words of wisdom for new parents.

Also, if you need support and want to connect with other parents who understand what you're going through, check out the Nourished Young Community so we can help support you on your journey.

Visit www.nourishedyoung.com to learn more.

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. 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.

Today, I'm going to be talking with Helen as she shares her story about feeding her two babies, Imogen, and Una, with a low supply, and how that changed and shaped her entire breastfeeding relationship. Hi, Helen, welcome to the Nourished Young Podcast. I'm so happy to have you here. 

 

00:56 - Helen (Guest)

Thanks so much. It's great to be here. 

 

00:58 - Avery (Host)

So why don't you get started and just tell us a little bit about yourself and a little bit about your journey? 

 

01:04 - Helen (Guest)

Sure, so I'm Helen and I had my first daughter, Una, during the pandemic. I got pregnant with her in November of 2019. So pregnant before I knew what COVID was or anything. So I think that also shaped a lot of my experience with my first daughter. So, going in, I had this idea that I was going to have this sort of normal pregnancy with a normal experience, and that all got put on its head, with me being about three months pregnant. So there just wasn't the support that you would normally have and the support you had was virtual. And so, going in, I wanted to have kind of an unmedicated birth. I wanted to have a midwife and, living in Georgia, that's not the easiest thing to do. I'm also an older mom I was 38 when I had Una so there were just a lot of limitations on kind of what I had envisioned and what I ended up being able to have. 

 

02:04

I'm also a nurse and a nurse practitioner and I have a PhD in nursing, and so I felt like I was pretty well versed in healthcare and maternity care and my research areas around access to contraception and kind of maternal health access. So I felt like I was pretty prepared. I had taken a whole breastfeeding course in nursing school like a 12-week elective, so I felt like I should know a lot about it. But not once did anyone talk about low supply, other than if you had had breast implants or some kind of production. So I had gestational hypertension with Una and so, after lots of conversations about induction or not being induced, I was induced with her at 37 weeks and four days, because I didn't want to be induced on a Friday, and so I had, I think, the second longest induction in the practice's history. 

 

03:03 - Avery (Host)

That's not like a good take home prize. No. 

 

03:07 - Helen (Guest)

I mean, the good thing was that, like, everything was good, everything was fine, so they didn't have to rush me to have a C-section or anything. My goal at the end was just like I don't want a C-section and I didn't have a C-section, but I did have this like 70 hours of not really being in labor and of course it was COVID, so nobody could come see me. I couldn't have a doula. My husband was a superstar and just stayed with me the whole time, but the weird thing was he could come and go from the room but I couldn't. Anyway, after every induction method basically twice, she did come and I had a very relaxed delivery and kind of started the whole breastfeeding process in a way that everyone tells you, and I was like okay, that's fine, that seems fine, I'll do that. 

 

03:57

And I did that and she didn't gain weight. She was losing weight, so luckily I had a really great pre-detention, which is really fortunate, and so she had us come in a lot for the weight issues. And I was kind of in denial about the fact that you could have low supply because I just never heard of it and I thought somebody in the many classes that I had taken would have talked about it a little that PCOS could cause low supply and insulin resistance could cause low supply and all these other things like hypothyroid could cause low supply. But nobody had said anything. 

 

So I didn't really know what to expect and I just kind of assumed, if you're just fed enough and you had drank enough water and Gatorade and whatever else like oatmeal, it would work eventually. But I only made about a third of what Una needed, and so then I had this whole crisis of like do I have to give formula? Is that going to be bad? And Una wasn't a great sleeper, so we spent a lot of time being awake and being like, oh no, giving her formula is going to be horrible, and what ratio of breast milk is the best to be able to give her to have it be okay. And I spent a long time thinking about that and so then of course she had bilirubin, we had to do the billy blankets and luckily we were able to do that at home, but it was really stressful and I remember we went to think her two-week appointment and the pediatrician said she's at the zero percentile and she's at less than zero percentile, like I wasn't sure what kind of formula I should use or how we should feed her. 

 

05:39

We tried droppers and I tried the SNS and I was not very good at it. And eventually, you know, we kind of got inner rhythm with having super low flow nipples like the preemie nipples and these tiny little bottles, because nothing makes you feel worse about your supply than having these massive eight-ounce bottles when you're pumping and you're getting a tiny amount in it. 

 

So I found that you could rig the bottles to be smaller and could do the adapters onto the pump and so you were pumping into a 2.5-ounce bottle, which makes you look better. And so then, when I went back to work, Una went to daycare and it was, you know, the middle of January of 2021. And she got COVID the first day of daycare. So that was really, you know, just after having a fairly traumatic experience with the pregnancy and the delivery and the breastfeeding. And she got COVID and she passed it. I am a nurse and so I'd been vaccinated once and didn't get it from her, but the rest of the family did, and my father-in-law was in the ICU and it was really, really stressful and at that point she lost interest in feeding at the breast and so I pumped with her for another 11 months and then we supplemented with formula. 

 

07:04

But through this I found this group called Low Supply Support Group on Facebook and that was really helpful. There's a group of about 10,000 people around the world and they have a pretty strict vetting policy around people getting into the group. So I met other moms and people they identify as moms and they we decided well, sort of under the leadership of a woman named Laurel, we started the Low Milk Supply Foundation, and so I've been involved with that since it was about nine months old, I think Almost a year, and so we have a website that has the most up to date information you have about low supply, which isn't very detailed unfortunately, because there's just isn't a lot of research around it. But we wrote some papers, some advocacy papers, we have a website, we have a science advisory board and kind of have a lot of how tos of what to do if you have low supply and what you can do about pumping, what you can do about supplementing, how to use an SNS, how to have conversations with people about low supply, because a lot of times they're like, oh, you're breastfeeding and so like, how do you answer that question? And I'm breastfeeding, but I'm also supplementing, and they'll be well, have you tried this? Yes, I have, and this experience with my second has just been so much better because I just don't care what people think anymore. I'm just like this is what we're doing and this is how we're doing it, and I'm like, yes, I'm breastfeeding and we're supplementing because I have low supply and I have PCOS, and then that's the end of that conversation. 

 

08:46

We don't have to go down the rabbit hole of being, like did you drink enough water? Like, have you done this? Yeah, have you been putting your breast in up? Yes, I have. But my body just doesn't work in that way, and we're very lucky that we have formula that works so well and we live in a place that I can supplement easily. 

 

I did a lot of workups for, like, why was having ow Supply, and I felt really privileged that I was able to do that, and as a nurse with really good insurance in a big city, I could just force my providers basically to run these tests, which a lot of people don't have the privilege to do, and I also fired a lot of my providers. I went to a primary care doctor and they said that there was no way that I could formula feed and breastfeed at the same time. That's what was the problem with my breastfeeding, which is just not true, because I was doing it. 

 

09:42 - Avery (Host)

Like that is such a shocking thing that somebody would even say that they thought that. 

 

09:51 - Helen (Guest)

Yeah, I was very emotional and the crazy thing is, was that I wasn't in there for my low supply. I had a vision change at nine weeks postpartum and since I'd had just a station hypertension, I was kind of aware of that being a potential red flag. And my OB said that I wasn't postpartum anymore because I was nine weeks, not eight weeks, postpartum. And my primary care person was like, oh, I don't know. And then it was like you should just try losing weight. 

 

10:24

Of course right. My optometrist was concerned and gave me some new contacts because I couldn't see very well and then it did go back and he thinks it was just some changes in my glucose level that had sort of caused some eye vision changes and that resolved. But it hasn't happened this time. So that's good. But I also am way more controlled with my PCOS and just kind of have everything a little more understood than I did with the first one. 

 

10:58 - Avery (Host)

I think that's one of those things. That's so frustrating is that, like a vision change can be a sign of something significant and you probably had that prior knowledge because of your experience as a nurse in the field and if somebody else had that, they would have no idea that it could potentially be significant and then having their multiple primary care positions dismissed, that could end up with some pretty significant consequences. 

 

11:30 - Helen (Guest)

Yeah, they definitely could, and as much as they'd asked me the question so many times in my pregnancy, and then all of a sudden it's like nobody cares. My chiropractor cared, but you know they don't really treat strokes. 

 

11:48 - Avery (Host)

Right. I think it just highlights the lack of actual support that we give to postpartum I mean to women's health in general, but even more specifically to postpartum women that so much of our support feels very superficial. It's almost like virtue signaling support where we're just saying that we care but we don't. And it's so discrepant because even though our support's not very good, it's even worse for certain groups of our population. 

 

12:22 - Helen (Guest)

Yeah, I mean that was what blew me away in my first experience. Postpartum was like I have money and resources and you know I speak English and I'm legally in the US and I have great insurance, and it was hard. I mean I can't imagine what it would be like for people that don't have all the things that I had. 

 

12:44 - Avery (Host)

And I also think it's important to talk about low supply as being common, because I think we talk about it as it's not, and there's this narrative that it says very, very small part of the population. In your research, did you guys have an estimate, an idea of what percentage of the population actually does have legitimate low supply? 

 

13:06 - Helen (Guest)

Yeah, so there's kind of three different main causes of low supply. So one is kind of within the body of the person lactating, so if they have PCOS or if they have hypothyroidism or if they have some calcium hand syndrome or IGT, which is insufficient glandular tissues, that just don't have enough breast tissue, or they could have a combination of those things. And then other reasons would be kind of at the breast itself, like they have had surgery or had implants or breast reduction. And then the other one would be kind of the baby side of things, where the latch isn't very good and they just aren't emptying well and that causes low supply. And that's like the one supply thing that you can. You know, if the, if the lactating person has the capability to have enough milk, then you know that's kind of one that you can actually do. 

 

13:56

And I think is what people focus on with like all the tongue tie stuff. So we think we estimated, if you look at the percentage of people who have these conditions, we think between about 5 and 15% of people who are lactating legitimately would now be able to get a full supply. And that's a huge range of like just getting drops to, you know, almost making enough. And I think as you have more children, you know, the more depressed tissue can develop, and so you know you won't always have low supply with every child you have, necessarily, but it's possible, especially if you have things like IGT which, like you know, you just can't get more breast tissue. 

 

14:38 - Avery (Host)

I think it's so important to hear that, because I think especially for providers too, because I think what happens is that we don't listen to women and we dismiss them and then we blame them for not working hard enough for milk supply and that causes so much stress and feelings of guilt and feelings of self-worth and that they're not doing enough and that they need to work harder. And it robs so many women of their ability to be present and enjoy and connect with their baby because they feel like it's their fault, like they've done something wrong, because we tell them the focus is on the baby side or milk removal. You must not be removing milk enough, when the truth is, I've never met a parent that isn't working as hard as they possibly can to do everything they can for their baby. 

 

15:37 - Helen (Guest)

Yeah, that's absolutely true. And I remember people being like, oh, you just need to feed her more. And I'm like I'm feeding her like 14 times a day, like I literally do nothing else but like sit on the couch and try and feed her and so there’s just really unhelpful comments that people have and I've re-evaluated how I do nursing; I've re-evaluated how I talk to students. I mean like if you aren't in that person's shoes and you tell them these things when actually like they are trying it really hard or maybe that's not their goal or this thing is their goal. 

 

16:09

And I think also like there's such a dichotomy within birth and lactation around, like you know, it's like hospital versus not hospital and like formula versus breastfeeding and like there's nothing like having something in between that is just kind of never discussed, being like, well, some intervention is really helpful, like probably good. I mean I have two healthy babies and possibly it's because I had all these interventions and maybe I wouldn't have that if I hadn't had the interventions when we don't know. But it's really hard to do intervention because it's necessary to do it. And I also had read recently there's a brand-new book that just came out that I got called, I think, Feed the Baby, which talked about how, this whole thing about breast is best and breast milk is best is a really ableist framework. 

 

17:02

Yes, and it's like well, I physically cannot do that. Imogen wants to say things too, and so, like I don't, it's not a choice that I give. I mean, I choose to give formula versus donor milk, but it wasn't a choice that I had to do something. I mean I couldn't just not do it. 

 

17:20 - Avery (Host)

I also think that saying breast is best also is a way of distrusting women, because when we say it's best, what we're saying is it's so hard, right, and we believe that the only way that women will push through and fight through and get through the hard things and want to feed their babies from their body is because it's best, instead of trusting that women know what's right and that there is an instinct like this primitive, instinctual feeling to feed your baby if it works for you and it feels right for you and we can trust women to make that choice or trust feeding parents to make that choice right. 

 

18:06

There are transgender women who go and lactate because the desire to do this isn't because it needs to come from a place of it being best. 

 

18:17

It needs to come from a place of it feels important, and being able to support that and then using that language is incredibly ableist but it's also incredibly damaging. It does so much harm to so many people who cannot or don't want to, or it doesn't work out, or babies can or have low supply this huge chunk of the population or go back to work, like all of these situations that make feeding the milk that our bodies produce not a viable option. It's a big chunk of the population and using that terminology is actively harmful for those people and it becomes actively harmful for the baby, because when it makes a parent feel guilty, it makes a parent not be able to connect with their baby in an authentic way. They're not spending time with the baby, maybe they dread feeding time, maybe they have shame, maybe it exacerbates feelings of anxiety and depression and all of those things and all of those undermine the relationship between the feeding parent and the baby, and that is what's best. 

 

19:27 - Helen (Guest)

Definitely sorry. Maybe my baby's a little sad right now. Okay, would you look at the picture? 

 

19:38 - Avery (Host)

Yeah, I think your quarter is running out here, which is totally, she gets to image and gets to set the timeline here. So you told us all about the really amazing resources that your organization has to offer, but you didn't tell us where to find them. Where can we find? Where can somebody go to get that support? 

 

19:58 - Helen (Guest)

Yeah, so the website is www.lowmilksupplyfoundation.org so they have the website there and links to a number of different books and other support organizations and support groups and some social media influencers who talk about low supply, like the Low Supply Mom, and there are all those links are on the website and there's also different pages for support people and for people experiencing low supply and for providers. And we did have it all reviewed by our scientific advisory board. So you know it is as accurate as we think it can be. It's no peer reviewed, but we did have it reviewed by people who work in this field. And then we have been working with the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine and they you know some of the lactation consultants and people working with them have, you know, seen our website. 

 

20:55

We've been advocating for there to be a protocol but there isn’t which is crazy. So I really would like to call for ABM to come up with a protocol for low supply, because at least then, you know, somebody can take it to their providers and say you know, here's the protocol. Can you run these tests? Can you help me with this, because some people, like I, different with those supply due to hypothyroidism. Once you get the thyroid under control, like it's pretty likely that you'll be able to lactate a lot better. It's a little more tricky with PCOS, which is what I have, but now I am on Metformin and I do make more milk with my second than I did with my first and, like you said, my experience is so different because I just stopped caring what people thought and I still you know, I think there's a lot of questions around like how much milk is enough milk to make it beneficial? And we do not have any studies, good studies, on that. If you look at studies of breastfeeding versus formula feeding, the actual difference is not that much and formula is really excellent. And so I really wish I hadn't so much in my brain space and worried so much about the formula because you know it's highly regular, it's like the most regulated food that exists. So you know any formula you give is probably going to be fine as long as your baby doesn't have some kind of allergy or some kind of sensitivity. But you know we switch formulas a number of different times for lots of different reasons, and both my daughters have done fine on lots of different kinds and when we talked to the pediatrician, you know she was really reassuring that most of them are pretty similar. I mean, they're kind of regulated to be pretty similar. So I think people get really stressed around that. 

 

22:47

And then the other thing is like I think figuring out the flow rate is under talked about. I know that when you know we would have sessions like I think one of the big things about low supply is that your rate, your flow, is slower and so, like making sure that the bottles you're using are also probably slower, so your baby gets, is used to that, and takes a long time. And the advantage of that and I don't know if it's just because I don't have babies that have a lot of reflex, but both my babies haven't had it basically any reflex. I mean I like barely use burp claws because they just, you know, don't? They aren't reflex, they don't have any reflex. 

 

23:27

So and I do my hypothesis that it might have something to do with the fact that I use these incredibly small, slow flow bottles that are, you know, it takes a long time to feed them, but that means that they can regulate how much they eat much better as well, and I think that was a big question for me was around like how much do you supplement them and how do you know how much to supplement them? And so, using these really slow nipples and really small bottles, you can do it in small increments more easily than if you have these like giant bottles. And if I try even to use a newborn versus preemie bottle, it’s too much in my daughter’s mouth. 

 

24:08 - Avery (Host)

I loved earlier where you were talking about your feeding relationship, and I think it's super important that low supply parents also don't feel like it means they can't have a feeding relationship with their baby, because I think that's the thing that happens is, when you feel like you have low supply, it makes you feel like your ability to breast or chest, to feed your baby, however you refine to find your body, stops, and it doesn't have to be that way. It's possible. We can separate out how your baby gets calories and how we feed our baby and we don't need to lump them together, and I think having support for that is so important, because how that works for every single parent and baby pair may look different for that parent and baby, and it's okay. 

 

25:01 - Helen (Guest)

Yeah, definitely. And I think the thing that is really challenging when you're a new mom and kind of looking at social media, a lot is like people are talking about their stashes all the time and I was like before I knew I had those. I was like I don't know how I would make this stash because I don't and I remember like watching videos of people pumping and like there was just so much and that's not what mine looked like and I didn't really know what it should, because we don't talk about pumping at all. That's a whole another topic. Like I remember I was in the hospital and they're like just use a smaller flange, not like there's, you know, 25 different flange sizes that you could have. 

 

25:35 - Avery (Host)

I think the Instagram people sharing their stash is such a byproduct of our society telling us that our worth is based on how much milk we make right, like it really does, like it's it feels, like you're, like you have something to be proud of, because that means we've met this level of expectation that says, hey, look how good I am because of how much milk I make, or look how much value I have for my baby, when the truth is that our value for our baby isn't measured in ounces or gallons. That's not how our worth as a parent is measured, and I think it's so important that people realize that their baby, they are more to their baby than their milk, no matter how much milk they make. 

 

26:23 - Helen (Guest)

Yeah, absolutely yeah, and I think, like you know, there's a lot of talk in the low supply community that they were like I would really like to have oversupply but there's like so many bad things that happen to other supply. In my second baby and pregnancy and experience, I've just appreciated that. You know, I can actually leave my baby pretty easily because I just give them formula and you know it's. And I think you said something to me that has been really helpful, which was on the days you have time to put in the time put in the time and then the days you don't like that's okay and that has just. I mean, my husband has said like how much a different experience he's having with me with those supply because I'm not fixating on it. 

 

27:07

I'm, you know I can just leave the house and have a formula bottle ready and that's fine and I'm not like pumping all the time. I mean I pump once before I go to bed so I can sleep a little bit longer. But I actually have no idea how much I make now. I know it's more than I did with my first, but I know that I don't have to supplement for 12 hours and I didn't have to supplement more than that with my first. I haven't fixated on my baby's weight, I haven't fixated on exactly how much I'm making and I've been more relaxed about, you know, being able to leave and when I do have time to put in the effort, I put in the effort, and when I don't have time, when I want to be spending time with my older daughter or you know my family or doing other things. I do it and it's fine. 

 

27:55 - Avery (Host)

And has that allowed you to have a different experience, to experience your second baby in a different way than you experienced your first? 

 

28:02 - Helen (Guest)

Yeah, totally different way. I mean also like the world is in a really different place, so I can actually go outside and do things and, you know, go to restaurants and the other things I couldn't do with my first and see other people. I've been up to enjoy, you know, these really early days which are totally exhausting still, but without you know, I mean we were going into the pediatrician like every single day for the first two weeks of my daughter's life and it was such relief to, you know, go to the pediatrician a day to and then go it two weeks after that and not go in between, because everything was going fine and she wasn't losing weight and we didn't have to do the belly blankets. And we actually found out that we would have had to be admitted, because they aren't doing the outpatient blankets anymore because there's some precious metal in it or something and people are stealing them, which is crazy. 

 

28:53

So I mean they're just like, you know, just giving a little formula meant that my life was so much better and my daughter's life was so much better and not stressing about, you know, is her microbiome going to be messed up because she got formula? I think there's actually a lot of damage also in some of the research that's come going around and like what's the formulation of breast milk and how does this work? And it's interesting and I think that some of it's going to be used for how do you create these other formulas. But I think again, it kind of feeds the narrative around like this is what you should do versus what you know. There should be like an open choice for what you should do, like as long as you're not like giving your baby bad water with your formula, like formula is a good choice. 

 

29:43 - Avery (Host)

Yeah, I think, and we demonize formula and I think that there is it's really important that we can separate out formula as a product and formula companies, just like we can separate out insulin from pharmaceutical companies and like say, okay, these are products that are really life-saving and helpful and important, and at the same time, I can say that, like, marketing strategies by those large companies based on a capitalistic model are not in the public's best interest, but that doesn't mean that what they have, the products that they have, aren't incredibly important and helpful and necessary. 

 

30:22 - Helen (Guest)

Absolutely yeah. And there's some exciting stuff happening, like there's somebody in North Carolina who's developed, has a company to develop kind of synthetic breast milk it's not formula. So there's exciting research happening around infant feeding, which is great to see. But I think, yeah, I mean I think getting down to the minutia of like what is the difference between breast milk and formula is, in a lot of ways, not very helpful, because it's like well, you know how is your baby supported and how are they loved and you know, I think there's so much more to baby development and what you know, what are they exposed to. 

 

30:59 - Avery (Host)

So if you have one final piece of advice for folks listening right now, what would that be? 

 

31:06 - Helen (Guest)

I think do what you need to do. I had a friend tell me yesterday that they're pregnant, which is really exciting, and I told her like there's nothing good, inherently good about any choices you make in pregnancy and like really postpartum, I mean, other than like obviously abusing your child or something. But you know, if you have an OB versus a midwife, if you have, you know, as long as it's regulated in some way and you are okay with the decision, that is a good decision to make and that it's a safe decision and baby will probably be fine and what you need is not necessarily what somebody else needs and there isn't the sort of dichotomy. You don't need to see everything as a dichotomy, which is what I kind of saw it as like this is good versus this is bad. It's like everything's on a spectrum and sometimes you need some things and some things that sometimes you don't, and you know when you have the time to put in, you know put it in. 

 

32:02

But if you don't have the time, like don't feel guilty about not doing it, like feel good about the decisions that you made. I mean, at the births that I had with both my daughters were not the births that I imagined them, but they're both good births and you know, I'm so grateful to have modern medicine and to be able to, you know, have these amazing little girls who are happy and healthy, and that's really all that matters in the end. 

 

32:29 - Avery (Host)

So thank you so much for sharing your story, also your experience and your knowledge as someone who works in this field. And one more time for everyone listening today Can you remind us what your website is? 

 

32:42 - Helen (Guest)

Yep, it's www.lowmilksupplyfoundation.org it's Low Milk Supply Foundation and it's yeah, it's a website, it's free and we can connect you with the resources that you need. And you know we update as much as possible the findings of research and there are a few researchers doing really interesting research in low supply and ways to treat it. So I think that's going to be exciting to see and also talking about, like the lived experience of people with low supply. So hopefully people will have you know, even if they have low supply, they won't be blindsided like so many of us were. 

 

33:22 - Avery (Host)

Well, thank you again for joining us. 

 

33:23 - Helen (Guest)

Yeah and sorry, my baby was a little bit fussy through the interview. 

 

33:28 - Avery (Host)

I love that your baby was fussy because the whole point of this podcast is about sharing real stories, and having the multitask with a baby, with our life, is part of our reality and that's part of what's real she likes to be proud of her. 

 

33:42 - Helen (Guest)

She's saying I was hungry, mama, I was hungry. 

 

33:47 - Avery (Host)

And thank you to everyone listening today and I hope you tune back in next week. 

 

33:51 - Helen (Guest)

Thank you. 

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. 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 in your journey too.