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.
Avery:
Today I am going to be talking with Alexis as she shares her story about her difficulty with feeding her baby and the pressure of feeling like every single decision, she had to make felt so huge and so hard, and how that impacted her newborn experience.
Hi, Alexis, welcome to The Nourished Young Podcast. I am so happy to have you here.
Alexis:
Hi, thank you. I'm so happy to be here.
Avery:
Why don't we get started by just giving a little bit of backstory about your feeding experience and how you got to where you are right now?
Alexis:
Okay. And I think that the feeding experience to me is tied into a couple of other issues that Sophia had. It all went hand in hand. I know that this is a feeding podcast, but if it's okay, I think the other bits are relevant, too.
Avery:
Yeah, I think this is a parenting podcast.
Alexis:
Perfect. So, after Sophia was born, there was a couple of things that happened pretty quickly. The first was how bad it hurt to feed her. So the latch was extremely painful. She also, they say colic, but of course that covers all manner of things, but she, I don't think slept more than two hours in a row for the first year and a half almost. It was gnarly and she had horrible gas and she had horrible acid reflux, and it turned out she had a tongue tie. Anyways, I was sinking because I thought I was going to spend those first number of weeks or months in a little newborn bubble, and I had read all the things and set myself up and instead it was like every night was hell.
So I'm not sure which part you want me to highlight, and she wouldn't poop. And so I don't know if you remember this from our coaching conversations, but she wouldn't poop without getting some sort of help, like stimulus with a Q-tip, until I think she was six months old. I think the biggest battle that was happening for me was one, the medical community, like the western medical community. My doctor told me that what I ate did not affect her even though I was breastfeeding, which was wrong. I had many people say that which was wrong. It was wrong.
I had so many people telling me that I needed to start sleep training because of the way that she was sleeping, which for me and my baby was also very, very wrong. And then I also had the western medical community tell me that she might have something called Hirschsprung's disease, which means that she would have to have part of her colon removed, which was also wrong.
And I think that, I'm sure you tell people this, but the confluence of being at literally the most vulnerable time in your life right after you give birth and feeling wildly insecure if it's your first baby because you don't know what you're doing. I'm not somebody who takes on the opinions of other people easily, and I was. I was considering because I just felt like I was completely out of my depth.
And so in our first conversations, some of the things that you said that woke me up out of my postpartum stupor was I made a comment about how I knew I should be swaddling. And you and your fiery typical fashion said, "No." You didn't actually say no. What I said was, "I know I have to swaddle." And you say, "You do not have to swaddle. I do not know who said that to you, but you do not have to swaddle." And it was almost like, it wasn't like I really thought I had to swaddle, but even one person saying so affirmatively the opposite of the traditional advice I was giving helped me understand that I needed to start making choices in a different way.
And so I ended up coming across a woman. She has this company called Ila Grace, and she's very traditionally anti sleep training, but she also ended up putting me on this pathway around air pathway help and tongue ties and the connection between sleep problems and belly problems and everything else. So it took a full year before, honestly, before I started to feel like I was really enjoying myself, which I also felt super guilty about.
But as I chipped away at the gastrointestinal stuff, the acid reflux stuff, as I found a pathway that suited us that actually became functional, and then I did end up getting her tongue tie, which I know is not for everyone, but pre-tongue tie and pre-talk to you, breastfeeding was so painful and she was pretty much cluster feeding all the time, and the only way she would sleep is latched on my breast, belly down on my body, which I know you're not supposed to co-sleep with your kids that way, but it literally was the only way that she would sleep. And between getting the tongue tie resolved and our coaching conversations, we got it to the point where breastfeeding was probably pleasant about 65 to 70% of the time. I think she had some learned habits in her mouth by the time I met you, it was a long journey to get her stopped doing what she was doing.
So I'll pause there. I just said a bunch of stuff.
Avery:
Yeah, I think you said a bunch of awesome stuff. Let's talk about some of that. I think the first one that popped up to me was that shock of not being able to a hundred percent trust the medical authorities that we are normally used to trusting. I think that is one of the biggest challenges when we are new parents is hitting this place where we're like, "Oh, these people who we are told this narrative, that they have all the answers, don't actually have all the answers." It's this surprising place to find yourself in.
Alexis:
It is. And if you're resistant to what they're saying, there is oftentimes kickback like you are being irresponsible as a mother, which is the most vulnerable place that you could get hit when you already feel like you're not positive.
Avery:
Or you're going to harm your baby.
Alexis:
Or you're going to harm your baby. Yes. Luckily I have some of that in me anyway, but I could imagine for women that have a harder time pushing back or fighting or are conflict avoidant, those experiences are probably incredibly difficult because they might even do what's being recommended when it doesn't feel good because they're not sure what the alternative is.
Avery:
Let's talk about if you're a marginalized person because there's very real risk not just pushing back, but in some communities, pushing back can result in yes, Department of Family Services coming to your home. If you don't have the means to push back yourself, then there can be really big consequences for standing up and saying, "Hey, this [inaudible 00:07:57] feel right to me," to someone who has a lot of power.
Alexis:
Yes. And in that way, I feel incredibly blessed that because I am privileged, I was able to do something like go to a naturopath and it's not like I'm like, "Oh, it's so easy." But I worked it out to pay somebody out of pocket to get the information that I needed that actually ended up being helpful. And I can't imagine what it would be like to not be able to have those resources and be stuck with one party line that does not feel right to you as a new mother.
Avery:
And I think it's important to people to just realize that the amount of education around infant feeding that's given in medical schools, it's like an hour. They get a lecture. In nursing programs, they have very, very little education. Sometimes they get sponsored education about feeding, and often the sponsored education about feeding is actually from formula companies. So there's definitely a conflict of interest there in terms of actual research and actual knowledge. That doesn't mean that all medical [inaudible 00:09:07] because some of them have absolutely gone out to learn things. It just means that the default isn't what is actually evidence-based and known to be true about how feeding works.
Alexis:
Yes, right.
Avery:
And I think also that emotional weight, let's talk about that for a second, because the emotional weight of having to make all the decisions all of a sudden for somebody else.
Alexis:
Shocking. I think it's actually, it feels overwhelming because for the first time, something is at stake that is bigger than you succeeding or failing at school or a job or whatever. I suppose if you're a nurse or a doctor or in a profession, or even you drive an ambulance or whatever, you probably have some of that internal understanding of what that's like to have someone's life on the line, but to have a minute to minute responsibility like that where you actually could make the wrong decision and negatively affect somebody for the rest of their life is terrifying.
Avery:
Yeah. It's just that weight of that. And I think it's so heavy, and you can't be prepared for the weight of that because you've never experienced that. I think that's the part that makes us feel so vulnerable and so terrified, even if we're otherwise empowered, is because it's such a different situation.
Alexis:
And I think that when your nervous system gets stressed like that, your relationship to immediacy goes wildly up and you start making decisions because you think that there is a ticking clock in this very visceral way, which there are a handful of decisions that are immediacy necessary, but most of them actually aren't. Including not breastfeeding and formula. It's like people act like you get on a path, you stay on a path, and that's the path. And it's like actually get ready to have a kid because that path ain't straight.
Avery:
Right. I think the best analogy for having a kid is you learn to ride a bike, but just as soon as you figure out how to pedal, someone throws a whole bunch of road hazards in the way. You learn how to navigate those and then somebody else throws more. Because the truth is that every season with being a parent changes and it's never one you've been to before.
Alexis:
Right. And I think that something that was incredibly helpful from you, from other resources that I found, was understanding that the number one thing that I could do for myself is pay attention to Sophia. So to actually stay attuned to her personality, her body type, the way that she responded to things in a moment to moment way, her particular specific feedback to things that I was doing instead of getting on a program and staying on a program.
Avery:
I love that. What did you find worked for you?
Alexis:
In relationship to feeding?
Avery:
Yeah.
Alexis:
So post tongue tie, it got astronomically better because before that she was losing weight and I was thinking I might have to switch to formula, or doing a combination of two, because she got so skinny. And then after the tongue tie and I started having coaching sessions with you around latching, and I don't know if you remember, but we also had to do all that occupational therapy around the roof of her mouth and her capacity for gagging and getting her tongue used to stimulus, et cetera, et cetera.
And so really it was the occupational therapy with you, getting her mouth used to opening wider without having a gag reflex, the tongue tie release, and then working on my diet so that what I was eating stopped bothering her as much. And then we were able to stick entirely with breastfeeding until we could do solids and breastfeeding around 6, 7, 8 months. And then I weaned her at a year.
Avery:
Did you feel like you were empowered about the weaning process, that that's when it felt right for you? Was that your choice and it was the right decision, or you felt forced?
Alexis:
No, I'm really lucky in the way that it happened. It felt really right to me. Sophia had a list of allergies that I got from the naturopath that was so long that, and I'm a vegetarian, and basically she was allergic to almost all vegetarian proteins at the time. And so my diet, I was starting to be undernourished from eating in a way that was beneficial for her, or helpful to her in some way.
I'm also kind of an older mom. I am 43 now. I was 41 when I had her, and I could feel my milk was starting to dry up and I knew what I would have to do to resource myself, and she was eating really well. So I imagine if she wasn't eating solids really well, I probably would've gone longer, but she was incredibly into and desirous of solid foods and good at it at an early age.
And so I think we were only down to once or twice a day when I decided to wean. And then I went down to once and then I knew when the last time was. I breastfed her in the bath. It was really sweet and beautiful. And again, I don't know if I would've gone a little bit longer, or gone back and forth longer, but it didn't seem to bother her very much.
Avery:
Yeah. What if that was absolutely your right pathway for your whole family? It sounds like you felt really empowered and it felt like this really beautiful transition for your family.
Alexis:
Yeah, it was the right time. I could tell. It still was hurting some. She still had a tendency to want to bite.
Avery:
The worst.
Alexis:
I know. So I was very rarely having those beautiful picturesque moments with her where she was relaxed. She also was not a relaxed feeder, so it got better after all of the work that you and I had done. I think the handful of times she fell asleep breastfeeding was maybe probably less than 10 in a year that I was doing it. She was wide awake. She was fidgety. She would look around, she would get distracted really easily. It took a lot to create that container for us. I know that there's other babies that it's way different for them, but it didn't ever seem like that particular thing was the singular or first number one way I could regulate her nervous system.
Avery:
Is she busy now? Because she was busy. She was a busy little human. Is she still a busy little human?
Alexis:
She's both things. She's gotten incredibly balanced. She is very busy, but her focus is incredible. She can now, she solo plays and she'll play alone for up to 15, 20 minutes at a time, which is amazing for a 2-year-old. And she's a lot calmer. She's fiery as shit, but I think she's probably always going to be like that, and I like it. I had to figure out which part was because her belly and her gut lining was aggravated, and which part is because she's got a huge personality. Sophia's really busy, but she's not cracked out and she's not fractualized the way that she was when you and I started working together.
Avery:
Yeah, that's amazing. And I think we have this narrative that all babies are the same. They're babies, but all babies are tiny humans that have personalities and those personalities show up in babies. You can see them later. You're like, "Oh, that. Oh, you are a busy human. This is just about who you are as a human." But I love your point about trying to figure out when you have a baby, whether or not it's who you are or where you are, and figuring those two things out is hard.
Alexis:
Yeah. I had to really attune myself to not having the point be to get her to be less intense because she just is intense. She's just inherently an intense tiny person. But to figure out how to understand when the feedback when I was getting it was because she was physically uncomfortable, which was very, very often.
Avery:
And it sounds like it wasn't an overnight fix. I think that's the other thing that's really helpful to think through for babies is just like for grownup humans, things aren't often an overnight fix, but we should be able to see that we're making progress in the right direction.
Alexis:
Completely. And I think that is counterculture to go slow. One of the best things you ever did for me was talk about the red light, yellow light, green light with the reassessment of what her mouth could take. Because for me, that ended up not just being about that, but it opened up a whole world for me around how babies operate. And I think that because we're such a fast moving culture and we want them to learn fast and get it fast and integrate it fast, what we end up doing is pushing and we don't even know we're being so pushy, and then we have pushy little kids and we say it's because they're entitled or because they've gotten Americanized. It's like, yeah, because you did that to them. Because you're Americanized.
Avery:
You modeled that.
Alexis:
Yes. I think even why she's chiller now is because I've just learned, actually, I've been playing a game with her. She's two years old, where the more impatient and intense she's about her requests, the slower I'll move my body and it just makes her nuts. But she also has learned to self-regulate and to understand that when she amps up and escalates when it's a non need, mom goes slower and slower and slower. And when she's sweet and chill and easygoing, I'm super down to get her what she needs.
And I think with babies, yeah, man, people do, they want it to be fixed and then they want it to stay fixed. But if you have a high needs baby with a lot of different physical issues, there's a certain kind of surrender into patience and having your life be just about that, knowing that there is a cap on it.
Because that's the other thing you really helped me with, is pretty much every time I talk to you, you said there is an end date to this. This is not going to last you for the rest of your life. This is a season of your life. And I think for new moms, it is shocking unless you have that kind of personality anyways, how much you have to just completely surrender and block out the noise of everything else to attune yourself to this one singular human to do an excellent job in the beginning.
Avery:
And it's hard because all of the books and the narratives, they all tell you a different thing. The support for helping babies all points in the opposite direction. So I think your point there is that none of them, none of the advice in the books and the courses and the programs are right for every baby.
Alexis:
I think that that's a hundred percent true. I also think you have to be careful because of Instagram and algorithms that if you put in your search engine sleep training one time, it's almost like there's these two or three philosophical chains of information or narratives. And if you're interested and you're trying to research, do not do it in social media because what you research, they will then pick a train for you and then feed you that narrative over and over and over and over again until you think that that's the one that everybody is doing. No, that is not true.
Avery:
I think that's a great point that you can curate who you follow, you can block and really just limit down who you listen to and who you resonate with and let all the rest of that narrative go.
Alexis:
Yes. And for me, those rules were no fanaticism. If somebody says it's one way, they're out. Unless they have some sort of philosophical understanding that I should be listening to myself and that me and my intuition around my baby is the right thing to do, they're out. There was just a couple ground rules I had to put in place to block out some of the noise.
Avery:
I love that. What else were your ground rules?
Alexis:
Let's see. It was really huge for me, the whole no fanaticism and no one right way and the highlight on the mother's intuition. But I think some of the other ones were anything that hinted that breastfeeding or sleep training should be a place of discipline or influence or control. That's also out for me because what I'm looking for is the most natural solution.
I totally had to learn how to trust my body and trust Sophia's body. So I think even that, anybody that doesn't ever mention body intelligence or the intelligence of your baby's body, or that your baby is not actually being whiny, they're communicating. Just like that foundational thing of understanding that your job as a parent is not to get your kid to stop crying because it's irritating. Even though it's very, very, very irritating. Your job is to discover the root over and over and over and over again, and it doesn't even mean you can fix the root, but your job is to try to create empathy and understanding with your kid.
Avery:
I love that. If you have any final pieces of advice, one final piece of advice for folks listening right now, what would that be?
Alexis:
I think it would be in the world of tell yourself you're an excellent mother as you're seeking for help and information and that it's not knowing what to do that makes you a good mom. It's a willingness to be flexible and learn and be open-minded, and that quality alone is what makes a good parent, is somebody who's humble enough to understand that they don't know everything.
Avery:
That's amazing. Thank you, Alexis, so much for sharing your story and your experience and your knowledge with everyone listening today.
Alexis:
My total pleasure. I hope that more and more people find you. I hope more and more people get into a conversation around not hyper idealizing that first six months to a year. And if you have a blissy baby, good for you. And if you don't have a blissy baby, it has nothing to do with your parenting skills and everything to do with the journey that you're on with this particular person.
Avery:
That's amazing. And one tiny correction I would like to make earlier was Alexis mentioned occupational therapy. Occupational therapists are amazing human beings, and they do therapy for baby to help movement and motor skills. We were working on oral function therapy, which helps babies move their tongue and their mouth in a different way. And if you want to find some support for oral function therapy, you can go to my website, nourishedyoung.com, and find a list of resources with providers who have a reflex based approach to oral function therapy that uses the exact same techniques that Alexis was talking about.
And for everybody else listening in, thank you so much for joining us today. Make sure you subscribe and you can follow me on Instagram @nourishedyoung and make sure you tune in again next Friday to hear another amazing parent share their wisdom, too.
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 and a short overview of your journey, or even just your words of wisdom for new parents to stories@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 in your journey, too.