3 Life Lessons My Breastfeeding Friends Are Teaching Me

Weird topic, but I've had a crazy amount of conversations about all things pregnancy, labor, breastfeeding, etc. and some of the things about breastfeeding got me thinking...

1. What we SIGNAL, we STRENGTHEN
2. Anytime we start something NEW, we should expect DISCOMFORT... that doesn't mean it's wrong
3. We create BASELINES for what we will TOLERATE, both physically and in other areas of life

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Transcript

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Hello, welcome to another episode of the podcast. I'm so glad that you're here. Today, I was reminded of somewhat of a life metaphor, I guess, directly tied to breastfeeding, and I'll be totally honest with you, I have never breastfed and, you know, I don't have children, and that's not something that I've done. But more so it's just tied to the physiological symptoms that we get, and the reason that it came up with breastfeeding is because I have so many friends. I'm at the stage of life right now where my friends are all having children, and so naturally I'm a girl, a lot of them are talking about their breastfeeding journeys or what they've done instead and just the, just the physiological changes that happen at that point. But even if you're like me and you've never breastfed before, or you're a man and you're never going to do that in your lifetime, It still is relatable, and I still think that you should listen because there are probably some physical things that you could relate to as well i- without breastfeeding. And also even though breastfeeding is the conversation that kinda brought these things to my mind as something that would be good to talk about on an episode of this podcast, the episode is not about breastfeeding really. It's more so about the things that our bodies do that when you think about for a second and and you think on it a little bit longer, you realize, oh, These are good things to remember just about life in general and the ways that we go about life in general. So I kinda have, like, three key points that came to mind whenever I was thinking about this. And fun fact, I actually had this idea a few weeks ago and had made an entire outline on it, and Sometimes things just come up instead. And in the last couple of weeks, things that have come up are, my husband turning 30. I talked about that on an episode about the things that we feel like we learned in our 20s. Or my book club turning three years old or celebrating our three year anniversary, that came up. And so I've actually had this outlined for a while, but I... It just kinda fell to the back burner, which sometimes happens. It reminds me of like when I have a list of books to read, and then something all of a sudden sneaks up to the top of the list because, oh, there's gonna be a TV show on it, and I wanna read the book first. Or, oh, someone in book club is reading it, and so I wanna read the book with them before I get, go down the rest of the list. It just-- This idea kind of fell to the background, But then I was reminded of the idea because we just celebrated one of our friends, their child turned one years old, and usually that's around the time that moms kinda stop breastfeeding. Uh, not everybody, everybody's different. But if they are breastfeeding, a lot of the time around one years old, they are doing it a lot less or not doing it at all anymore. And I was talking with some girlfriends about this, and just how crazy it is how our bodies, especially female bodies, but male bodies too, how our bodies just adapt to the situations that we're in. And breastfeeding is such a good example of that, or just pregnancy in general, because your body adapts to what it is preparing for, right? And so I recently learned that, the breast milk that you produce in the morning is different than the breast milk that you produce in the evening because in the evening it has more melatonin, like natural melatonin or something like that. You can fact check me. But basically because your body is trying to produce what it is that is needed of it at particular times of day. And this is true anyway in our bodies, like whether we're breastfeeding or not, is that our hormones fluctuate throughout the day based off of our circadian rhythms, and that they naturally go through a cycle so that we can sleep better at night. And then also when we wake up, our corticel- cortisol is elevated in the morning so that when we wake up, we have that natural spike of energy or adrenaline to start the day. And I just find it really, really interesting. If you know me, I find physiological things really, really interesting, and the way that our bodies adapt to our scenarios without us even realizing it. Super interesting. Especially because I think a lot of these things can be metaphors for things in life. So one thing with breastfeeding that is always interesting to me is how when women say that they go back to work and they have a harder time pumping regularly or something like that, that their body naturally go... Like, it takes that as a signal, "Oh, I don't need to be producing as much because I'm going longer and longer between the milk actually being used." And so then you stop producing as much. And that's not the case for everybody, But I also think that's true physiologically as well for just any kind of physical thing. Like, think about the first time that you took a half-mile walk. You might've been winded, you might've been tired, but once you start taking a half-mile walk every day for however many days, then you're like, "Oh, I could go a little bit further. I could go a little bit further." And your, what your body is doing is getting used to what you're putting it through, and so you're signaling to it, "Hey, this is something that I wanna strengthen." So in real life as well, what we signal is what we strengthen. I always think about that phrase, like, where attention goes, energy flows, or something like that. Like, basically the things that you give attention to Are the things that are going to flourish in your life. And so with this example of when we give our body a signal that, "Hey, we need this. This is something that we need," it naturally strengthens that thing within our system. That's true in our real lives too, right? So I'm curious what you would say, like if you think about it right now, what is something that is important to you, but you haven't really been signaling, you haven't made time for it in your life to strengthen it? Because your body is aware of that, whether it's subconscious or not. Your body is aware of those things, and your brain is aware of those things. I've talked a lot about confirmation bias on here before. But when you consistently put something off or procrastinate something or you're not doing something, even though it is something that you want to do and something that you care a lot about, you're signaling to yourself that it doesn't matter that much, and so you're not really strengthening the muscles within you to continue doing that. A really silly example would be, I'm j- book club just comes to mind because we just had it, but say that you've decided that forming female friendships is really important to you or forming male friendships is really important to you. Having a social circle is really important to you. But then every time that a social gathering comes up, you decline the invitation or you last minute back out, you're signaling to yourself that that actually is not that important to you. And so what you're strengthening is the isolated part of yourself, which sometimes that's okay. Like I'm not saying declining social invitations is bad. I find that to be a huge source of empowerment for myself because a lot of the time I'm the yes girl, I say yes to too many things, and then I'm over-obligated. But, so I'm not saying that at all. But I'm just saying that if you think about your priorities and think about the things that you want to be and the person that you want to be in life, and then you signal to yourself that that thing is not important, then you're strengthening the opposite effect or opposite thing. Hope that's making sense. So basically, that point is what we signal, we strengthen. That's kinda my first point. The second thing that I always think of whenever people start talking about breastfeeding is, like, I, as someone who has never breastfed, I'm always thinking, "That has to be so uncomfortable. That has to hurt," you know? And I, I'm sure that it does, but that is not really the biggest thing that they talk about. Like, sometimes moms will talk about that. But what it reminds me of is that there's always going to be discomfort at the beginning of something new, right? So, if you are breastfeeding for the first time or you're doing anything for the first time physically, like say that you're working out for the first time or taking that walk for the first time, at first it's gonna be uncomfortable. At first you're not gonna be comfy. You're gonna be out of your element. It's not something that you've done before. So, any time that there's something new, you should expect discomfort. And so I really wanna encourage you with, you're pro- there's probably something new that's going on in your life. There always is. I feel like a new job, a new relationship, a new house, A new title at work, a new child, a new anything. There's probably something new on your calendar or something going on. And any time that there is something new, you can expect discomfort. So I think that sometimes we take discomfort as meaning that it's not aligned or it's not... It's just not a good thing. And we forget that the first time that we ever crawled, that was probably not comfortable. The first time we walked, that probably was not comfortable. The first time that we ever did anything, it was not comfortable. So discomfort is actually a sign that you're doing something right. I really, really liked something that my husband Jared said on one of our walks. He was saying something about this app that he just recently created, it's called Penny Penguin, it's a personal finance app. And when he was doing his first test, there was like the first download and it broke," or something like that. It was something to the effect of, yeah, the first thing that it did didn't go well. But he said, "But if it messes up, that means you're doing something right." And that's just so counterintuitive because we, at, at least I personally, and maybe you agree with this, but I personally feel like, oh, if I mess up, if I fail, that means I'm doing something wrong, right? It doesn't mean I'm doing something right. And in his head, he was like, "Oh, well that means that I'm at least..." Doing something wrong is indicating that you're doing it at all, and that is progress. When you try something and it doesn't go correctly or perfectly, that is better than if you never tried the thing at all. If you never tried the thing at all, you wouldn't have figured out that this was the wrong way to do it and then been able to make progress. And I just think that that's something that's so counterintuitive, is that when we fail or mess up, it's actually progress. I don't think people think about that. At least I don't regularly, and I need to regularly. But when we do something wrong, it's progress because we're learning. We're learning what we need to do next time, and how to get better, and how to improve, and that's actually progress. And I think that, I guess it kinda loosely ties in with the breastfeeding thing or any physiological thing, but when you first start working out or you first start breastfeeding and y- like, you h- don't have the hang of it yet, you learn all the little tips and tricks to get it right, and your body eventually gets used to it, and that doesn't mean that you just quit at the beginning. I mean, some people do. Some people have different experiences. But for a lot of people, there's these uncomfortable moments of defeat or discomfort or you feel like you just can't do it, And then eventually it just becomes the usual, right? When you first started your job and you didn't know what you were doing, after a while, like now it just feels like you've been doing it forever. Or when you first... I think a lot about mine and my husband's marriage, 'cause we've been reminiscing a lot. We're going on our 10-year wedding anniversary, and we've been reminiscing about our relationship, like in high school or something. Like there were all these feelings that were really uncomfortable at first, like, "Oh, should I say this? Should I do this? Should I text this?" "Should we hold hands in the hall?" All those different things, and it felt really novel and really crazy. And then now it's just like those are just usual things. And in 10 years it'll feel, there will be things that we're going through now that will feel more usual then. So it just becomes the norm eventually. So if you can remember that at at the scary beginning of the thing that you're starting, I think it would be really helpful just to remember that eventually this is gonna feel like the norm. So I just need to remember that the discomfort is not a sign that I'm doing something wrong. It's actually a sign that I'm doing something right And then the last point that I really like is that we, we kind of train our body for baselines, right? So we do this with food, with exercise, with sleep. Like, how many people probably slept eight hours when they were a kid, or 10 hours when they were a kid? I don't know. What- however many hours when your parents were moderating it, and then now that you moderate your own sleep, You might be like how I am. Like now I've noticed that I, I'm just awake pretty much at 6:00 AM every day. It's really, really hard for me to sleep in past 6:00 or 6:30, even on the weekends, because my body is just, like, into this routine. I've, like, trained it to get up at that time. And so, and I think just as you get older, it gets harder to fall back asleep. And so I'm experiencing that where, like, I wake up the first time at 6:00 on a Saturday or something, and then I try to go back to sleep, and it's really, really hard to go back to sleep until 8:00 or whenever I actually wanna wake up. But what we do repeatedly trains our bodies to get used to that routine and get used to that thing, and I think that that's true in our lives too Sometimes we train our bodies to tolerate less sleep or tolerate less food or tolerate less water And the water one is so real because when I started drinking more water several years back when I first started paying more attention to my health and I started drinking more water, like, immediately, I will get so parched now because I'm in the habit and the routine of drinking so much water. But whenever you stop doing that, whenever you decrease the routine or increase the routine of whatever you're doing with your body, your body adapts to it. Your body, like, gets used to whatever it is that you put it through. And so you're training it to tolerate certain things. And so I think that's such a great metaphor for life because you do the same thing in life. You train yourself to tolerate certain things. Like, in your workplace, have you trained yourself to tolerate poor culture? Or in your relationship, Have you trained yourself to tolerate something that is l- a lower standard than you usually think that you would've? I would say just think about your lifestyle, your job, your body, your relationships, and ask yourself "What things have I unintentionally trained myself to tolerate?" Because you may not have realized, because it can sometimes be like a slippery slope, and then you look up one day and you're like, "How did I get here?" But what things are, have you unintentionally trained yourself to tolerate in your life? And which ones are important to you to not do that anymore? Because I think sometimes we do tolerate like, more negativity or something like that in our relationships than we intended to, but w- we look back and we're like, "How did we get here?" And so reminding yourself, what, what do I want to be true of the things that I will tolerate, and what do I not want to be true? Like, what are kinda my non-negotiables? So I would say that's maybe a reflection point of, looking at, okay, Where have I allowed, like, chaos or something to be an excuse to tolerate something less than I want or deserve for my body or my relationships or my workplace or my family or my house, my home, my surroundings? And then ask yourself, where would you like to go from here? And you can start really small. Just start really small and decide, "Okay, this is one step that I'm gonna take toward making that thing a priority again." And vocalizing, 'cause sometimes that has to do with other people And when you're not prioritizing something, other people aren't gonna realize it's a priority unless you tell them. So you need to do do that too. But basically, I just think that these are three things that are worth thinking about, worth reflecting on, and I hope tying them to, like, a very physical, real thing is helpful for you. And I love you. Thank you