An Honest Conversation on Birth & Early Motherhood with Cub & Kin (part 1)

This season is all about the evolution of you, exploring growth, change and what it means to step into the next version of yourself. 

Cassie Davenport is a experienced and degree qualified naturopath and nutritionist, Cassie is passionate about co-creating achievable and sustainable solutions with her clients. Her approach involves combining the latest evidence based research with traditional herbal medicine methods and believes small changes can create a big impact.

The information shared in this episode is general in nature and is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not a substitute for personalised medical, nutritional or therapeutic advice. Cassie is not responsible for any actions taken based on the content of this episode. Always consult a qualified health professional before making changes to your health, diet or lifestyle. If you loved this episode, follow Cassie on Instagram Follow Cassie here  for more, and HERE to learn more about working with Cassie one-to-one.

Kat & Jess aka Cub and Kin join Cassie to chat all things pregnancy, birth and early motherhood with honest and personal reflections. 

Kat & Jess are are deeply passionate about supporting and educating mums-to-be, Whether you are preparing for birth, finding your rhythm in the early days, or simply looking for steady guidance in a brand new season, we are here for you.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Oh, my home is fine. It's my mind. Art prepared and not informed, and they've hopefully never seen a bird quite foreign. So I'd really like to be talking about having a really appropriate birthday, and maybe sitting down and being like, okay, you might want to be in the room that you've got me through experience, emotional, and the identity that happens with that. Today we're talking about one of the most profound transitions in a woman's life. It's pregnancy, birth, and the transformation into motherhood. And I am joined by two incredible women who support mothers through that journey every single day. A big welcome to Kat and Jess from Cub and Kim. Welcome to In with Cassie. Before I jump into the 101 questions I literally have for you both, can you take me back to the moment when you realize birth work was a part of your calling? Do you have like a moment?

SPEAKER_03 1:12

Yeah, I'll go first because mine was a lot earlier than yours. I was sitting in the bathtub in the year 2016, is when I was in year 12, watching Call the Midwife and watching One Born Every Minute. And I thought, yeah, this is what I'm gonna do for my life. And there's no bicycles involved in you don't get to do little house calls, and One Born Every Minute is obviously very dramatized. So it's not quite what it was, but yeah, it was just a 17-year-old thinking what she wanted to do. That's it. Yeah, and I guess I'm stuck with it now. But luckily, the passion has grown since I was 17. Binge watching Hall of the Black.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Oh my gosh, I love that you just had that moment. You're like, this is what I want to be and where I want to be doing it. I mean, it sold you down the dream of the house calls and the bicycles, but I mean it really got me.

SPEAKER_03 2:01

And the nuns, none of that, none of that. And my nobody in my family works in health, so my mum sat me down. Like, you really don't want to do this. She's a she's a big doom prepper, so she wanted me to be a pharmacist. So if the world went to shit, she'd have access to the drugs she needed and things. But she said, midwife to me now.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

So anyway, that was my falling. Very remote. In terms of your mum's needs, midwife wasn't really cutting the mustard there. She doesn't need that, but she's fine.

SPEAKER_03 2:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

She's like, Tick, I've had my children. That actually doesn't work for me. Yeah. Sorry, Mum. What about you, Kat? Did you have a moment?

SPEAKER_03 2:38

Uh mine came a lot later in life. Mine happened after I had my daughter. Going through her pregnancy, towards the end of pregnancy, there was a a lot of kind of questions about how I was going to give birth and what that was going to be like. She was really big, and so they were really pushing for me to have an induction. And I had my trusty best friend here, midwife Jess, to kind of relay things off. And then I ended up having an induction for pre-eclampsia. So although it wasn't my like initial plan, ending up there, I had a really positive experience. And coming out of that, I think I really relate it to my team, my support team. So having Jess there, having my husband who was somewhat prepared, um, but also having like a student midwife and a midwife that um Jess really trusted from her hospital. So yeah, the thought of having this really beautiful experience because of my team really connected with me. And Jess had said a few times, like, you should be a doller, you should be a dollar. And I was like, no. Um Matley was kind of coming up, and this opportunity came up in Sydney to do like an intensive. So it was a few days of training um in the Blue Mountains as opposed to doing like weeks and weeks of it or an online module every month. And it kind of just seemed to slip right into life. And I was like, All right, now's the time. If I don't do it now, I'm never gonna do it. So I'll just I'll do it and I don't know what'll come of it, and we'll just we'll just do it. And so yeah, I kind of went from there.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Wow. So it really was your own experience with the birth of your daughter be like, okay, this is solidifying, this is where I want to be. Like, I know I can is know that I can support or just feeling that support from your birth team around you and knowing the difference that they made in your birth.

SPEAKER_03 4:22

Yeah, I think the the difference that they made in my birth and the support that I had was massive. It was like paramount to how I felt at the end of my birth. But then I'm a real people person, kind of as is, and and have been over all my sort of jobs that I've jumped in and out of. And so the idea of being a dueler and kind of coming alongside someone emotionally um in this time that's really huge and massive and challenging and all those things, um, yeah, just really appeal.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Well, I love you've both supported like so many women through pregnancy and birth now. Looking back at everything you've seen and learned and from your personal experiences as well, what are three things you wish every woman knew before she began the journey?

SPEAKER_03 5:08

I could talk about this for years. Um I think like the number one thing you should know going into birth, which like if you're at the shops and you stop me for a second, like I will talk to you about this if you're childbearing age. I will attack you with this 45-minute conversation, is your your model of care is the most important thing you can do for your birth. We have such good research now. The best study, which is all about birth trauma. In Australia, we have the birth trauma inquiry. So many women are being traumatized by their birth. And it's not because of how they're birthing. It's not because, you know, they were forced to have an emergency cesarean or an instrumental birth, or the midwife held them down in the bath, they were forced to have a water birth. It is like it's how you're made to feel during your birth experience experience. Are you safe? Do you feel confident? Is your care provider giving you confidence in your body? And that all comes down to who you pick for your care. So many women who go into pregnancy. What did my mom do? You know, the the boomers and the gen X's, they're all about the private obstetric care. That's what they had, that's the best of the best in their eyes. And so we're just we follow on with that. Or, you know, where did our friends go? And where like Kat was lucky enough to have me who had had a home birth my first. She's well, like, oh, people have home birth. Okay, yeah, sure. And there's been like five or six other women since I chose to have my home birth who have kind of slowed on from that. But most people don't have that experience of one percent of women in Australia home birth. So yeah, it's all about you.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

And then just to I guess to follow on from that, I am gonna come to you too, Kat, as well. But how do people choose a model of care in terms of does it come back to not having being a woman who has not given birth before? How do you figure out what aligns to you and what your values are? Because I think it's very different. Like I had such a different experience once I'd been through it before. I was like, oh, okay, I have somewhat of an experience to know what I should be expecting. But I think I had my like you have such ideas and perceptions and values before you've gone through it. It's just this like pie in the sky stuff of like this is how it's gonna go and this is what it's gonna be like. And I mean, it can be like how you think of it, but I think for a lot of women it's a world apart from what they imagined it's gonna be like.

SPEAKER_03 7:41

Yeah, it's really tricky picking who your care provider is gonna be because all you have is the experience of your friends and family. Very few women will do some research around models of care. I know the hospitals have I've worked out, even the website explaining the different models of care is atrocious. Most women book in, I sit them down at their first appointment. I'm like, so you've booked in with you know midweek regroup practice or a birth center model, and they're like, I don't know what that is. So, like it's so lacking the education around models of care. Most of it comes back to your GP. And when we first started cubing, I went in all guns lazy and I said, like, the GPs is where it's falling short because there's so many different models that every hospital has a different model, it's really confusing. So went to a few different GP practices and did a little in-service on these are the models of care to offer to the women just so that they know. But I know when I went to the GP with my first baby and said I was, you know, six weeks pregnant, I was like, I'm gonna have a home birth, so can I have a referral to a private midwife? The GP immediately said that that's incredibly dangerous. I really don't recommend that. That's really unsafe. I don't support that. I was like, oh well, actually, like here's the place of birth study, it's a really large study from the UK, and here's another study from New Zealand. They were like, oh, okay. And that's me as a midwife who had the confidence and the knowledge to back it up, but other women choosing anything remotely outside of mainstream, like, yeah, it is gonna be shut down and really disheartened straight away. I guess I would say like you start with what you want for your birth. And it doesn't have to be set in stone. You don't have to know exactly what kind of fairy lights you're gonna have there and exactly what position you're gonna birth in, but you know, what are your ideas about birth? Are you terrified and you want an elected cesarean? That's a little bit of a dangerous fear because I think we can work on those fears through education and so like ruling it out and going with a model of care that will get you your elected cesarean straight away without kind of doing the work on why you want those things can be a bit tricky, but I think just starting with what kind of birth you want and then looking at the evidence of what are the stats around each model, where am I most likely to get that birth whilst still being safe. But I think a good place to start. You need friends who know this stuff, and you need you know, yeah, you you need to be in the know, and that's what I have seen that women don't know. And they either do their birth class with us at 36 weeks, they're like, oh shit, I didn't know any of this. I picked this model of care, or this is just what I've fallen into, and it's so sad for me to see, or they really want a water birth, but they picked a private obstetrician who has a 94% seizure rate. Like, that's not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

Yeah, it happens popularly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:38

So my like life goal is to head into schools and start educating teenage girls on how epic birth can be and what options they have for their birth, heading back to all the GPs, educating them. Like, that's a big job to be classed.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Oh my god, I so coincide I co-sign that with you though, Jess. I would have that is my biggest goal. I see so many women with hormonal issues or even thyroid dysfunction, and I see them in a preconception state, and they're like, I wish I knew this, like 10 years ago or 20. Um I was like, Yeah, I wish you did too. Like, I wish I did when I was studying. I remember uh one of my best friends and colleagues who I still talk to today, and he's male, and he was sitting behind me in the female repro subject, and him answering all of the questions perfectly and knowing so much. I'm like, okay, I've been menstruating for many years. Like, how do you know this stuff though? Like, what he's like, I've read the books, I've read the textbooks. I was like, rude.

SPEAKER_03 11:36

And that we have to pay like $140 for our period tracker app that like to educate us on like we just don't, yes. So anyway, you and me, all right, let's go into the schools, let's empower these young women to learn about their bodies.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

It's so it's so a hundred percent. Okay, Kat, what are your things that you wish everyone knew before taking on the birth and pregnancy journey?

SPEAKER_03 12:00

Uh, what do I think everyone should know? Um I I've also co-signed the models of care situation. Um yeah, definitely since doing cub and kin and hearing just as passionate for that, I can definitely see where that is a massive um player in the game and how yeah, positive a positive birth experience doesn't just um isn't just like the one way of giving whatever doesn't make a positive birth experience. Um so the idea that you are setting yourself up with the best sort of care in in who you choose to care for you is massive. Um, but I also think the importance of the support team, if I um you know, that's a whole reason I've become a dueler and and started this, um, is because the importance of my birth team and the people I surrounded myself with. I my husband is the best. I love him a lot. That's my display. What comes next? He was a bit of a mess during birth. He had a real fear that I like he just thought he kept voicing this fear. He said it multiple times that I was gonna die in birth and he would become a single dad, and that was our life. Like, what a way to set you up for confidence. He's like, I just know Kat's gonna die, she's gonna die. I was like, don't aim that. Also he, you know, he didn't have strong uh, I don't know, belief in you, in me, in my livelihood, um, or just like birth in itself. I don't think it's not something that he'd ever kind of been um, you know, opened up to before we had a midwife as a best friend who doesn't shut up about us. Um, you know, we were the first kind of people that he'd done that with. He's his family, like his sisters don't have babies, so it's not like we've done that to our families yet. Um, we're the first one on either side. Anyway, so as much as I love him, he would be useful. Yes, I knew he wouldn't be great. So who was educated, who knew um, you know, what to talk me through, who knew how to talk me through things, who knew how to advocate for me and how to help me kind of make choices was massive for me. Um, I think it was only after I gave birth that I realized how lucky I was to have a really positive induction experience to end up having, you know, an unmedicated vaginal birth fire induction. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

Go you, cat.

SPEAKER_03 14:36

That's amazing. 5.1 kilo baby. Yeah, she was huge.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Whoa. I thought I had big babies. Both my babies were over four kilos, but 5.1, you've just like really turned up the volume there.

SPEAKER_03 14:50

She did good. She loved it in there. Um yeah, I didn't I don't think I realized how important that was to me and to my experience until I was looking back afterwards and listening to other women talk about their inductions and how it, you know, that cascade of interventions that we talk about and those sort of things kind of slide into place. So yeah, I think having your support team and having a team who is just believes in you, believes in what you're doing, believes in the plan that you guys have set, is on board with your plan, kind of comes hand in hand with model of care because you know, your biggest support and often is your care provider. So whether that's a known midwife or an obstetrician who is just fully on board with what you kind of foresee happening, then yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

Really important. And I love that you touched on your husband's experience because I think there's been such a shift. And I don't know if you guys have seen this as well in your work, but I mean, compared to when our parents had babies, like, yes, maybe dads might have been somewhere in the hospital vicinity, not necessarily in the room always. And if you think you fast forward to now, where husbands seem to be like the primary support people for a lot of for a lot of women, and a lot of them aren't doing the birth classes and aren't prepared and aren't aren't informed and don't know to when a woman is in, I guess, that zone of hey, the hip squeeze doesn't seem to be working. Why don't we try getting you into a hot shower and being able to have that knowledge to sort of move it along a little bit? So it's not surprising, I guess. Surprising's not the right word, but they've probably never seen a birth, they've never had people talk about it in front of them. So and they're in this experience, it's quite foreign to them and it can be scary. So I really like that you talk about having a really appropriate birth team and maybe sitting down and being like, okay, you might want to be in the room, but are you going to be the best person to support me through this transition?

SPEAKER_03 16:57

Yeah, definitely. I also think like I've got two thoughts here. One is there's a video that the ABC did, I think, of like, I'm gonna say olden timey days as black and white. They're interviewing people on the street about their wife's blame over. And they're just like the men in that video are like, oh, that's not for me. That's not why would I like do that? That's not my domain. They're so out of the picture that it's really interesting the thought of like, well, when did that change that now our men, our partners, our biggest support people, but the education there hasn't caught up. Yeah, it's huge, like it's because I see obviously partners supporting in labor every day in birth unit. It's such a big thing for me. And even after having my first baby, I had my midwife there, who I loved and was epic, and I had my husband there, but I wanted Kat there as well. But Kat had not trained as a doula and had never seen a birth before and was pregnant, so I just I couldn't even look at her in labor because I thought I'm gonna I'm just scaring her and I can't draw on her. For my second Labour, Kat had had a baby, she'd retrained as a doula, and there was a moment in the bath where I was holding my husband's hand, and he's always, you know, that steady presence, and he knew his stuff, so he was calm and he knew the double hip squeeze and all of that. But I had this real sense of I just need to hold Kat's hand. I don't need her to say or do anything, I just need the strength of a mother to hold me up in this moment, and I would have been eight or nine centimeters. So this is the thick of transition. I couldn't even vocalize it. I could have on her hand, and that was enough for me. And Rhea Dempsey talks about this all the time of women in the thick of crisis of confidence in labor when things are at their scariest, you're your most vulnerable, you don't know what's gonna happen or how you could possibly get through this. Women turn to women who have walked through the fire before them. And that and they have the confidence. I can look at my husband in the thick of this fiery moment, and he's like, I read the I read the book, I know you can do this, but they they haven't done it. And they two thumbs up, big smile, you got this babe, keep going. But women, and as a midwife who's now a mother, I can confidently look at women in the thick of that and go like, this is so shit.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Yeah, this part's hard.

SPEAKER_03 19:31

You know, you I think it's incredible men are now at the forefront of supporting their partners in labor, but we need more. This idea that it's a really intimate moment between you and your partner bringing your baby into this world, that's bullshit. It is But it's not gonna it's not gonna get you through. Yeah. Birth is hard work, and since the dawn of time, women have come around other women and held them up and walked through this with them. Have your partner there, and they're right in your face, giving you all the oxytocin, the confidence, the calm. But women are then gathering around you and your partner and doing doing the hard work, rolling their sleeves up and getting this baby out. You know, I really love the idea of women gathering and just doing the hard work of birth together.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Yeah, I do your experience just then of holding Kat's hand, I could have written that myself with my second, with my second birth. I pushed it to like the very last minute to go to the hospital. I had an obstetrician care, but he actually missed it. He missed it, it came too quickly. But the midwives that were there, there was this young midwife, and she was so incredibly supportive, and I must have been in the middle of transition, and she like I was just gritting on the bed, standing up over the bed, and I remember she just came and held my hand, and I remember having the thought of as long as she doesn't let go of my hand, I can absolutely do this. Like, she's got me and I've got this. And I remember having that distinct thought, and I was like, do not fucking let go of my hand. You're you're here because it was coming up to like the end of shift. You know how they've got that changeover at 2:30, wherever I was like, I know that you're probably finishing soon, but you need to see this baby out. Like, you're you're here, you're with me, you're stuck.

SPEAKER_03 21:21

Yeah, I think women need to be around women for birth. Huge for sure. I think the other thing is the other thought that I had going from that was that my husband, like it's huge, birth is huge, and it's long, often it's long. And for me, it was, you know, I was in overnight and then I started on the birth unit at like 7 a.m. And I think I was down there at five, you guys got there at seven, and she wasn't born till seven like PM. So it was like twelve hours of just kind of doing our thing, which isn't even like the longest.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

Just was in labor for like early labor for three days, like, you know, so it's a long time.

SPEAKER_03 22:00

And so having someone else there to support not only me but to support him in in doing that. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

Tag tag.

SPEAKER_03 22:07

Yeah, there was a moment where my husband has diabetes and Jess was like, have you eaten? Like you need to go eat. Like you need to check your sugars. Have you had a lollipop? Like, come on, you can do it. Or like another moment where he was a bit out of his depth and needed to take a moment to stand in the hallway and have a little cry. So was able to kind of step in in that moment when he needed to like, yeah, to kind of I guess navigate the partner as well. It's not just, yeah. I think the birth birth support and the team that you have around you is massive.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

And because it's the birth of their child as well, so they are having a visceral and emotional response to that as well, where they're not always going to have, I guess, the capacity to step in and give you what you need in every given moment during that child.

SPEAKER_03 22:55

And they've never seen their partner in this much intense pain or making such primal noises. It's so overwhelming for them. But I think they have to be at the forefront of the experience with you. I guess we'll talk about this later, but the transformation you go through in your birth, you want them to be left behind in that. You want having a physiological birth, the oxytocin in the room is contagious. So their oxytocin is ramping up as well to bond with their baby. Um, that's a nice little gift from us. You're welcome. But seeing your partner go through the fires of birth, you have this newfound respect for the woman in your life, the mother of your children. It's so important that they're there and they're at the forefront. And that having other women involved is not to take their role away, it's to lift them up and give them to do their role and to add yeah, what else you need. Because in that transition moment, almost every partner looks that shit terrified as well. And it's the midwives or the duelers who are like, I've seen this all before, like, you're not scaring me. You've still got this. You know, Conan could go out and have his little cry because things were really intense. And then the women are like, Yeah, we've got this, like, we know our and you're good. Yeah. Just good thought. It's obviously you've hit a uh divine.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

I love it. That's really important to know. And I think a lot of people who may be thinking of kicking out their partners or husbands or whoever it is, like, no, bring them in on the journey, but just make sure you also have additional support around you so you can tag team and really fill out that care. The whole team. What about I know you've both had very different experiences around breastfeeding, and breastfeeding can be such a physical experience, but it's also deeply emotional experience and the identity shift that happens with that. And I think it's something that we don't talk about enough in terms of that feeding transition and how you're going to do it and what that looks like. It's just, I always used to say feeding was the most unnatural, natural thing. And I just thought it was meant to be this easy transition, and when it doesn't work out properly, it can be devastating for so many people. Tell me a bit about your experiences and your thoughts around that.

SPEAKER_03 25:17

I'll start because Jess has a deeper story than me. Just didn't deal with it as well. No, yeah, there's a lot of like I took it off. Yeah. Yeah, I lost my mind. Whereas Kat was like, oh, that didn't work. All right, let's move on. Okay, yeah, I'll start because Jess's is a bit more emotional and a bit more in depth and and definitely worth talking about. Um, but mine's a bit shorter. Breastfeeding. So yeah, I expected to breastfeed. I kinda thought during pregnancy that, you know, it'll just happen. Like that's what we do. We have our babies and we breastfeed. Uh so I didn't really think too much about it. I remember showing just my nipple once in pregnancy, being like, oh my god, look at my nipple.

SPEAKER_02 26:01

And um, she was like, that's a great breastfeeding nipple, okay, let's carry on.

SPEAKER_03 26:05

And I was like, great, I'm gonna have an excellent breastfeeding experience because of that one like a nipple. It's gonna happen. Um, but then it turned out that yeah, I didn't. Uh I it was, you know, day three in the hospital, and you know, you know, day three, day three, but uh it all kind of came crashing down. I was really emotional. Baby was hungry, baby was trying to five kilo baby. Yeah, she was hungry. She wanted a schneck, um, cluster feeding, all that sort of stuff, and lactate a lactation consultant came in and kind of just spotted straight away that I had IgT, which is hyperplasia, hyperplasia, which is then IgT, which is something glandular tissue, insufficient glandular tissue, um, also known as hyperplasia, which just kind of means that you um the breast tissue hasn't formed, and it's kind of anyone's guess as to what is gonna happen with your milk. It could come in, it could not come in, and like who knows? Anyway, so for me it didn't really happen. Um, and I kind of went straight onto formula top-ups and then pretty quickly into formula, I think around week eight, we were fully formula feeding. Yeah, for me, I definitely felt that it was just gonna happen. It's just natural, it's it's we're gonna figure it out, it's gonna be that thing that happens. Um I hadn't really spoken about it with my midwives through pregnancy. I had a really they were like, Do you want a breastfeed? And I was like, Yeah. I showed my friend my nipple and she said it was good. And they were like, Cool. I need to cave it in case anyone um now no longer trusts me as a midwife. And had asked her midwife to do it, like ask her, can I have at every booking appointment? We're supposed to say, like, oh, can I have a look at your breasts to see? I don't want to throw anyone under the bus, but not throwing anyone under the bus. No, just my midwife. Potentially would be difficult. I didn't really want to have that conversation with her, so I'd asked other people to have it, but it's yeah, that's a different thing. Yeah. Yeah. I was on engine, and I didn't think I saw the same midwife twice through my whole pregnancy. So that was a different, you know, hospital thing. But anyway, yeah, I I was fully under the belief that it was just this natural thing that was gonna happen, that it didn't, you know, everyone does it, and that's what we we just get on with it. Even though fully known, I was a formula fed baby. Like I didn't die my parents, but with my mum prior. But I was like, yeah, I know I was on formula, which I think is also one of the reasons why moving to formula didn't feel so scary. Because I was like, for the most part, I'm pretty fine.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

For the whole part, you're amazing.

SPEAKER_03 28:49

Parts that aren't so fine. I don't think it was the formula before. You know? So I um yeah, I don't think I found it as scary because of the experience of my family. Um so yeah, it kind of it kind of it was something I thought was just natural. It didn't happen that way, and I felt pretty at at ease with that, which I know I I honestly feel pretty lucky that that was my kind of reaction to it because I know it's big, I know it's emotional, I know you know, watching other friends go through it, Jess being one of them, and it not working the way that we kind of just expect it to, Jess obviously having a bit of a different perspective because she's a midwife is really hard, it's really big. Um and we definitely don't prepare for it enough to go through it, particularly your first child, like pregnancy. Yeah, I remember watching you because you had Parker only a few months after me. And I was still had I'd given it up at that point, I probably was still in the thick of all trying to make it work, and and being so jealous of how you were just like, Yeah, this is okay. I'm still a mother, and I'm you know, I have so much more to offer my baby than just breastfeeding. And I remember watching her and be like, why can't I think the same thing? Like, why is this such a big deal for me? And was had so much respect for how you kind of just be like, Yeah, there's more to me than just breastfeeding my baby, so I'm gonna move on. It was really cool to watch, but certainly not my experience.

SPEAKER_00 30:18

What was your experience? I think the interesting distinction as well is around having a a parent, like you have a lived experience of watching a parent formula feed and having that the belief is I guess is different around that because you're like, oh, it's fine, like I was formula fed, I'm fine, like it's no big deal. Whereas Jess, were you breastfed? Like, did you do you have family members?

SPEAKER_03 30:48

And that was like a big pride thing, I suppose. She talked about it a lot.

unknown 30:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:54

Yeah. But yeah, so that's kind of what I'd grown up with, and then obviously my training, it's you know, like we you think that us as midwives hit you hard with the breastfeeding propaganda, like even more so sitting in a lecture theater, and every year we need to do another uh 10 hours of breastfeeding education. Like it's really driven home, you know how important home. Yeah. But to have the back knowledge, because I do think breastfeeding is so important and epic because of all the things I've learned about it. So it was a really important to me before I became a midwife, but then really driven home when I became midwife. But on my very first day of university, we were sitting in a lecture theater and it was on anatomy, and they started talking about inverted nipples. And I went, what's that? And did a little look down at my kitties and was like, oh no, I did not know inverted nipples were a thing. I thought I was normal and I was not. So I knew going into breastfeeding that it was gonna be hard for me. Potentially I'd psyched myself out a little bit. I had already the 40 mils of express milk in the freezer ready to go. I had these little nipple aspirators every night before I went to bed in pregnancy. I was trying to pull my nipples out and I had the nipple shields there ready. And so I never gave my body the chance to to attempt it by itself, which I think that I over-midwifed myself a lot in my breastfeeding journey. And midwives, you know, we have some knowledge, but we're not lactation consultants. We don't know when things get tricky how to really make it work and get creative. So uh yeah, I definitely needed more support in my journey. It was huge, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

Wow. And so you weren't able to breastfeed your first, is that correct?

SPEAKER_03 32:47

Yeah, I started off, she went to special care for a few days, and so there was a bit of disconnect there as well. So, kind of I'd had this home birth to set myself up for breastfeeding success. That's how important it was to me. So I'm gonna forego the comfort and epidurals and all that. I want to breastfeed, and I knew that a physiological birth was gonna improve my chances, but we needed to go to special care after the birth anyway. Straight away on the nipple shields and breastfed okay. I was so engorged, which uh the transfer of milk just wasn't that good from the get-go. But she was managing and we're managing with the shields at six weeks. I was like, I want to get off the shields, I'm too good for the shields, I don't want to use them. So went to an optation consultant who was unfortunately the beginning of the end, had given probably the wrong advice what I needed. Obviously, that's hindsight, but recommended a tongue and lip tie release, recommended third hourly feeds with a really rigid breastfeeding pillow, and this is how you have to hold them, and this is how you have to do it. Came home from that appointment feeling so overwhelmed. Anyway, got the tongue and lip tie released, but she was eight weeks old at this point, and so was really thrown off, didn't know how to use her mouth anymore, and um didn't help with the nipple shields anyway, still had to use the shields, and she started losing weight after that. So went back to that LC. Oh, she's losing weight, switch over fully to expressed milk and bottle feeds while she's gaining weight, and then she wouldn't go back to the breast really unless she was like asleep. So it was seeing cranio osteopaths, chiropractor three times a week, which was a 45-minute drive, with a newborn screaming in the back. What else that's relactation consultants? Yeah, it was really emotional to the point where I was feeling like really dark thoughts about my journey of like, okay, this baby's ruined. She's not breastfeeding. Okay, I want to start again, I want a new one. I need to try this again. And not wanting to feed her at all. If she wasn't gonna breastfeed, I didn't want to feed her. Managed to get through that, called Panda, spoke to a counselor, obviously got in touch with my psychologist. Couldn't give her the bottles at the start. My husband had to do that. I just couldn't, it was too emotional for me. Lots of screaming in the shower and like, yeah, really dark place. Um generally for my mental health, had to call it quits and stopped trying every time I tried, she just scream and pushed me away. And so there's this real like upset when your baby's not like is working against you, you feel like you know, they're not on your team, they're not on your side, you're trying to make it work because you know this is what's best for them, but they don't want to do it. And that was, you know, just her personality. She's strong-willed and she liked what she liked, and that is who she is now. So yeah, so expressed, went on to full-time expressing for a year. So and was so proud of that at the end, and I wanted to breastfeed because I wanted to do it in public and I wanted to be an example to women, but I got to without my pump in public and and be a full-time pumping mum in public, and that felt really cool as well.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

I was a full-time pumping mum with my first as well. Just stuff. It's a lot, it's hard. I there was a lot of damaging dark thoughts that I had as well from things that I had picked up from lactation consultants, which I'm sure their hearts were in the right place and they meant really well. But like you, how you know she was pushing you away. I remember my first parker was actually trying really hard, and the lady was like, You just have to keep going. Like, look how hard he's trying. And I'd be like, So it's me, like I'm the problem, I can't do it. Like, I'm the one that's failing in this partnership of breastfeeding. And I think there's so much that's wrapped up in that, isn't there, in terms of like And just also I think there's a lack of support with I know that there's lactation consultants as well, but it's just not a given thing. It's something that you have to really seek out yourself, and it's expensive. It's expensive, particularly when you're on maternity leave and you've just had a new baby and the hormonal shifts and all of it. Um my milk didn't even come in until I was at home.

unknown 37:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:13

Like I didn't even hours, right? I'm like, okay, off your pop, we see you. Yeah. That's it. Like it's yeah, it's full on what we expect of mums.

SPEAKER_00 37:24

So I remember my old neighbour who's in her 70s, and I was coming home, and she was like, But your milk is not in. And I was like, Yeah, I know, but I've been in the hospital for you know four days, and that's just what she was like, Oh, because she's a she was a midwife, she was a nurse. She was like, in my day, she was like, We would never have sent a mother home if her milk hadn't come in and she wasn't comfortable breastfeeding or with her feeding methods, like that would not have been a thing. Like you would have stayed. She was like, even if you had to have stayed like two or three weeks, I was like, I don't think that's a thing anymore. Like it's too many people, you're like, you're out the door, you've got that baby, you're good, you're out, like on your own. So I do really think, in some respects, and I guess you might have seen this a lot more than me. There's so much in terms of appointments and guidance and support, particularly around birth, like everyone's checking in and all of that, but then postpartum happens and it almost feels like that support flaws off a cliff a little bit. And you're like, okay, well, now you've got this new little being, keep them alive, feed them every three hours, make sure you're getting up, make sure you're feeding yourself, stay hydrated, don't forget to exercise. Good luck.

SPEAKER_03 38:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:37

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 38:37

Yeah, absolutely. And it's definitely it's one of those things I think that when you're pregnant, people can talk to you about it until the cows come home, but you don't, I don't think you really hear it, right? Like, particularly if there's you go like, oh yeah. I was talking about with a friend yesterday about how oh, you know, when you have a baby and you like you go into parenthood, people who don't have babies, you can talk to them about it and how hard it is and how it's changed everything, but you like I don't think they get it until it happens to them. And I think it's the same going through postpartum and we we can talk about it, particularly the first until the cows come home and you just don't really hear it. And I I don't know how we get around that. I don't know how we how help women hear things that they don't fully grasp yet. But it is one of those things that you then like you you've gone home with this baby and you're like, okay, this is hard. Why did no one tell me this was freaking hard? Like what? And yeah, you've hit the nail on the head. I think because up until this point, and even now, who's making the supports, who's making the systems, who built the hospital system, who built child and family health, it's men. It's the patriarchy because unless you've had a baby, unless you're a mother, you don't know what that is ever going to be like and what you need. And every woman needs something different. So I think up until now, the people making the systems, designing child and family health, designing maternity care in Australia, a lot of that has been men leading the way. Obstetric care has been predominantly men. Even research around women's health has been done on men's bodies. You know, it's just so lack wild, isn't it? So lacking. There's more research on male pattern baldness than there is on endometriosis.

SPEAKER_00 40:37

There is more Just sliding in as we wrap up part one of my chat with Cub and Kin. In us in part two, we're going to dive deeper into the postpartum period, how best to support yourself, what to have in place, and the conversations worth having with your support network.