#372 | The First Meal: Colostrum, Formula, and Newborn Gut Health with Dr. Rhonda Trust, PhD

Most parents have heard that breastfeeding is beneficial. What far fewer understand is why those first feedings matter so much, what colostrum does beyond nutrition, and how early feeding choices shape the gut microbiome, immune system, and long-term health.

Today, we’re joined by Dr. Rhonda Trust, PhD, registered dietitian, professor of health communication, and longtime breastfeeding educator, for a conversation about newborn gut health, colostrum, skin-to-skin contact, formula supplementation, and the larger systems influencing infant feeding decisions.

We talk about what happens when babies receive formula in the hospital before breastfeeding is established, why nutrition education is still surprisingly limited in conventional medical training, and how formula marketing continues to shape the messaging parents receive.

We also get into donor milk, birth mode, bacterial transfer, and why the newborn microbiome is about far more than digestion.

We discuss:

• What colostrum actually does in the newborn gut
 • Why the first feeding matters differently from feeding decisions made later
 • How skin-to-skin contact helps establish a healthy microbiome
 • Why formula is so often introduced before breastfeeding is fully supported
 • The connection between gut health, immune development, and chronic illness
 • Why many pediatricians receive limited breastfeeding and nutrition education
 • The role of donor milk when breastfeeding isn’t immediately possible
 • How modern infant feeding culture became so disconnected from biology

If you’ve ever been told “a little formula won’t hurt,” or wondered why the first few days matter so much, this episode provides much food for thought.

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Transcript

I'm Cynthia Overgard, birth educator, advocate for informed consent, and postpartum support specialist. And I'm Trisha Ludwig, certified nurse midwife and international board certified lactation consultant. And this is the Down To Birth Show. Childbirth is something we're made to do. But how do we have our safest and most satisfying experience in today's medical culture? Let's dispel the myths and get down to birth.

Hi, I'm Dr. Rhonda Trust. I am currently a professor at the University of Miami, where I teach health communication. I recently developed the country's first course housed in the School of Communication, called Nutrition and Communication. I hold a doctorate degree in Health Communication, a Master's of science in nutrition and dietetics, which was earned two weeks ago. A master of the art communication and a bachelor in communication. I have been teaching at the college level for 25 years. I've always been interested in health and wellness. My dissertation was on breastfeeding and many aspects of why women choose breastfeeding and choose duration and exclusivity of breastfeeding. I've always been interested in nutrition, so during Covid, I actually went online and earned a certificate through Cornell University in nutrition and healthy living.

After that certificate, I realized to legally gave new medical nutrition advice. I needed to become a licensed registered dietitian, which involved two years of pre-med prerequisites, then applying to a Master's of Science program, being accepted to the program, entering the Masters, while doing 1000 hours of internships in various locations, such as hospital settings, community settings, specialty food service, all kinds of rotations. I have been working with all areas of the lifespan in regard to nutrition. Like I mentioned, I was a lactation consultant years ago and wrote my dissertation on breastfeeding.

Currently, in addition to being a professor at the University of Miami, I work one day a week with an organization called Health in the Hood, which is located in Miami, and I go into a school once a week and do nutrition education for children on the autism spectrum, ages four through 18. I do nutrition lessons. I've helped children eat who haven't been able to, eat foods before because of textures, so I have worked with all ages in the lifespan in regard to nutrition, and now I created a course called Nutrition and Communication, which really merges my two passions, nutrition and communication, together, and I'm here today to talk about one of my favorite topics, which is the importance of that first meal that babies get, that first meal of colostrum, and then breast milk, because the gut microbiome is really so important for our entire life. Like I said, all stages of the lifespan.

I love to communicate, I love to talk, I love to teach, and there's so much to know. And my goal here today as a guest, and I'm so grateful to be back. I was on episode 239 where I talked about cost of breastfeeding, literally costs of breastfeeding versus formula feeding on an intra level, interpersonal level, micro level, and a macro level, how it taxes our healthcare system. But I'm really excited to talk today, because sometimes I forget, because I'm such into research and academics, that not everybody has access to the information, the education about our nutritional choices, or has the knowledge, because it's not really, it's something taught to us, right, most obese, or I shouldn't say midwives, most obese, and most patients I've encountered their obese don't know much about nutrition. In fact, it hasn't been required in medical school.

Now it will start to be required with our new administration. There'll be some education required in med school about nutrition, so that's something that not everyone has that knowledge, including practitioners who are seeing women who are pregnant, or even pediatricians who are seeing babies.

Rhonda, can I jump in with a first of all? It's great to see you.

Thank you.

You and I go way back. You have a son starting college, and you took my HypnoBirthing class when you were pregnant with him, you were a doula. You laughed all through your labor and ate watermelon, and you're a gem. And I, we worked together, you were, you taught many workshops at my center for years, and we always had a great time together, and many, many, many hours of working together. So, I'm so happy to see your smiling face.

Thank you,

Rhonda. Can you, before we get into this conversation about the gut and formula and breastfeeding, which I know Trisha and I are both very interested in hearing, I don't understand an inherent link between nutrition and communication. Every time you say it goes right over my head. I don't. All right, picture. I was going to ask the same thing. What is nutrition communication?

Alright, so to me again, this is like it's my world. But how did you ever learn about nutrition? That's communication. So human communication is how people interpersonally communicate one on one all the way to mass communication, a formula ad, a conversation. And you're having with a grandmother about breastfeeding, that's all communication. So, as human beings, we communicate non-verbally and verbally, that's how we, you know, sort of, that's one of our survival mechanisms, obviously, communication. But how do we communicate about food, our meals on an interpersonal or group level, all the way to how does mass media communicate messages and frame messages surrounding food and nutrition to us? Does that make sense? A little bit,

it makes some sense, but what direction does that approach go? I mean, is it to question which of those methods is the most effective? Why, why put these two concepts together, and what is the ultimate goal of marrying these two related topics?

So we can, how to, so if you think back, how you learned about nutrition, how did you learn? Oh, I need to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. The My Plate, for example, that is communicated to us, the public, through a health campaign, a public health campaign. Everything we know about nutrition, everything we know about advertising, like certain foods, or like years of campaigns of formula advertising, it's all rooted in communication.

Is the is the ultimate goal to lessen the reliance on mass communication of nutrition, or what? What is the hope, or the ultimate goal?

So, when we look at nutrition communication from the mass level, we look at how over time trends or foods have become popular, right? And what makes money, right? So, for example, the milk industry, dairy milk, right? What happened in our society that the like we started to see push for dairy milk or the got milk campaign, and then it kind of maybe 1510 years ago started to switch to nut milks, right? So, no to dairy and more to nut milks or processed milk, so just the campaigns and the communication around that can frame the way a person on the individual level, on the micro level, can shoot, make their choices when they're in the grocery store, can make their choices, influence your choices on how they feed their family.

It does make sense. This is just basically how we translate the knowledge of nutrition to the person on an individual level and on a mass level,

right.

So, how are we doing with nutrition communication as far as infants go? Because I think we're probably doing a pretty poor job, especially considering that we get zero education around nutrition in pregnancy, basically zero, and then pediatricians don't talk about it either. I mean, it blows my mind that pediatricians know so little about breastfeeding, and I do believe that they are working on getting more knowledge, or at least they're working on bringing lactation consultants into their practice, but this is their entire job, is the health of a baby, the health of a child, and it all starts with how they are fed as infants, and they don't talk about it, and

that question is how they're not even given a lot of that concept's not given a lot of thought or consideration, but if you look at a larger level, most pediatricians, if you walk into a pediatrician office, you'll see advertising for formula, which is from a pharmaceutical company. Even though there's a lot of laws, international laws regarding infant feeding commercialization, they're still violated consistently, so the companies come in and they're very strategic and they're very smart and they get you in the way in and they get you in the way out, because when I worked in geriatric care, the same formulas that are given to geriatric patients are from the same pharmaceutical companies that make formula.

What formulas do you mean? Are they given drinks or things? What are you referring to?

Yeah, drink, so if they're like on Enshore, for example, or other booths, there's things called booths, and they're all like the first ingredients, like seed oil and liquid diets. Yeah, liquid diets. I also had patients that are on pegs, so they're tube fed through their abdomen, and that those formula bags are just like, you know, the same,

the same bad ingredients,

same bad ingredients. I don't want to use the word bad or unhealthy, because we try to move away from that in the world of dietetics, but the not nutrient dense, not nutrient dense ingredients that are bagged up, that are made by the same pharmaceutical companies that make formula companies, I, in my training, obviously love to communicate, and I've often said, How are we giving this to the patients? It's causing further inflammation. How are we giving this to little babies? It's inflaming their gut. Same questions, different, different life's age of life, and. And you know the people I asked don't know, they're just that's what, oh, that's what we give, that's what we prescribe, that's what we give, that's what we prescribe, that's that's been communicated to us, right, that's gold standard, that's

what they've been educated on, because the people who are coming to provide the education are the people who are looking to make money, and so they're out there talking about and selling their product

and writing the textbooks that are used in the training. I remember in one of my classes, I don't care, remember, maybe it was microbiology, but like I was reading and it was like, oh, and we prescribed this, there was nothing, it was like the name of the medication, and I'm like, how is this medication name being dropped? Oh, who's who wrote this textbook? So it's just all connected. It's this whole, you know, system of here's what we're going to prescribe, here's what we tell, here are the pamphlets we create, here's the education we provide, here's what you tell the new parents, here's what's given to you in the bag when you have the baby, that all the communication, right, the book, the pamphlets, the samples of formula, so it's all communicated that from a very early point, even when you go into the grocery store, right.

So, if you're going into the grocery store as a new mom, or as a pregnant mom, or with your two week old, what are you going to see at eye level? You're going to see all the fancy formula cans, and at the very bottom, you'll see the breast pads in the pump, the manual pump sold on the shelf. Every time I happen to be in that aisle, I check it out, and I'm always right. That eye level, you go into the next stage of life, the kids, you know, the young kids, eye level is all the sugary cereals, all that diet filled candies and granola bars, same eye level, and that's community, that's deliberate communication, that's deliberate marketing, sneaky communication. We have a problem that's really systemic. We see again that there is a change now in the way nutrition is being communicated. The first week of January, the food pyramid flipped. I don't know, you know, yeah, it's been. it was a big topic in my nutrition and communication class, because now, whole foods are being emphasized, whole foods, right? The perimeter of the grocery store foods are being emphasized. It'd be great if we could start emphasizing that down to the baby level, right? Whole Foods, as in breast milk, as being the number one first choice for babies, right? If you can't do that, then second choice, donor milk. Third choice would be a formula with very few ingredients, which usually comes from Europe, not the United States, right? So it's just the whole framework in which our society is set up right now, with the neonatal and the pediatric care, it's just there's a big problem.

One of the things that is not being communicated is the importance of establishing a healthy microbiome from day one, and most people think about the microbiome simply as their digestive health, you know, whether or not they're going to have easy bowel movements, whether or not their baby has gas or not, whether or not they're comfortable. It is so much more. The more I learn about the microbiome, the more I am blown away by how it impacts every system in the body, it really, it really does. I just worked on a research study for my last internship, where we were working with people with spinal cord injury, so we had a control, which were people with non-spinal cord injury, and what we would do is, we would feed the people, we would watch them eat, but we had electrodes hooked up to their gut and their brain, and we would monitor scientifically, so I worked with a whole bunch of neurologists on at this internship, how the gut is communicating with the brain as it's being fed and post parentally, so after the meal is consumed, the messages going back and forth, and they're constantly communicating with each other, there's so much communication between the gut and brain, before, when our, when our gremlin hormone kicks in, to tell us we're hungry, okay?

And then, during the eating process, to feel satiated with our reluctant, our GLP one, telling us, okay, we're full, we're done, shop is over, that is so important, and when we inflame it, when we put high fructose corn syrup and seed oils in it, and put our gut into a state of inflammation. Our microbiome is a mess, and yes, it can heal, but it, it gets damaged, and that is setting your immune system up for life. That is setting up autoimmune, potentially. Remember, some people have genetic, they're predisposed genetically for certain issues, but those genes and nutrigenomics talks about that can be turned on and off depending on what we eat, depending on that gut microbiome. So, there's so much, and you mentioned, you know, people don't understand, how that first meal can really impact. The baby, it's really interesting, because talk about another nutrition and communication trend.

You may see this on social media, is the colostrum trend. People, oh my guts a mess, I'm going to take colostrum. Well, if you were breastfed as a little baby, you would have gotten that colostrum, and maybe you would have had a sealed gut, and maybe the microbiome would have been balanced.

Let's talk a little bit more about that, because there are many, many scenarios where women are going to need formula, and that's a whole nother, whole nother discussion around how we can better support them, so that they don't need formula, but we know we're not going to change that overnight. Many infants are going to get formula, however, what happens in the first 24 hours, people really underestimate the importance of what happens in the first two or three days.

People really underestimate the importance of getting formula 3456, weeks down the line is not the same as the baby's first meal, so can you talk a little bit about that, and why that matters so much, and how that, because people have heard, well, yes, some formula changes the gut microbiome, but we can rebalance that later over time, and if you look at a six month old baby, their gut microbiome is basically the same as a breastfed baby, but what happened to their gut on day one, day two, day three, when they

didn't get their gut is very permeable, right, which means things can seep through, and I always, when I taught in Cynthia's class in, in your studio with my group of women, I always compared it to imagine this gut, it's like, like a sponge, very porous, right? When it, the baby's first born, and then by giving it colostrum. And does everybody know what colostrum is? Colostrum is a liquid produced the first few days before the milk comes in. It has tons of antibodies in it. It is literally liquid gold.

It can seal this very permeable gut, so I always told my students in, in class, imagine like a thick, thick paint being poured down the baby's gut, like this gold thick paint, it's a thick paint, and now the colostrum has sealed the gut, it's a nice layer of protection for any pathogen that's now entering that vulnerable little baby's gut, so they get this colostrum, which fills in all those holes, and is now a nice coating lining securing that very delicate gut, making sure that microbiome has a chance to thrive

when it's semi-permeable, let's say a baby does not get colostrum. What exactly happens? Where does that quote leaking go to? Where do the pathogens end up going? Then,

so you're making the gut just vulnerable for pathogens, right? So it makes it vulnerable for anything in the system to enter.

Yeah, and, oh, it protects the gut in that sense. Yeah, it's protecting the gut for anything to enter and get in, infiltrate that gut.

And when it, when it goes through the gut, then it gets into your bloodstream, and what gets into your bloodstream, it triggers your immune system because particles from your gut are not meant to enter the bloodstream until the gut has done the processing of those things, and it doesn't properly process what's absorbed if it doesn't have this protective lining, which is why it's so critically important that babies get colostrum. There's a reason colostrum comes first, exactly, and that's it's it's so true, and it's so sad, it is sad, because a lot of people working with new moms, and they, you know, they're maybe not as trained as well, even in baby-friendly hospitals, so baby-friendly hospitals, those hospitals receive a certification where all staff interacting with new moms have to be trained so many hours in breastfeeding education, they're not supposed to give formula automatically, they're not supposed to separate baby from mom, they're not supposed to give out formula bags, even in baby-friendly hospitals, I've still seen it where one nurse has 10 patients, they'll. it's a weekend, there's no lactation consultant. On same year, I've seen it too.

Yeah, she's running from room to room, the baby's not lashing, the baby's crying. If mom had an IV birth, a birth with IV, she could be swollen, her nipples can be very swollen. Maybe she doesn't know how to do. it's not even reverse nipple compression. There's no. So, what are you doing? The baby's screaming. Oh, the baby's gotta eat. Family comes in, starts communicating with mom. Babies gotta eat, baby's gotta eat. Mom's emotional, mom's tired. Maybe mom had a traumatic birth. Baby gets the formula, so that education piece is missing, if prenatal. That education piece was there, then maybe mom and any supporting people during mom's birth would be like, "Oh, we want to make sure colostrum is given, even the few drops. Babies don't need a lot in the first 24 hours, they need a few drops, that's it.

But that's not how it's set up, "Oh, the baby's starving, and then you see a baby getting, I remember. Oh, I think we've talked about this. I would see a baby, like a day-old baby, getting a two-ounce, chugging the two or three ounce bottle of formula.

That happens all the time. And what is so sad about it is that nobody is thinking about it from the perspective of the long-term health of that child and the potential damage that they're doing, all they're thinking about is, yes, giving formula might interfere with your breastfeeding, but oh, you're planning on going back to work anyway, oh, you're not really planning on exclusively breastfeeding anyway, it's okay, a little formula won't hurt, or even if you are planning on exclusively breastfeeding, a little formula still won't hurt, yes, it actually will interfere with your breastfeeding, and you're going to have to work harder later to get a full milk supply, but all of that aside, I don't even care about any of that that much.

I care about what it means for that child's long-term health, how they end up as a teenager, young adult, and late adult, what kind of chronic illnesses they may or may not develop because their gut was not established properly, and if your gut is not established properly, your entire immune system malfunctions in your lifetime. If you become more reactive to things, more sensitive to things in the environment, certain genes, as you said, get turned on. You're probably at higher risk for a lot of chronic illnesses. That all of this is just. we're just starting to really understand the connection, because the microbiome is not about how well you digest food or not, that is just like a tiny little part of it. It is the master communicator with your entire body. It is like your brain. It is as important as your brain.

That is the piece that's missing. That is the piece that's missing, and where does that go in the curriculum? How can people learn about this really important missing piece? Is it going to be from their doctors that they encounter, or their medical care providers right away when they're pregnant? Is it going to be from the staff, but is it going to be in a campaign that that's what's missing, I think. People generally know at this point. Oh, breastfeeding is the best way to go, the healthiest way to go. Well, I think generally speaking, people have that idea, whether they decide to do it or not. But I don't think people know about that critical the first couple day piece.

Let's also add to that the importance of the skin to skin contact after birth, because while colostrum is critical, and you really need to get your baby that colostrum, whether they're latching onto your breast or not, you can hand express it and spoon feed it or cup feed it, no matter what, you're getting that colostrum out of your breast and giving it to your baby, but also skin to skin, the more time your baby spends skin to skin, the more they are getting all this healthy bacteria from your body. So you have to get that microbiome set in those first few days by hopefully a vaginal birth, not always.

And we know that there are ways that we can compensate for that if you didn't have a vaginal birth, and one of those is that skin to skin contact, and then the colostrum, and then that gut microbiome is off to a healthy start, and it really only takes like a few days to give it a good start. Then the breastfeeding helps fuel and feed it over their lifetime, so the breastfeeding is still critically important, but people just really don't understand the importance of the first few days, and skin to skin is not just one hour after birth, like the golden hour. That concept needs to just be completely forgotten, because it's so shortcuts. What really needs to happen, we're talking hours and hours and days and days of skin to skin contact between the mother and the baby.

And I don't think people, like I always say to people when they ask these questions, I said, Well, how do you think we survived as a species? Like, how do you think your ancestors survived? Like, you know how many generations ago they were breastfeeding and they were skin to skin, they were with their babies, and you know, yes, some patient babies in mom's side because they didn't have the medical technology to save them, but generally speaking, we did okay as a species. There's a lot of us on this planet, right? And it was because we were breastfed, like our ancestors were breastfed. Our ancestors had that skin to skin, or think we didn't have hand sanitizer, and you know, scrubbing, and this. Yeah, you had the baby wherever you were on the field, the hut, and the table, and the baby was with the mom.

No one was hopping in the shower, and you know, scrubbing the baby down with the iodine, so it's like,

and then not letting other babies near other babies because they didn't have vaccines. I mean, right, we have been on this earth an incredibly long time, and it's really incredible now that you're talking about communication to. See how quickly a culture forgets how quickly a culture becomes persuaded.

Yeah, babies didn't have anywhere else to go besides being on the mother, because you couldn't really put them down. It was sort of unsafe to put them down. We didn't have strollers, we didn't have car seats, we didn't have snooze, we didn't have all these cribs, cradles, things that you could place your baby, so moms and babies were kept together, which kept them thriving. That was the key to an infant surviving, was being close to their mother, exactly. And that's been somehow lost. I think people don't want to associate us with, animals or society, you know, we're people may say, "Oh, we're, we're above that, but we're not thriving as a society. We have our nation is not a healthy nation, you know. Our nation has the highest mortality rate for, for new moms, including, including the sickest children in the world, exactly.

And they are, and they are the most vaccinated children in the world, and we do have the highest rates of every childhood illness in this beautiful, affluent nation of ours, with good quality food, nutrition, water. We have it all. We have all the ingredients we need to live beautiful, healthy lifestyles, and we are doing something wrong. But I just can't believe how quickly a society forgets things. It's really when you live long enough, and you start to see trends come and go, you're just like, am I crazy? Because 15 years ago everyone was saying the exact opposite of this, and it's really wild. It's fascinating.

It really is. It's really upsetting, you know, the concept of even just taking the baby away from the mom and giving it something that's made in a factory, I've often asked people this, and I think I did this in the workshop, Cynthia, with our former students, just knowing what's in the formula, like looking at the label, is this something that you would consume, you, the adult, would you consume this? How would your stomach feel if you consume this? Just these basic questions. I just think it's just accepted. Oh, this is what we give babies.

Yeah, how many moms have actually ever even tasted the formula that their baby is consuming? Very few. It tastes like crap.

It's, it's really upsetting, and it's something that I've been trying to figure out. Where, how do we change things? Like, at what level do we change things? Where do we start?

More sharing of breast milk, more donating of breast milk. I mean, that's another thing, mothers are, have been led to believe that it's really unsafe to share breast milk, and it's that's a huge fallacy. There are very, very few things that can put a baby at risk from another's, another mother's breast milk, and there are plenty of women out there who are making tons and tons of extra milk and would have nothing to do with it. They would love to have somebody to give it to.

I think one of the problems that I really observe and see in so many industries, not just this one, but it's. it's not this is a word I never use. I never use the word safe, because it's just. I can't. there's some words I just can't, because everyone's saying them too much, and I normally can't stand the way certain words are used, but it is generally not safe to have these conversations publicly, because when you do, and really when it's when you're against the pharmaceutical narrative, in almost any case, someone is telling you you need to be silent because what you're saying is judgy, don't judge me. There's so much of that, and first of all, facts are not judgmental. I mean, that's exactly what makes a fact a fact. It's, it's devoid of any judgment, but I always say people are entitled to judge.

Like, I'm not walking around telling anyone not to judge me, because we have a prefrontal cortex that is specifically designed to judge. That's how you make good decisions in your life, how you make the bad decisions in your life too. It's how you and complimenting someone is a judgment. Telling your friend she's beautiful is a judgment. So we don't understand the meaning of the word judge to begin with, but it's always silenced. And I have heard in behind the scenes talking with passionate breastfeeding experts like both of you, I've never heard a judgment escape your lips, only passion and love and concern and care. Yet I have seen openly people judging those who have a natural approach and saying, "Oh, I would hate for my breast to change. No, I'm not going to have some baby drinking off of me like a cow, blah blah blah.

And I've never seen the breastfeeding mom saying, "I beg your pardon, don't judge me. It's never, it's never that person who's saying it. The woman who wants a natural birth, everyone's happy to judge her. Oh, what do you think? You're going to get a medal for this, so don't try to be hero, and blah blah. Leave her alone, it's how she wants to birth. And for the woman scheduling a cesarean, I've never heard anyone judging that woman, nor should they, because these are very intimate decisions.

Questions, so I really believe the biggest problem is that passionate women and informed women like us, most of them are afraid to speak, and when they do, they start apologizing, and we're not judging anyone, and we just want to get information, so don't get mad, don't shoot the messenger, people get so afraid to simply speak, but if you are a woman who wants information, you're fearless in listening, you're willing to hear anything, you're not covering your ears and saying I don't want to hear about it, right? So I think that that's part of it. We are teaching people who to stop, who to block, when to cover the ears and say, I won't have it, I won't hear it. Look, look what happened during Covid. They banned the hashtag natural immunity, you couldn't even say I've had it, you can't even have the conversation.

So, anyway, I think that that honestly is while we're speaking of communication, there is so much of silencing of women, of other people, women, men by saying to them, don't you judge me, and they end the conversation, and you're sitting there with the facts in your lap, saying, I beg your pardon, I don't think I was judging, I was just trying to talk, so that has to stop. People who try to use power against others by telling them that they're judging, they're entitled to judge. We are all entitled to judge and to be judged, it's not a big deal. It's like,

and yeah, the thing about it is the thing that you're judging another person for, the thing that's causing you to feel angst when you hear it, is it actually exactly the thing you probably need to hear, because if you hear somebody's opinion, if you hear somebody's statement, if you hear somebody's truth, and you're like, cool, you're, you're neutral about it. Your position is pretty neutral about it. You either agree or you just, you disagree, but you're like neutral. But if it's triggering you, if it's, if it's feeling like a judgment, that's where your work is, because something inside you is saying there's a part of me that believes that there's a part of me that is bothered by it, because I know there's some truth, but I'm not allowing myself to hear it.

Our intention is to speak the truth, and our beliefs - these are just our beliefs, you don't have to believe them, but if it's triggering you, look a little deeper, because there's something in you that's going, maybe there's a part of me that believes that or wants to know more. Otherwise, you wouldn't care.

That's true. And people, again, I think the times I've brought up to people, oh, you know, when a woman gave birth and couldn't breastfeed, someone in her village or family tribe did, and people have, oh, that, that's that's gross, and I never do that, and that's, but that's how you survive, that's why you're here, that's why we're here, that's why our species is here, because that happened, you know. Formula is a new invention in the realm of humanity, so people disconnect from the past.

We are so myopic. There's so little understanding of whatever happened before the past 150 years. There's like almost no respect for it, no understanding of it. It's just people don't understand it. How long we've actually been here doing all of this, it's just. it's a very hard conversation. We believe so much in choice, but there is absolutely no choice when there isn't full information, the very definition of informed consent is to have full information at the beginning, at the outset, and that's all we, that's all we're interested in. Then we're out of it. Make your own decisions.

And there should be informed consent when a pediatrician's office gives formula, or when the hospital gives formula. There should be informed consent, or when the person buying it at the store, there should be something that is not tiny, teeny print, but something saying here's a risk of giving your baby a food that the first ingredient is the oil, the processed seed oil. This is a potential risk.

It's a definite risk, it, that's the formula. European formulas are beautiful compared to the American ones. There's not even a comparison.

Well, but you're right, they have their regulations on food are very different than the US.

Many of them also have seed oils, though. The European formulas, they're not perfect, but whether or not seed oils are the devil, I am not sure that that's really true, but yes, to find a totally seed oil free formula is difficult. There are some now, but they are definitely to a higher standard than I was going to say. Yes, formula processing, and how they're, you know, how they're processed in the US versus the processing in a European, you know, it's just they definitely don't have as corn syrup, and you do have that in US formulas, and that's another thing, it's like this addiction to artificial sugar starts so young, and it's in everything I can't. Understand when sugar is added to foods that we're never supposed to have sugar, bread, soups, pasta sauce. If I even have one bite of those foods, like I will stop eating it. And I love dessert, I love chocolate. I have no problem with that's not, you know, I wish I did have a greater aversion to sugar than I have, but I can't, I've no tolerance for it in normal foods, and they sneak it into everything that really throws off our barometer, so I just don't eat those things.

One of my guest speakers this semester, I had a guest speaker who owns this organic restaurant in Miami, and she started her journey because her son had type one diabetes very young, and she needed to get him food. He was having an episode, and she was driving down the street, and there was nothing except for fast food, and she's like, "I can't believe this, and he needs food immediately for his blood sugar, and I don't want to give him anything.

So, anyways, she came and spoke to my students, and I forgot the amount of pounds, but she said the average American has blank amount of pounds of sugar each year that they don't even know they're consuming, that's not like, oh, I added sugar to my coffee, this is sugar in product, like you mentioned, bread, cereals, ketchup, that they don't even know they're consuming, and it was this large number in pounds, and I'm like, oh my gosh, but it makes sense if you're eating the bread, if you're eating the ketchup, whatever

else. Well, if you add sugar, it sells better, right? Everybody you know gets that, then they get hooked on it, because the sugar is addictive. They put corn syrup in formulas.

My biggest takeaway that I want anyone listening to this, whether it's a new mom, seasoned mom, dad, whoever is listening is just to understand two things, and I think maybe listeners of this podcast would be more inclined to listening to themselves in their guts and trusting themselves and seeking out information rather than just listening. Practitioners that are that you're encountering along your journey may not have had any training of nutrition education, so that's something to consider, and that under that umbrella of nutrition education is what you're eating while pregnant, what your baby's going to eat as soon as they're born, and throughout their childhood years.

Your practitioners, your providers may not have any education in that, and it's not necessarily their fault, not saying they're a bad practitioner, they just in their curriculum through training that wasn't even brought up. So, do your research, find out. Second, when you are choosing to feed yourself or your child, look at the ingredients, look at what's in there. If you don't understand an ingredient, you don't know what it is, search it, do your research, and always go back to nature, right? Always go back to nature. How did we survive as a species? How are we doing as a country? How are we doing as a humanity?

Look at our children, you know, constantly getting sick and being in a state of inflammation is not, should not be the norm. What's happening with our society that we're, we're not a healthy society. So just start questioning things, understanding the importance of that gut microbiome, and how it starts right away through the things we talked about with the first meal for colostrum, the skin to skin, the bacteria, and that bacteria, and that maybe you've probably talked about that another podcast. If you're not, you know the importance of going down the birth canal and acquiring all those healthy germs, bacteria like nature has these plans that are so deliberate, and they really are perfect, right? They're given to us, so we can survive. So, I think we need to go back to that, like back to basics a little bit more.

And again, the listeners of this podcast are probably more in tune with listening to nature and in their guts, but these are really important things.

Yeah, we have a society that's more afraid to expose children to the sun than to screens.

Wow, that's a perfect area of where a parent would say to another, "Don't judge me, that my child is on screens. Like, that's a per. like, that's the side that always gets touchy about. But everyone's afraid of the sun. you made a comment, and we hear it all the time, where it's like it's not the practitioner's fault, they're not given this in their training. I just want to say I feel differently about that. Yes, it's not given to them in their training. They are responsible for getting their own education on this, as we spend God knows how many hundreds of hours a year in our free time better educating ourselves beyond our own credentials. They too have a responsibility, and if they don't have the time or the interest in doing that, they shouldn't be giving the advice, just like the hundreds of women who've asked me for breastfeeding advice, and I said I'm not the person to ask.

I have far more knowledge than the average person I've sat through, God knows how many hours of both of you educating me and others, but. I keep my lips sealed because I'm not the person to ask, and I think of all the times that people who didn't know anything about breastfeeding tried to intervene in my own breastfeeding relationship when it was actually going perfectly, and I just didn't know it, and I was insecure, and I was nervous, and anxious, and worried, and they just sat there doling out the advice, like the pediatrician saying, just top off after each breastfeed, for no particular reason, that was the advice, and it caused me so much anxiety, even though I didn't listen to it. So, if you're not, if you are a practitioner and you don't get a good education in nutrition and all of these things, then keep your lips sealed and know where to direct your client.

That's so true. I mean, of course, you're interacting with children or new moms, you should have the correct knowledge, but no, if you don't, it's okay not to have that knowledge.

You don't have to do like the white coat, oh, superior, I don't need to. I'm not giving any, I'm not giving any leeway to pediatricians for not better understanding breastfeeding and diet nutrition. If you don't, if you didn't get it in medical school, which they don't, that's not your fault, but go get it elsewhere after, because it is the foundation of your job.

So, there needs to be a shift, and there will, or there needs to be the patient realizing this and leaving the practice, or the provider who is humble and wise enough to say that is such an important question. I won't dare answer that. I can tell you who to speak with, because they don't study so many things that are greatly affecting women's lives. They don't study pelvic health, pelvic floor matters. They don't study breastfeeding. They don't know a thing about postpartum depression that is affecting how many 10s of millions of women a year. So that's the key. It's okay not to have the answers, but know where to direct. And I tell my clients all the time, please try me, not because I'll have the answer, but I will very likely know where to direct you. And there are so many extraordinary women who have so much knowledge related to this field of birth, pregnancy, and postpartum. You just have to know they exist, and that's one of the best gifts I think I can give my clients.

The moment I say I don't know, or if I think I know, I still don't feel I should assume responsibility for answering that, because I could be wrong. It's not my field. I'm going to tell you where to go. Imagine if we all did that for women and just directed them to the right women all the time, the right practitioners all the time. It would change everything.

It would be amazing. It would be amazing.

Thank you for joining us at the Down To Birth Show. You can reach us @downtobirthshow on Instagram or email us at Contact@DownToBirthShow.com. All of Cynthia’s classes and Trisha’s breastfeeding services are offered live online, serving women and couples everywhere. Please remember this information is made available to you for educational and informational purposes only. It is in no way a substitute for medical advice. For our full disclaimer visit downtobirthshow.com/disclaimer. Thanks for tuning in, and as always, hear everyone and listen to yourself.