All About Breastfeeding Podcast: Breastfeeding|mothering|parenting|pregnancy|postpartum|birth|expert Advice

We have a discussion about the differences in how babies respond to the procedure, the aftercare exercises and how long it takes some babies to recover from the procedure and mothers and babies to get to the place of normal breastfeeding. Dr. Agarwal highlights the fact that the tongue does not know how to really move well as it has been restricted for so long. So all the mechanics of the tongue movement and how it is going to function – all this change needs an adjustment period. It takes a while for the tongue to figure out what it is suppose to do. There are also a lot of pieces to this recovery and normal breastfeeding. Some of these moving parts ( variables) are: 1. Mom’s breast size, 2. Mom’s milk production. 3. Mom’s pain level 4. Mom’s perception of babies pain 5. Babies pain or soreness level 6. Babies, palate, jaw, tongue length, just to name a few variables. Read more

Dr Rajeev Agarwal is a local pediatrician in Arizona. He has a beautiful wife and 2 children. Dr. Agarwal moved to Arizona in 2005 and opened his first office the same year. If you are ever in the area, you must take a tour of his amazing office, It truly is a treat. He has since moved to a second office. Over the years, he has received many awards, which he proudly displays in his office. He is an expert in tongue tie procedures and has performed many over the past few years. He is also a member of the (IATP) International Association of Tongue Tie Professionals. Dr Agarwal is in hot demand as a speaker and has spoken world wide. Dr. Agarwal was born in India, and grew up in different cities because his father worked for the government as a telecommunications engineer and he would get transferred to different cities every few years. His mother stayed home with her 4 children. Dr. Agarwal describes his growing up years as being very blessed and living a very charmed life with doting parents an

Joanna Wilder RN, BSN, LM, CPM has been practicing “good birth” for 25 years. As a nurse Joanna started out in an inner city Phoenix hospital in 1990. Three years gave her a good foundation in Labor and Delivery, Nursery and Postpartum. Next, she helped create Bethany Birth Center. For fourteen years, she had the privilege to work as a nurse in the birth center, led a unique childbirth education program, and served as a community liaison orienting women to birth choices in AZ. This birth center closed in 2007. In November 2006, she began to work toward her licensure as a midwife. In May 2010, she was licensed as a midwife in AZ and completed her national certification or CPM in April of 2011. Joanna has been involved in grass roots community development in inner city Phoenix for 25 years. She works with a teen mom program in “the neighborhood”, and also with a breastfeeding grant program bringing support to Hispanic moms. She is passionate about helping women learn to trust their bodies. One of her passions,

Sleep deprivation

Heather Kinsy was born and raised in Arizona and now residing in Oregon. She is married to Michael and mom of 2 boys, Joseph 2 years old and Vincent 4 months. She is an Associate Director in Technical project management for an International Clinic Research Organization and enjoys the flexibility of a home based working arrangement She enjoys cooking and baking exercising is an advocate for natural birth and breastfeeding. Heather had a very tight knit community with her classmates and extended family living within 1 mile of the house that she grew up in. She is just now realizing what a blessing it was to have both sets of grandparents who lived close and were healthy for many, many years. Heather has a younger sister who is an amazing support person for her. While she misses her Phoenix family and friends, she does not miss the heat. Heather shares with us her story of the births of both of her sons. She had natural childbirths with both her babies and was very pleased with her experiences. Heather had a dif

Medication and milk drying up

Lori tells Nancy that she is a huge fan of her, why she loves her books and that she  really enjoys her approach to breastfeeding and the breastfeeding mother.  Nancy gives us a little info about herself and what life was like in the family she grew up in.  She was the oldest child and the only girl, with two younger brothers.  Grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, right on the cusp of a very large societal change in the 60s and 70s.  Her goal was to become an elementary school teacher.  In those days  womens lib was beginning to heat up and prior to this most women were going to be a mother who stayed home or a school teacher or a nurse. Nancy arrived at college right around the time that protests were happening and  it just felt like everything exploded and changed overnight.  My first year in the dorms was the last year they had curfews.  I came to school ready to wear my matching outfits only to find that suddenly everyone was wearing jeans.    Her major was elementary education.  Nancy dropped out after 2 y

There are some mothers who will need to or who chose to exclusively pump for their babies. In this show, Lori talks about hospital grade pumps and single user pumps. She explains why the hospital grade pump is the first choice for EP moms. Lori discussed what moms need to do so they can ensure a good milk supply and be comfortable while doing so. There are choices to be made and Lori shares some ideas and gives some great tips on how to make EP as easy as you possible can.  

Heather grew up in Northern Indiana in the Southbend area. She lived with her parents and younger sister. Heather describes herself as a child of the 70s and her parents were hippies from the 60's. With her hippie parents she ate organic food from their garden and only had processed foods when she went to her aunts house, which she loved doing. There she could get white bread and potato chips! Her parents were into recycling and organic gardening and loved nature. She planned on becoming a teacher and never would have guessed that she would become a Special Agent and work undercover narcotics. Heather went into premature labor with her first baby and at 27 weeks was put on bedrest and kept her baby "cookin" until 31 1/1 weeks. She was prepared for having a small baby, who would probably need special care in the nursery, however, he was whisked away to the nursery but they quickly realized he was a healthy almost 5 pound baby who did not need any help breathing. So he was brought back to her room. She did have

How and why to use nipple shields

Dawn talks to us about the projects that she is working on. Her favorite topic and her Board Certification is addiction medicine. Her biggest interest is in alcoholism, drug addiction and recovery in all populations including pregnant and breastfeeding and women. Written two books about addiction and recovery, and are both available on Amazon or on her website on docdawn.com Her first book is about missionary medicine. Dawn and her husband have both done short term missionary work all over the world and she wrote a book about that. We learn a lot from Dawn during this interview. She talks about prescription drugs and street drugs, marijuana use and alcohol us in women during their pregnancy and postpartum years. I am so glad that she was able to answer some very important questions that I had and I just know that you will find this part of her interview quite fascinating. If this topic is of interest to you and you are in healthcare, please know that Dawn is available to consult with and she also is a very ex

Dawn Obrecht, MD is a frequent speaker on addiction and recovery to physicians and other interest groups. She has published 3 books. Doc Dawn lives in Colorado with her husband, Eric. She has 6 grandchildren and 2 wonderful daughters and son-in laws. Dawn grew up in Baltimore and talks about her difficult childhood growing up in an alcoholic household. While she knows that her parents did love her and they did take care of her and her brother, this experience certainly had an impact on her pre-teen and teen years. She knew early on that she wanted to become a Dr. and is grateful that her parents supported her in this decision. Dawn tells us of her early years when she left home to go to school, as well as her early years of combining parenting and running a growing family practice. We hear Dawn talk about her feelings of being a grandmother to 6 beautiful grandchildren and how she has navigated through this role and has a purposeful and thoughtful relationship with her adult daughters. Quote - "He had the

 Lori says her days are never the same, never boring, always begins with a sense of wonder.She wonders if her day going to be busy or slow.  Is it going to be home visits or office visits?In this show, Lori shares the story  of one of the moms she saw on a particular day. Breastfeeding is not always easy for some mothers.  It can be very challenging for some and Quite painful for others. Most of the time there are answers and the breastfeeding challenges  Can be fixed.  For some mothers, the challenges are great or medical issues makes it Impossible for them to breastfeed in the way or the length of time they had intended.  Listen as Lori shares the details of one mothers breastfeeding story.

Abby felt that she had a fairly typical upbringing and remembers her childhood fondly.  Her family moved to Amsterdam when she was 15 years old and lived there until she was an adult.   This  move made her family a little more relaxed as Europe as a whole seems to be much more relaxed.  The atmosphere in  Amsterdam is family centered and very small townish.   She moved back to the United States and when she became pregnant, she assumed she was going to go back to work once her maternity leave was over.   She was a self-proclaimed  workaholic working with teenagers in a  high stress program with kids who struggled with mental illness and violent behavior. This was her identity and she figured her husband was probably going to stay home.  She was going to run her house like a residential community just like at work... but  she said: "they handed me Jack and I am like -   what am I suppose to do with this?  I am totally prepared to deal with a violent teenager and now they have handed me this newborn and I was n

This show is all about steps you can take ahead of time to ensure a calm and peaceful household for when you have your newborn. I am going to cover a small portion of my Ebook - The Guide to breastfeeding your newborn the first few days, and you can go to allaboutbreastfeeding.biz/guide and download the rest of the Ebook for the rest of the information This will be available for FREE until the end of January 2016. I have added much more and in February 2016, this will be available on the website as a booklet. There is not a lack of information available about what you need to do to prepare for breastfeeding. Books, classes and items to purchase. I love talking about all this too. However, for now I would like to talk about some ideas, which are practical tips, and suggestions that are not necessarily shared. Some people think this is the boring stuff and just want to know what it is they should buy to prepare for your breastfeeding experience. I am here to say that you can have all the stuff in the world. You

Courtney talks about her journey to become a massage therapist. Her dream job was being involved in music as a career. However, after a few car accidents, she began to pursue avenues for alternative healing and found her way to massage school. She always knew that she wanted to be a mom and is the proud mother of a beautiful 2 1/2 year old son, named Joshua. Courtney knows that her mother did breastfeed her and her siblings. She credits her mother for setting a good example about breastfeeding as well as credits herself for learning about the health benefits for mom and baby when you breastfeed. Courtney had a cesarean section and a hospital stay of 4 days. Breastfeeding was okay in the hospital, but her nipples cracked and bled soon after coming home. She stuck with it for a while because she had been told that breastfeeding hurts in the beginning and she kept trying to push through the pain. Her midwives did tell her that it was not normal to be in such a high degree of pain and did refer her for help with

Mary starts off by explaining to us how she came up with the name for her business. It all has to do with, believe it or not, how tall she is compared to the rest of Rhode Island. Mary is a middle child. Her mom breastfed all 3 children and at age 40 was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had a mastectomy and is doing well. She had a loving childhood and tells us that having an older sister who is severely mentally and physically handicapped has taught her to be a strong person and to be grateful for every experience she has and to be a patient person. Mary reveals that she met her husband on match.com back in the days when it was kind of “racy.” She knew as a youngster that she would always want to be around kids and music. She is grateful that she has built her career around her family and music and what makes her happy each day. Mary shares with us that she had a very easy time with breastfeeding from the beginning with her baby crawling up to the breast right after birth and she says that it was one of the

In a previous show # 21,Lori talks about the fact that breastfeeding should not be painful. She talks about this a lot in her daily work. It is her working mantra:   If breastfeeding is hurting on Day 1, something is not right. If breastfeeding is hurting on Day 2, something is not right. And if breastfeeding is hurting on Day 3, something is definitely not right and I urge you to seek professional help right away.  This is her daily mantra to mothers, she says it many times a week.  Lori has  it on her website.  What Lori really would like to do is put it on every billboard, along every highway, in every town.  What Lori would like to do is put this mantra on her back car window shield.  She would like for this to be handed out to every mother in every childbirth education and breastfeeding class. When you enter the halls of the maternity unit or your birthing center or on the literature that your OBs and midwives give you, it would be great if this was  in big bold letters:    “Breastfeeding is not suppose

Stephani is the mother of 2 daughters ages, 2 1/2 and 7 1/2. She works as a web accessibility consultant,is a budding entrepreneur and has her own pod cast, The Audacious Life. She was 1 of three children, her parents divorced when she was less than 2 years old. This was in the 70's and her mom spent time living in a somewhat alternative lifestyle so this meant that she spent her earlier years growing up in a beautiful Christian commune. As a young adult, Stephanie graduated from Emerson. She was drawn to the internet and studied New Media and Film and soon became employed with MIT. She started creating educational products for online learning that corresponds with programming at PBS. She is currently building an audience and interviewing great speakers for her newest endeavor a podcast called The Audacious Life. Stephani had two very different breastfeeding experiences and shares with us how they were different. She learned so much from her experiences with her first baby, that she felt much better prepared

Lori brings up some stuff that many people don't like to talk about. Lori talks about it because she wants you to be prepared in the event you have a hard time with early breastfeeding. You will know you are not alone and you will know the importance of early intervention. Lori talks about her breastfeeding mantra: "It is not suppose to hurt." If it does, get help. There is no need to suffer for days while you are waiting for it to get better. There are some things that you do want to wait it out and see if it gets better. Breastfeeding is not one of them. What motivates Lori? The facts! Listen as she shares with you the details about breastfeeding initiation in our country and how this changes as the weeks and months go on after birth and how this impacts breastfeeding. Lori talks about how there is no reason why mothers should be suffering with painful breasts and nipples when breastfeeding. If trauma has been created, please get help ASAP to stop from getting worse. There are many barriers to breastfeeding