Supported & Thriving Lactation Support | Motherhood Untamed

This week I sat down with Motherhood Untamed, an incredible breastfeeding support resource in our community. Run by IBCLC's Angela Das and Chelsea Ford, they provide highly personalized and supportive lactation support. They accept insurance and Medicaid, and offer a free monthly lactation support group. 


Connect with Motherhood Untamed:
Instagram: @motherhooduntamedlactation
Website: www.motherhooduntamed.com

Links and Resources:
Website: www.greatestjoydoula.com
Listen to the Birth Your Way Podcast 
on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
and Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5XaaUhU...
Watch on YouTube: /@birthyourwaypodcast  

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Welcome to Birth Your Way Port Collins. I am thrilled today to have Chelsea and Angela here with Motherhood Untamed.

unknown 0:14

Ah.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

We are so excited to talk to you. They are IBCLCs, both of you. Yes. And really, I'd love for you both to introduce yourselves. We're gonna start with you, Angela.

SPEAKER_02 0:23

I'm Angela. I own Motherhood Untamed, which I started in 2021. I'm a lactation consultant. I also hold my CLC. I just got my license massage therapist. I'm a mama of three. I've lived here it feels like forever. I'm actually from Wyoming, but I moved here to go to CSU and I've been here longer than I lived in Wyoming now. So I'm a townie married to my favorite dude, and I just love babies and families and everything.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Birth World's Me.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

So glad you're here. How about you, Chelsea? I'm Chelsea. I'm also an IBCLC. I am working for Angela. She was so wonderful to take me under her wing. I'm a much more recently coined IBC LC. I'm also a nurse anesthetist, so I've been in the healthcare world for over 20 years now. But more recently in the IBCLC field and super happy to be here. I moved to Fort Collins in 2024, so I am not a townie, I'm a newbie. But I love it here and see myself being here for a long time and just feel fortunate to get to do this work.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Oh, that's wonderful. Can I share how we met?

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Oh, please do.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Yeah. Because she totally slid into my DMs. I haven't from Spain. Accidental Instagram following. It's not like I'm an influencer or anything, but it's bigger than my whole. She has a huge influence. And she DM'd me and was like, hey, I'm so-and-so, and I live in Spain. And I was like, okay. And then she went on to say, We really want to move to Fort Collins. I'm like actively working towards getting my IBCLC. And I just want to connect with you because I would love to work with you at some point if that's an option. And then lo and behold, as soon as she sat for her exam, she came back to that message and was like, so I just sat for my exam and I'll have my results in 12 weeks because they make us wait for 12 weeks. And then here we are. That's amazing. I think that's kind of fun.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Yeah. No, I think even before I moved here to Fort Collins, I had a newborn. And when I was looking if I need lactation support, you were the first one to pop up. I knew who you were before I moved here. Yeah. They slid into your DMs though. It turned out I was I didn't need support. But I'm so glad you're here for the community.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

Yeah. I love it here. And we just have a really cool birth working community, like professional community here is awesome.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

I totally agree. I'd love to hear what drew you to this work. Tell us what brought you here.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

I think most of us are gateway drug to birth work, lactation included, is motherhood. It's not true for everybody, but for me, I always wanted to be a mom and becoming a mom was trickier than we thought it was gonna be. And then when breastfeeding came along, I was like, it's unnatural. My mom breastfed us, like no problem. We had a doula, she helped with latch, like all of this stuff. But then all the extra layers of things of like, why is my baby projectile exorcist style vomiting all over me at least two times a day? And we're crying and he's fussy and like you know, naps 20 minutes on repeat, rinse and repeat every hour. And then I had another baby, and that was like even harder, and she had ties and but she was chubby, and so as far as lactation support, it was like, well, just lean back and help her handle your flow and look at her waking. And it's like, but she cries all the time and we're miserable. So for me, my gateway drug was my motherhood experience and the support that I got and the support that I felt was lacking. And so when the pandemic came around and all of us were like, What do we do with ourselves? I was like, Well, shoot, we got one life. I'm gonna do this thing.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

And here I am. And you decided to go for the IBCLC, like the ultimate.

SPEAKER_02 3:57

Yeah, I think if you're going to do true clinical lactation care, IBC L C is the gold standard. We have a lot more which is it's different, right? It's confusing to parents because there's lactation soup and we could go all into that. But yeah, my goal was always to become an IBCLC. I opened my business as a CLC and worked towards within two years I had my IBCLC, which is a feat if you're not a nurse.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Can you explain at a high level for someone who's not familiar with the different processes?

SPEAKER_02 4:27

The different credentials and whatnot. Okay. There's CLC, which is certified lactation counselor. That's how I started my business. It originally was a 52-hour class. I think it's now around 90, but it's a just an online course you can take, and then you do have to take an exam. And then you are a certified lactation counselor. There's some can continuing ed requirements. It gives you the base knowledge of lactation and the physiology of milk production and some troubleshooting stuff for the typical struggles that we might see. And on that kind of bracket, there's CBS, which is certified breastfeeding specialist. Same thing. There's all these certified something or other courses that you can take. And it's great for doula as anybody that wants to do lactation care in addition to their main thing. It helps them with latching and all of that. Gives them a basic foundation. Yeah, it gives a basic foundation, which is beautiful. And then the IBCLC is international board certified lactation consultant. And it has lactation education requirements. You have to have at least 95 hours of lactation specific. And then beyond that, you have to have it depends, there are a couple pathways to get to it. If you're a nurse, you would use your experience with moms and babies and count those hours, but you have to have somewhere from 300 to 1000 hours working directly with moms and babies before you can even apply for your exam. And so there are a bunch of different ways, and that really is one of the barriers to becoming a lactation consultant is getting those hours. And so that's gonna nutshell the various and even IBCLC to IBCLC, we might have the same foundation of education, but where did we go from there? Like where did we seek our continuing education courses and how did we grow in our knowledge base? Because just starting out at that basic foundational knowledge. And I think this is why some people are like, well, why did this IBCLC said this and this one said this and these people said this? And we all have the same letters behind our name. And it that truly comes down to what is our niche, where's our passion, and what is the education that we've built up outside of just getting the letters behind our name.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Yeah, and thank you for clarifying that. Yeah. And just real quickly, you said it was important to you to provide clinical level care.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Can you speak to why that was important to do?

SPEAKER_02 6:53

I just think and I think Chelsea can attest to this now being six months into working here and serving families is it's so much. I can't imagine trying to do the level of lactation care that I do in a postpartum visit that's 20 minutes as a healthcare provider or a doula or and get my other hat finished. It truly is not something that in my heart I believe that you can tack on to something else because it is its own piece. I'm communicating with your midwives and your pediatricians and really truly part of the medical team that's holding you up and and I think that's where it kind of differentiates.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:39

It's not just, hey, let's switch your position just a little bit. And that's amazing. We need all of that support, right? But it's it goes deeper than that.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Thank you for yeah, explaining all that. I know before I entered this world, I mean I didn't know.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

No, yeah. I think so many of us just don't know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Yeah, and the varying pathways to be an IBCLC, there's a foundation, I think it's 14 anatomy and physiology and other like healthcare basics leading to a nursing path or other healthcare path, whereas a CLC or a CBS, from my understanding, if you don't have to have that basic foundation. And so if you're trying to provide evidence-based care coming from that background of a stronger science foundation, I think is important from a clinical standpoint for the more evidence-based approach than simple latching basics and things like that. Yeah. So that I think a significant difference between the IBCLC and it, there's CEUs that are required, and it's they all have their place in care, but it does provide an opportunity for more of a strong foundation from just an anatomy and physiology standpoint. Got it. Got it. And yeah, what brought you down this path? So, same similar path in that my own struggles with my daughter. I went to nursing school when I was a baby. I was 18 years old, and I actually went to nursing school to become a midwife, but then realized in nursing school after my labor and delivery rotation, I was just like, I'm so young, I'm I'm a baby, I'm not planning on having babies anytime soon. And I just didn't feel like at that moment that was the right path for me. So I finished nursing school and I went into emergency medicine and I did that for about eight years. And then it was time for me to take the next step in my career, and I fell into anesthesia's lap. That's a long story for a different day. So I went back and got my master's in nurse anesthesia, and then several years later had my own baby, and I was very prepared to just exclusively breastfeed. And my mom was like, I sprayed milk across the room, and it's it's natural, it's easy, that kind of thing. And that is not how it went for me. I did not spray milk across the room. It was like very challenging, and I sought care of an IBCLC. I went to a prenatal class and I thought I was so prepared for it. And then in the moment, I felt totally unprepared. And I did have good care by I saw two different IBCLCs, and I wanted to be able to provide the care that I wish I had in that moment. So while those two women were wonderful, they didn't really give me what I needed in that moment. And years later, I came full circle to realizing that. And then after being in health care for 20 years and realizing that health care is really sick care in this country, I really wanted the opportunity to do something where I could form relationships and provide more of like a continuity of care. And it wasn't just a one-off thing, especially in anesthesia when we're doing care for surgery. I think I provide excellent care, but the I really missed the patient rapport and developing a relationship. And so when I was like, what do I want to do when I grow up? I'm 40 years old. What am I gonna be? I thought back and realized the passion, like a kind of full circle moment brought me back to the birth world and how I could have my space in that world without going the midwifery route. Cause at that point, I was like, I'm not going back and getting another master's degree. And I'm really passionate about lactation care because of my own experience. And then it's a unique thing. I think I'm the only CRNA. There may be others, but I'm pretty sure I'm the only CRNA, at least in this country, that is also an IBC L C in the country. I think so. I found that out when trying to get credentialed for Medicaid. They were like, nurses and there's PAs and there's physicians and there's all of these categories of people, but nurse anesthetists, they didn't have the taxonomy, which is a more alphabet soup, but basically they were like, we've never had an a CRNA try and get under us for lactation care. So hopefully I opened the path to that and maybe other CRNAs will be interested in it. But we are airway experts and I have advanced knowledge and I really understand the underlying anatomy. So especially coming under Angela's practice, she in this community is known for those more tricky cases when it is not like every baby has a tongue tie, but when there are oral restrictions present, I am able to come at it from a clinical approach, which is a different approach than Angela necess like, but we come to the same thing where I'm like, I've looked in thousands of mouths and I not always in babies, but I can tell anatomical variations and that kind of clinical knowledge is just a different subset. That's what is unique about Chelsea special sex.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Yeah, and it sounds like you two compliment each other really well.

SPEAKER_02 12:21

We think so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

Yeah. Yeah. So your background was in nursing, like nurse esetists and I forgot. What was your background before you came to this?

SPEAKER_02 12:29

I quit nursing school a semester and a half in, not even all the way through first year after I had my undergrad in communication from CSU. I just didn't want to continue to be in school and I was 20 something and was like, I'm gonna go live my best life. And then I did. And I I have a a not so natural career transition. I was an insurance adjuster. I would be the person to come climb on your roof if there was a hail storm and let you know what we're gonna pay and blah blah blah. And then I was the director of business development and marketing for a roofing company once I had a kid and did that part-time. So that gives me a lot of my background in growing a business and helping I helped him grow his business. So when I made my own, I just put that playbook that we had created and turned it towards this. So I'm not an RN and I come from a background really of communication and of business development and marketing.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

I love that though, because that's a huge trend, I think, with all birth workers, especially on this podcast so far. We all bring our own gifts into birth work. And as you mentioned, yeah, our gateway drug often is motherhood. Yeah. And we were doing something different before that. But now it brings us home to ourselves in a way, I think. Yeah giving birth. And but you both bring your backgrounds so like there's a synchronicity there that I think that our community really benefits from. You bring this really clinical lens, your own personal experience, and you bring, I think communication can be very important. Very huge. Especially in something that yeah, when people don't have that understanding of their bodies and they're in postpartum and like having this problem to be able to communicate clearly to them.

SPEAKER_02 13:56

And just to be able to care well for people. Communication is just it's the root of most of our problems, right? Whether it's marriage or whatever, it's miscommunication is such a hard thing. So yeah. Having really great communication is it hasn't hurt things.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

Yeah, yeah, it cannot hurt. So you've got these great backgrounds coming together in this business. Tell me what you offer through Motherhood Untain. What services are available and people come to you?

SPEAKER_02 14:18

Yeah, we've got lactation care, obviously, is what we really do here. So that goes all the way from prenatal education. We've got online courses. A few years ago we used to consistently host on in-person classes, tried to do it at least twice a year, if not three times a year. And someday maybe we'll get back into that. I have three kids at home and layering life and all the things that just fell away. But we have that online, all the way from understanding your baby to then having truly a breastfeeding basics foundation. And I have a parenthood prep one too, if your first time and you're like, what's a budget? And what's child care and what's all of this? Like so there's like some prenatal education there. And we do prenatal appointments, which like do a prenatal appointment. It's so fun talking about like Chelsea was saying, that relationship with a family, doing your research, finding a lactation consultant, they're like, Oh, I think I like that for like they seem like they were my vibe. You can meet prenatally. If your insurance is gonna cover lactation care, they're gonna cover your prenatal visit. We'd like to see you around your 30-ish to 34-ish weeks. It's a sweet spot, 28 to 34, maybe. And so we do prenatal visits and then we carry it over to newborn home visits and come and help you use your space and figure out your house for what feeding feels like and looks like. We also have an office, and so we really the whole spectrum of what would you add to that?

SPEAKER_00 15:44

I would the only in addition to feeding your baby at the breast, we can also help navigate pumping and bottle feeding, and yeah, Angela can help a lot with body work. I am not I don't have special training in that as much as Angela now that she has her massage certification, but helping babies feel comfortable in their CST knowledge.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

We did go to a craniosacral. Yeah, craniocacral. Okay. We went and did a weekend workshop together. Yeah. And I've done a couple workshops on that too. So it is like we bring our own unique things to it. But yeah, it's like first latch and throughout the duration of this podcast and anytime I'm talking about what we do and we talk about lactation care, I that's really just human milk feeding your baby. No matter the device, if it's your body that we're using or a bottle or if it's some of your milk and some formula or donor milk or whatever, we just support that whole feeding journey. So just to clarify, it's not all about obviously latching and feeding at the breast, because that isn't what some families want. And for some families, they just have a different journey than that. And so we support all of it. All the feeding. All the things. Call it food introduction too.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

Yeah. So I know when I was pregnant with my first baby, if I had heard, oh, you can go see a lactation consultant at 30 to 34 weeks, I would have been like, why? What are we gonna do? Yeah. So that's truly a question I would have had, and I can only imagine many other first-time moms might have that question. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

How would you respond? I think that prenatal visit is so special in finding if you're vibing with that person. And I think that some questions that you may not have thought about of like what feeding is even gonna look like. Because I think a lot of families are like, I want to breastfeed, but what that breastfeeding is gonna actually look like, or I want to give my baby breast milk, but have you thought about it? Does that mean at the breast only? Do you want to feed bottles too? How do you feel about combo feeding? All we can help like solicit information from you that you may not even realize that you should have thought of that. And also, if things are tricky, postpartum, hormones are raging, there's so many things going on, you have a crying baby, you're emotional, it's like a whole thing, and it's really hard to absorb knowledge in that state. So having a foundational basis, and even at 28 weeks, birth is so far apart, and you're still excited for your pregnancy, and you're really so full. It's crazy how many people are just focused on birth, which is a huge component of it, and that feeds a lot into feeding is having a birth that you can look back on and view as successful, of what success means to you, and really trusting your body, but having that exposure before you're in the moment and in the thick of it, and have the added emotions and the added hormones and all the things, I think is like super helpful.

SPEAKER_02 18:37

Yeah. I'll tack on that if you were having a baby and it's your first baby or your fifth. I actually more of my prenatal appointments are with parents that have had a baby or two or three or five. Yeah. And they're like, you know what, that sucked. And I don't want to do that again. But I do want to do that again, but just not that.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

But like better.

SPEAKER_02 18:55

And so prenatal appointments really like everybody goes into something with an agenda. It's the my goal is to get whatever the parent needs out of that, right? Do they have anxiety because everyone keeps talking about how their milk disappears at three months or that their milk never comes in, or all of these things. Let's talk about those anxieties. Let's give you evidence-based information and education around you can navigate that, like why we don't need to be fearful of those things. So it really is like a one-on-one prenatal education. We geek out a little bit on the science of milk production and latching and all of that. But then we give you, I always tell families, this is not a read all-at-once email, but after our visits, because people are tired and we are going over a lot of information, and we do our best to not overwhelm people. And one of the tools that we use is a follow-up, like a post-visit recap. And so if you come see me prenatally, you're gonna have a post-visit recap to save on your phone that's gonna have a cutesy little thing that talks about how what kind of poop should we be expecting in those first couple of days? What happens when your milk comes in and how can you help your body be comfortable? All the way down to just like tips and tricks of, hey, while you're still pregnant and you're prepping and planning, make a list of things around the house that would be helpful and tack it to the fridge so that when someone comes over and says, How can we help? All you gotta do is point them to the list instead of having to think about it. So we talk about it's so much more than just breastfeeding. It's about what are you anxious about? What are your goals? What have you heard? Yeah, what have you heard that's making you like, eh, I'm gonna give this a try, but I'm not so sure. That's really just getting curious about what their goals are and where their anxiety lies about it and what kind of evidence-based and education and support can we fill in to reduce the nerves and to help them feel like they've got their game plan. Because when it comes one of my favorite statistics is that when it comes to breastfeeding success, it is like the number one indicator of breastfeeding success is the parents' belief that they're able to do it. And we get that confidence and that belief in ourselves and our body through education and through understanding how things work. And so that's really the goal of prenatal visits is to help them gain that confidence to where they're like, it might be tricky, but I have resources and I know what's typical and what's maybe common but not normal.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

And I love that. It's so similar to what we do in the doula world and midwives say this as well. A big part of our job prenatal prenatally is to build trust in your own body in preparation for birth, but also then preparation for breastfeeding. Is that something that you'd like to do?

SPEAKER_03 21:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Yeah, there's so much to instill in parents who are doing it for the first time. But I think that's so interesting too that people are coming to you afterwards knowing now. Okay. I thought, yeah, because I think there's a huge narrative in our minds sometimes. We're like, oh, it's natural. So it will be easy.

unknown 21:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:49

Yeah. And it's like biologically programmed in the biologically typical way to feed a human, sure. But your baby's gotta learn, you've gotta learn. There's a whole lots of messy, muddy layers of society and how we have been educated about this and the lore that's been handed down. People love to share their horror stories. And that's true for birth, that's true for so many things, and it is so true for lactation.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

Yeah, the reality of is this typical, is this expected versus is some is this a red flag or a pink flag or something I should be thinking at more. Yeah. I just think a lot of times people in general just don't know exactly what that newborn, especially those first few days, are gonna look like and like how tired I'm gonna be and those kinds of things. So just instilling the confidence and the trust. I think the trust piece is huge, especially when somebody has a really strong vision for their birth and then the path strays and then getting back to that trud that mistrust can pour over into feeding. Yeah. Big time. Getting back grounded into my body, I can do hard things. My body was built for this, I can do this, I can trust that this can be different, or this is where our path can come together if it kind of went astray in the birthing process.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

Yeah, you can have support when it truly does go astray because we are not magicians that we can support you and we can absolutely help navigate when things have gotten really tricky. But there are absolutely times that you had this beautiful glowing vision of what feeding your baby was gonna look like, and then it doesn't look like that for whatever reason. And I think a lot of what Chelsea and I do honestly is holding space for families and you know, just being there, being the vessel that they can pour into. We're not therapists, but give us all your ick of what's going on with breastfeeding, and we can be that space to hold that and help you navigate what feels good to you.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

That's wonderful. So it sounds like you've got your groups that people can come to and you've got appointments one-on-one where they're in their office or and you go to their home.

SPEAKER_02 24:00

Usually home visits are primarily for four-ish weeks and under as new babes. Yeah, yeah, we go to homes because that's really important to figure out your space. And a lot of us, if you just had a baby, we serve a vast variety of how people have their babies, but a lot of our families give birth at home. And so, yeah, they want us to come to them. And we I love going and seeing newborn squishes. I feel like it's holy and it's such an honor to get invited into that space. Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

And I heard you mention you were getting Medicaid approved. So I'd love if you can speak to is it is this covered by insurance? To what extent? What does that look like at your practice?

SPEAKER_02 24:37

I would say last year when I ran through numbers, 85% of our families were covered by insurance. And so we are in network with a vast variety. United healthcare, Aetna, Medicaid, and that can be lactation's interesting when it comes not to get on a business side of it, but lactation is interesting because we have two patients, two fam when we serve a family, I chart on the baby, I chart on the mom, I talk to the OB and the midwife, I talk to the pediatrician. Yeah. I think that was only the two of them together. Yeah, and then that and how they work in sync, as we call it a dyad in lactation. And Chelsea can vouch to the the uh amount of charting charting that we that we do.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

And the annoyance of the insurance. I mean most the Affordable Care Act guaranteed insurance coverage for lactation, but the reality of that and the commercial insurers, there's a lot of intricacy too. But oftentimes commercial insurance will cover lactation and usually it's up to six-ish visits. Okay, I was gonna there's a range. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:40

Yeah, that's really only with one provider, one insurance company. So I've seen, I will say, not a lot of families are going to need beyond six visits. And sometimes when we fall into that, maybe something super tricky, but often it's like, it feels really good to have you come over and tell me that this is working out with you. And I get that. I one of the hills I will stand on is that as people that are working with postpartum families, and really since lactation is my vein, like lactation specifically, is to really care and take really good care of a parent's confidence. Because we do come in and we're like, well, like maybe there's oral dysfunction, meaning your baby doesn't really understand how to suckle and we need to teach them, or maybe they have ties, or maybe you do need to remove a little bit more milk and support your milk production and your body to meet your baby's needs. There's a lot of things that feel like judgment. They could feel like judgment, right? When you're tired and you just want this so bad, and then someone's layering on all the reasons why it's not happening. And so I it's I'm like the forefront of my mind of like, how do we keep this parent feeling confident in their journey? How do we protect that for them? Going back to confidence is how we see success in feeding journeys. It's very multifaceted, but to go back to your insurance. Most people are covered under insurance. And you can always call your carrier and ask who they cover and peek around. But we do, like I said, last year it was like 85% of our families that we saw. And we saw over 400 families last year. That's incredible. And they all had insurance and coverage, 85% of them. You can self-pay, we can give you super bills, which is just a fancy receipt with all the insurance language that you can send your insurance carrier. And they're I've heard they're really great about reimbursing those too. There's definitely less barrier financially than there used to be.

SPEAKER_01 27:26

That's incredible. Yeah. Did you say that you do accept Medicaid?

SPEAKER_02 27:29

We do accept Medicaid. Yeah. Yeah. And that was something really important to me. I think I was the first lactation consultant in our area to accept Medicaid. And it was like I could have beat my head against the wall trying to go through their application process, and it's a bit archaic, but it was just really important to me to have that access to care outside of your traditional OB clinic, right? Because that was really who was able to bill those policies were somebody that was billing underneath maybe your physician that was in network with Medicaid.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

Can you speak to the benefit to coming to your practice, your business versus going to their OB or pediatrician? What's the difference in care? Would you say?

SPEAKER_00 28:07

Yeah, time. Time time. Because in in a traditional medical setting, they have an allotted amount of time. And generally speaking, I would say it's probably 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_02 28:17

Yeah, I think lactation care, they might have a little bit more time. Um like piggybacking on when I said you can be the same letters behind your name and a totally different provider. When you work at a big corporation, you work the way that corporation believes. And that's true for our hospital systems, our large pediatric offices. I work for myself. And so I am very mindful of evidence-based practice and I want the science to be there, but the lived experience too also is sometimes science hasn't caught up with what is truly happening with families and not to go on about spicy things in women's health care. That's right. Sometimes we are a little delayed in getting actual great evidence behind women and babies' health care, especially especially when it comes to birth and breastfeeding. And so in our practice, we have the ability to I don't want to say think for ourselves, but we have the ability to think for ourselves. And there's great care out there, and we need all of it, right? I'm never ever, you're never gonna hear me bashing another lactation consultant or a different type of practice. We need everybody. We need everybody. There are, I think, the most recent statistic on a butcher this. Somewhere in the 30-ish thousand IBC L C's, period. Across the world. Yeah. Yeah. And there are a whole lot of babies being born. And so we need everybody to do this care. But coming to my clinic and seeing Chelsea or I is vastly different. We have this beautiful little she shed that it's calm and it's super inviting and it's less medical feeling. Yeah. It's I truly don't want we don't wear scrubs, although sometimes I wear scrub pants because they're basically sweatpants. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. But I just I don't want it to feel we are part of your care team, and I do believe we are medical providers, but I don't want it to feel that way. I don't want to medicalize it. I want it to feel like your big sisters that are helping you breastfeed.

SPEAKER_01 30:28

And what from the big sister perspective, what is your specific philosophy on body feeding that you're bringing to a visit?

SPEAKER_02 30:40

Like my business is five years old now. So five years ago coming into this, pregnant with my third, had breastfed two kids. I had a lot of my lived experience in my head. And five year ago to now, I'm like a vastly different human when it comes to providing care for families. And really my philosophy is I don't care how you feed your baby. I want you to feel held and I want your baby to be meeting its nutritional needs that it needs, however that happens, and for you to be able to look back on your journeys without grief. Because one of the things that is so true in how you feed your baby, and birth probably as well, is that when things go differently than you expected, and so you are forced to maybe it's formula feed because your milk wasn't didn't wasn't abundant enough to meet your baby's needs, or your baby couldn't latch, and so now we're bottle feeding. Whatever it is that pivoted your journey from what you wanted it to be, there is a deep grief and sadness that happens in that family and honestly in that mom and baby dyad, in that in the whole family unit. And I just my philosophy is we just support support. We just have to help families navigate that if it's different than they so that when they look back, they can go, man, I tried everything. I did all the things, and this was just our journey. Yeah. So that's that's a philosophy, that's mine.

unknown 32:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:19

I think meeting them where they're at and going back to the prenatal visit and looking at what how do you want this experience to be? Is it important for you for most of the nutrition to come at the breast? Is the breast milk the the most important part? Is it a really truly an equal combination? Because those are things that I never really thought about. And again, the seven-year-agomy now, when I had my daughter, to now, nobody really said to me, Well, is the breastfeeding relationship important? Hopefully, you can have it all. You can have the breastfeeding relationship, you can give your baby the breast milk and it just works perfectly. But maybe if it's not working well, can you compartmentalize a little bit of like, is it more important to you the breastfeeding relationship, or is the breast milk the really important part? And I don't think a lot of people think about it like that. And so at my philosophy is like, what is important to you? Because what's important to me doesn't matter, and really trying to remove my own personal experience, my own bias from it. Obviously, that's what drew me to this, but I can support you however if you can tell me how I can support you and what's important to you and how you can feel good about this at the end of the day. And it feels hard because it is hard, but we can do hard things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:29

Yeah. Um and creating space too for there's so much noise in motherhood and parenthood as a blanket, but especially in new parenthood and in finding your footing in what is a family what is this new family system, whether you just added a baby or it's your first baby, look like. There's so much noise around like how we feed our baby, what's right, what's wrong, what should we do be doing for comforting, what shouldn't we be doing? There's we shouldn't and should all over people, right? And it's like a curse word basically. Don't should on people. And so finding the ability to create quiet where a family can actually listen to what they want and support from that place. And that's a tricky thing to do because the world's noisy. And so finding that soft place to land where somebody can actually listen to their inside voice, what do you actually want? Yeah. And let's work to support that.

SPEAKER_01 34:27

To that end, I know you mentioned you served over 400 families last year. Yeah. Do you see some common themes from people coming in? Common issues, common problems that they're coming to you with. And how I know it's a very nuanced and what what works for different people works for different people, but what are some common issues you see and how do you typically address them?

SPEAKER_00 34:47

The most common is supply related, I would say. But it is my milk supply enough. Am I doing this right? Is it supposed to be this often? Yeah, is it supposed to hurt? Yeah.

unknown 35:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:04

Yeah. A lot of that is the first two weeks, right? In the first two weeks, the common themes are going to be like, why do my nipples hurt? Or why do they look like hamburger? Because I have a pariah baby. Then how do we undo that? Because that's a hard no. And are they maybe they've lost more than 10%? All babies lose weight at birth. It's inflated if we've got a long induction in intrapartum fluids and all of those things, and maybe we could look at a 24-hour wait. But like all babies lose a little bit of weight while they're waiting for mom's milk to come in, which I'll air quote that because you literally start making breast milk at 14 to 16 weeks of pregnancy. So you have milk when your baby's born, no matter when they're born. But that's that first couple weeks of like how do we do this? And is this enough? Am I like my boobs are really uncomfortable? Maybe you've never done this before because it's first time. And then we have, I would say we had a lot of families first time, first two weeks. The what is happening? Please come save me. And then a lot of families around the sixth week mark is honestly, if we if I had to put a stamp in it when we see families most commonly, it's the six to eight weeks. It wasn't great breastfeeding up until now, but it was like working okay. We only cried a little bit and babies were gaining enough, or maybe like a rock star or whatever, but then around six to eight weeks, it all goes to like hell. And they're like, what happened? My baby is like on and off the boob, my milk supply is gone. We did our two-month weight check with our well baby visit, and they're totally off their chart. Yeah. That is a really common time for families to seek support, is that six to eight weeks? And not to go deep rabbit hole, but for the first six weeks of life, the parent has as with appropriate stimulation to their body, i.e. removing milk, whether it's a baby or a pump or a hand, if they have the appropriate stimulation, they have an abundant amount of milk. And our biohack as the parent is to fire hose our baby, not like shoot it across the room, but pretty forcefully, and it's a hormonal push of milk production at that moment. And that's our hack to help our baby learn and us learn how to feed. And our baby's biohack, if you will, is that for the first six weeks, really all the way to 16 weeks, but very strongly, the first six weeks, babies are very reflexive and they feed in a neurological pattern. Their brain takes over and makes them feed. You put a nipple up to the roof of their mouth, they are going to suck because it's reflexive. And that can carry families over and through a lot of oral dysfunction, ties can be missed. Maybe baby, mom has such a good supply that baby literally just hangs out there. They look like they're attached, there's never any nipple pain going on, but they're just attached and drinking. And even a bucket would gain weight if mom just poured milk into it, right? But then her milk supply regulates, we're not doing that hormonal push, and like all things are like it was okay and now it's awful. And so that would be, I would say first two weeks, learning curves, and then around that what is happening moment around six to eight weeks is the vast bulk of when we meet families.

SPEAKER_01 38:22

Yeah, wow, that's really interesting.

SPEAKER_00 38:23

Or going back to work where oftentimes bottle exposure early, and then they're like, oh, my baby did the bottle, and then time to go back to work at that 10 to 12 week mark, and now my baby won't take a bottle. What's going on? From this.

SPEAKER_02 38:37

If you're pregnant and you're watching this, give your baby a bottle somewhere around three-ish weeks of life. Okay, and then continue to do that two to three times a week, henceforth. And your baby can keep that skill set. But it goes back to that reflexive sucking.

SPEAKER_01 38:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:52

And we need to learn that skill. It's different than a breast. And so we need to learn that skill and we need to keep that skill set as our reflex to suck goes away.

SPEAKER_01 39:01

Well, that's gold. That's really that's the gold. That's the podcast. But you already made a huge impact to everyone watching. Yeah, that's incredible. Yeah, I wish I had heard that. Yeah. Yeah. Me too. Yeah. Just out here being the women that we needed, you know.

SPEAKER_02 39:18

I I think I when I needed them. How many like one of my favorite things in teaching? I taught at the hospital systems for a long time. And sometimes the mom of the new mom would show up to class with her daughter and sit through breastfeeding education in 2021 when she had her babies in the 80s. And I love, love, love getting the opportunity to teach. I love teaching, but to teach to the generation that didn't have support because lactation consultants became a thing in 1985 with a grant from the Lilicha League, which Lilache League was in the 50s. So they're still around. I was a leader at La Leche League in our area for a long time and now passed it on to another Chelsea and and they take on and do groups. But I love the grandmothers that are like, where were you? Like everything about my feeding journey 30 years ago just clicked. Yeah. And I'm like, well, that's gotta to speak to that grief that comes along. You can let that go. Because that was just the system letting you down. Yeah. The system wasn't a system yet and it failed you.

SPEAKER_01 40:20

Yes. Oh my goodness. Is there anything that you wish people would ask you? Yeah, our little nuggets of gold. Yeah, I think we can. More nuggets?

SPEAKER_02 40:28

Yeah, the bottle thing. I just I wish that we educated people better. We are never taught how bodies make milk. And there's a whole hormonal cascade that has to happen and that we can be in charge of no matter how we birth if we understand what's happening. And so I wish people sought education. And education, it's again, you can have the same letters behind your name, but you're gonna get different things. And so seeking education that truly trusts we can trust people with science. We don't have to overwhelm them. We can put it down to common language and help people understand how their body works. I wish people understand how milk was made. That would be my number one thing. And I just I wish that people knew it doesn't have to be an emergency to come see us. And it's uh another thing. We'd love when it's not an emergency. Yeah, yeah. I prefer to see them as well. Yeah, when you're like milk quite right. I just want a little support.

SPEAKER_00 41:29

And that it's okay to change your mind. I think that's important for people to know that it's okay to we use the word pivot a lot. You're not quitting and you're not giving up. But sometimes that's part of the journey is now you have the information and you have the baby that you have and you have your body, and it's okay to change your mind. Don't change it to a permanent thing on your hardest day. But staying never quit on your hardest day, but it's okay if you have to change your mind to meet your mental health needs or whatever else it is that change, it's okay.

SPEAKER_02 41:59

Yeah, no, I love I think two things can be true, right? We can have all this wonderful science of what human milk provides for us as a species, for our health, and support the heck out of families however they want to feed their baby. You guys, how can the people find you? Mostly like old school way. We have a website, motherhooduntamed.com. We have Instagram, Motherhood Untamed Lactation. If you need to schedule an appointment, go through the website. You can text us, call us, or reach out via that. Or we have online scheduling as well. If it's three o'clock in the morning and you just need to get on the schedule. And but for funsy little tips and tricks, the Instagram's gonna be where it is.

SPEAKER_00 42:43

And physically, if you're looking for us, we host a volunteer donation-based group on the first and third Thursdays of the month at a chiropractor office on Harmony in College. So that's a great way to come out and meet community, other people in the thick of it in similar phases of life. So that's a good way to physically connect with us. And then also we have a physical location at Drake and LeMay. Usually when we're there, we're with family, so it's not like a pop-in. But if you're looking for a physical location or wondering where we're at in the world, physically, we're coming in.

SPEAKER_02 43:18

My van has boobs all over it. Sitting outside the studio. See it, just wave. That's me.

SPEAKER_01 43:25

Oh, that's wonderful. I love that group. I refer people there all the time. Thank you both so much for hosting it. And thank you so much for coming on today.

SPEAKER_02 43:31

Thank you for having us. This was so fun. Thank you for doing this for our community. Absolutely, thank you. It's my pleasure.