Inclusive Ways to Feed and Parent Your Baby
Episode 65: Inclusive Ways to Feed and Parent Your Baby with Victoria Facelli @victoria.facelli.ibclc
This week Rachael speaks with Victoria Facelli, an IBCLC and author of the book 'Feed the Baby', to discuss the inclusive approach to feeding and parenting. She emphasizes the need to change our mindset and be open to different feeding methods, rather than getting caught up in the breast milk vs. formula debate.
Inside this episode:
How to use a risk-benefit analysis for each parenting decision, considering factors such as recovery, sleep, and mental health.
The importance of advocating for oneself and seeking support from professionals like lactation consultants!
The power of being able to change our minds as parents and adapt to the needs of our children.
The role of partners in supporting the birthing parent and the nursing parent.
Why it is so important for partners to be involved and educated about feeding.
Practical advice for partners to help with feeding and caregiving responsibilities
The need to protect maternal sleep.
Some challenges and benefits of introducing bottles early on.
Hear about Victoria’s personal experiences & insights for navigating the postpartum period.
And so much more!
Mentioned in this episode:
Victoria’s website: https://www.victoriafacelli.com/
Victoria’s Instagram: @victoria.facelli.ibclc
Victoria’s Book: Feed The Baby
If you enjoyed this episode, please rate 5⭐️ and write us a review! ⬇️
✨For sleep support and resources, visit heysleepybaby.com and follow @heysleepybaby on Instagram! 😴☁️🤎✨
Rachael is a mom of 3, founder of Hey, Sleepy Baby, and the host of this podcast.
Listen to the full episode
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Welcome to No One Told Us, the podcast that tells you the truth about parenting and
talks about all the stuff you wish you knew before having kids. I'm your host Rachael, and today I'm so excited to speak with Victoria Pachele. She's an IBCLC and author of an incredible book called Feed the Baby, which is an inclusive guide to nursing, bottle feeding, and everything in between. Victoria writes and speaks about balanced ways to support feeding, prioritize parent mental health, and discusses the value of changing your mind as a parent. So I'm so excited to welcome you to the podcast. Your book is incredible and one of a kind, so thank you so much for being here today.
It's so nice to be here. I feel very in line with the theme of being incredibly surprised by parenting.
Aren't we all? It really does come as a shock, doesn't it?
Well, what's funny about it is that I was a parenting expert before I was a parent. So like, then no one told us like, I cannot claim that. Like I was in people's postpartum homes for a decade. And yet still walloped.
How old are your kids?
I just have the one, she's six.
Okay, six, okay, I have a six year old too. It's starting to feel a little easier in some ways, no? What do you think?
Well, my daughter is disabled, she has cerebral palsy. So I think for me, it's a different kind of leveling out. Like the challenges of navigating school are pretty unique when you have a disabled child. And so those aspects are are different though like the actual kid continues
to get easier. So like I think if you have a disabled child, you're always navigating sort of two pieces of parenting, the actual parenting of the actual person and then navigating all of the systems and ableism and all of that stuff. And so those two pieces changes like go in a way that is a little bit unique to parents walking that path.
Yeah, for sure. We actually have an episode about this very topic because I was, before I did this, I was a special education teacher for almost a decade and yeah, you're right. There are so many other challenges that you don't even think about before becoming a parent. And then when you add the disability layer, it's just a whole other ball game.
Yeah, and I think for me, and we'll get back to talking about feeding, but I think for me, that's where the no one told us was, is that no one, I was so, so, so familiar with the postpartum, but no one told me that most parents at some point will encounter some kind of disability. Like you will at some point encounter a learning disability, an injury, or in my case, a more sustaining, enduring experience of parenting in disability, neurodivergent kids.
If you take a broad lens, that will be part of your experience, certainly if you have multiple kids, and that's kind of my big no one told me. So that all started for me with feeding, where I was like, I'm an expert, I'm a lactation consultant. Like I will breastfeed this baby and no, I would not.
Yeah, so let's talk about this. Let's kind of dive into the book a little bit because I would love to hear, I think for most of us who are in the parenting space, there is that little piece of like that self -serving dynamic that kind of comes into whatever we choose to do 'cause it's like we went through something or we're going through something and we just to help others. But I would love to hear kind of what was the inspiration behind this book and why did you feel called to write it's, you know, a quote unquote inclusive feeding book.
Yeah. So I think my experience was a little backwards of that. I think a lot of people end up in this field because of their experiences. And I always just found this field really fascinating. So I ended up in this field before having a kid. And then when I had my daughter, you know, I had to take a really big step back from work for a lot of reasons, including but not limited to the pandemic and, you know, like child care fluctuates a lot more when you have a child with a disability. And so I took this big step back.
But what I had been doing was being really curious about what is the teaching of lactation and what is the teaching of infant feeding if you don't think one way is better than the other and when you actually don't think there are two ways. Like what does that look like? And I had started to build that and my backgrounds in performance and communication and I had a lot of metaphors and scripts and ways of explaining things that other people didn't quite
have.
And that, for me, was sort of the grounding of the book. And then I had experienced a lot of trauma around my birth and a NICU stay. And so I was seeing this really wonderful trauma therapist to help me through my postpartum mood disorder. And she, when we entered the pandemic, she was like, you're gonna get so lost. You need something that's not about your kid. You need something that's about you. And so I sat down with all of these scripts that I had in my head that I had been teaching, that I had been telling parents I had been working on for so long and just wrote them all down. And for me, actually, I wrote it as a cookbook. I was listening to the podcast Home Cooking and reading Salt Fat Acid Heat. And I was like, oh, this is just like my job.
And I don't think anyone else's brain sees it that way, but I basically was like, what would it be like to sort of like be some (indistinct) and break feeding down not into this binary of like formula feeding and breastfeeding that I don't believe exists. And instead, you know, I'm an autistic queer person. I'm like all about spectrums and like being all along continuums. So what if instead, like instead of thinking about it in those two parts, what happens if I break it up in the way that Samin breaks up the elements of cooking into salt -fat -acidate heat?
And so I sort of broke down feeding into like, what are you feeding your baby? How are you feeding your baby? Like what is on your end of it? Like in your body, what's happening in their body, and looking at those elements separately instead of looking just at sort of like the
substances and going from there.
I love that. And I love how you talk about how the breast milk versus formula is one of these hot topics in parenting. It's like this binary, and I love that you kind of talk about it as more of a spectrum and how there are actually so many things in between. What do you think about like the breast milk and formula comparison is there really one that's better? Is there a reason to choose? What do you think?
I think it's absolutely the most boring conversation in the whole like of all of the variables. It's the thing we can't change. It's the thing that's just sort of like exists. So like I can get so in the weeds about like all of the politics and all of the dynamics and the polyunsaturated fatty acids and the omega -3s and the different farming practices and like I can go there all day. I'm an enormous nerd. I love that stuff. So like in a vacuum where people have every single resource afforded to them, they have identical bodies and they have identical babies and they have like and I say this knowing like identical twins that do not eat the same way, or queer co-parents who are both nursing the same baby, right?
So like, I've seen all these permutations, but like in theory, if I could, and this is why lactation is
impossible to study because you can't do this, but if I could make two identical case studies, probably in the minutia breast milk would win out marginally.
Mm -hmm. A lot of people really don't like that perspective because it's, I don't know, we have this like fascination with human bodies and like in reality what we have is this enormous world of different experiences and different babies and different bodies and different jobs and different houses and different partners and different hospitals and different births and different sleep patterns and different brains and different mental health needs and different pumps that mean that that's like one variable in this enormous super variables. And so it's not actually a direct comparison.
So in the direct comparison, Like, formula is not the milk of another species given to humans. It is the milk of another species that we bioengineer the ever -loving bejesus out of to become synthetic breast milk, in the same way that we make synthetic insulin that is medically comparable to pancreatic insulin, right? Like, It is definitely easier if you have a body and a baby that fit together really easily and nursing goes really well for you. It's
really cool to be able to just feed your baby wherever, whenever, and not ever worry about safe water and all of those things, cool. It's cool to have a pancreas that makes insulin.
And also, in circumstances where those things don't work out, or where your job really, really needs to be your priority, I don't think using the synthetic is that biologically different. And though we can isolate one little variable, one little variable at a time, and we can make those the end all be all, I don't think that serves whole human beings and I think what serves us is to really do risk benefit to really say like for every single thing we do there's a risk and there's a benefit and the reality is that most people at some point in their feeding a baby journey do some amount of all of the things like most of the people that I know that go on to exclusively recipe for six months, adding complimentary solids and continuing until mutually desired.
At some point, use a little bit of formula to work through an issue going there or do a little bit of pumping or also bottle feed or have some combination of those tools. And so I just wanted to write a book that talked about all of those tools and was neutral about it and was like modern to our reality instead of sitting in this really boring debate of whether the embodied or synthetic is superior.
And instead says, sometimes you don't have clean water, and that's going to change it. Or sometimes you have a very real reason why nursing is medically superior in your experience or like way impossible in your experience. So I'm not gonna sit in whether that's good or bad. I'm just gonna give you the tools to do what you need to do.
I love that. We're gonna take one quick break and then when we come back, I would love to hear more about your cost benefit analysis. We'll be right back.
So we are back with Victoria and before the break, we were talking a little bit about, you're right, it really is so boring and so pointless to debate formula versus breast milk. And every parent really, and I talk the same way about sleep, like we don't really need to discuss sleep training versus not sleep training anymore, like let's get over that and let's just meet families where they're at and help them with whatever it is that they need to do and take some of the shame out of it and take some of the divisiveness out of it and the mommy wars thing is just so played out and I'm over it.
Like with any parenting decision, there's a risk benefit analysis that we have to make with every parenting choice, right? Whether it's sleep, whether it's feeding, whether it's sending your kid to kindergarten or holding them back, like every choice we make has pros and cons. So can you talk a little bit about how you do like a cost benefit or a risk benefit analysis when it comes to choosing the right way to feed your baby?
Yeah, I think for me, the direct sleep comparison is more towards like newborn co -sleeping where we do a little bit of an abstinence only thing where we're like, don't ever do it. It's biologically normal and you're definitely gonna do it because that's how the hormones work. But like, don't do it. And then like never, ever, ever put a baby in your bed. So then what happens, because biologically, especially if you're nursing, the hormones actually put you to sleep. Like in other mammal studies, the like behavior you're looking for in good like nursing rat parents is that they're asleep all the time. Like chemically, you're just supposed to be kind of like dozing on and off all the time. And so you will fall asleep. And so if all you've been told is
never bring your baby into the bed, you fall asleep in the recliner which is so much more dangerous.
Instead of saying hey, best case scenario, your kid's in the bassinet, you're on a separate surface. However, if you are not on narcotic painkillers, like if you are sober, if you are like non-smoking and we're not smoking in pregnancy, it is relatively safe to sleep under these conditions and lay out what safer co -sleeping looks like. There's not actually all the way safe with anything, but there's safer. And it is safer to be in your bed, doze off, wake up and realize where you are and move your baby to the bassinet. If you want anything beyond that and whatever co-sleeping looks like for you, you get to make those risk -benefit choices. But we know that the dozing off in your bed in the right circumstances is safer than never talking about it and dozing off in the recliner.
And this happens with formula education too, where formula marketing is... So I always talk about the back of the can. The front of the can is all marketing. Very little of it is regulated, very little of it has any meaning whatsoever. And so because there's no one to actually educate about formula, lactation consultants by and large do not learn about formula, pediatricians at most get a class from the formula companies. There's very, very few people who actually educate about formula.
And so we leave this huge vacuum where parents don't know where to go for information and so what I really want to see as a change is moving beyond this like binary to be able to help people make those risk -benefit decisions too of like okay we're encountering so let's take an example of like you're having some early feeding issues maybe your baby was 36 weeks what we call late preterm baby.
So not all the way like a preemie going to the NICU, but just like little. And those babies don't have the fat stores and the energy to stay awake for feedings. They're just so sleepy. They're really, really, really hard to feed. And so I'm going to take a look at that whole family and I'm going to say like, okay, well, number one, we have to feed the baby, which is why the book is titled that. That's what we always say is like first feed the baby. That's we're gonna do that obviously and then what are the other variables?
So if nursing or like human milk feeding is super important to this parent like all right We got to add in some pumping to protect your supply. I can't only pay attention to those two variables because there's one more variable. and That is that parents sleep. What is traditionally done in this case is we're like, okay We have to feed the baby and we have to protect your supply and we have to keep them engaged in nursing.
So what we're gonna do is they're gonna nurse, which is gonna take forever because they won't wake up to eat because they're late preterm. So that's gonna take only an hour. And then you're gonna pump. I'm not actually gonna tell you like how or when to wash your pump parts. You're gonna be like sterilizing those all the time even though that's not necessary. And then, so that's gonna take an hour. And then I'm going to need you to do that every two to three hours around the clock.
Is this triple feeding?
And we've completely missed this huge, huge, huge variable of a person who is either recovering, who is most likely, I should say, recovering from birth and possibly recovering from surgery. Right? No other time. Like you would have like, toe surgery, and we're like, oh, stay in bed and sleep. And with major abdominal surgery, like, I'm going to need you to literally never
sleep, right? So that's a cost that we lose to the triple feeding plan.
So instead, I'm going to say, what if we do-- what would feel most comfortable for you? Do you want to do more nursing and supplement with formula? you might lose some production in the long run, is that the cost that you'd like to give up? Would you like, is the cost that's most comfortable for you that sleep piece and what does really, really monitor it and see how you're doing and like be in touch with your mental health providers and be really honest about how you're doing? Or do we want to do more pumping and bottles? You skip a feeding entirely to sleep. You do like a little bit of nursing. We kind of piece those together.
And that's gonna depend. Like, do you have a mom in a nursing home that you need to be taking care of too? Do you have four other kids at home? Do you have a baby, or do you have a family history of like severe milk allergies to cow's milk and thus formula is not on the table? Like then we're gonna use donor milk. And so there's all of these tiny variables. And it is not so simple as a yes or no question. And so what I always wanna remember is number one, the variable that we most often forget, which is protecting that recovery and protecting sleep and protecting mood.
And then once we've thought, once we've put in that invisible cost, looking at what are the other risks and benefits from this, that in this case probably gets us through a week or two of really hard stuff, and then once they're a little closer to term, they tend to wake up and perk up and get going. But you need someone to really walk you through that support and what are your options? In this case, let's say that the baby does have a family history of milk allergy. You need somewhere to go to say, what are my hypoallergenic options?
Yeah, and I think having someone like you would be so incredible for any new family. The unfortunate thing that happens is that they, you know, are giving birth in this large hospital and they're short staffed. And so people are just throwing little bottles of formula at them and being like, "Oh, your baby's not latching, try this." instead of doing everything that you just said and really talking about all of those little variables and finding out what the nursing parent really wants.
Can you talk a little bit about how to either advocate for yourself in that situation or what maybe a partner could say to speak up or is it something that really needs to be thought about even before the birth and you need to like find an IBCLC that you can text or call from the hospital, what do you recommend in that situation?
I think it's a little bit of all of those things. So number one, I think what's really challenging is that we often have, we have such a culture of like asking like, are you gonna breastfeed? Are you gonna breastfeed? So we've drilled into this like sense of like success or failure and that formula represents failure all throughout this continuum. And then we just give formula without any other context. Like that dynamic is actually the more dangerous part, rather than just handing over the formula. And being like uh use this tool. Is that entanglement without more information?
I do think prenatal education is really important, though most of those classes often just talk about the benefits of breastfeeding and don't give meaningful support. There's some great online classes, depending on where you live. There may be some really great in -person classes. I think reading the book before you have a baby is enormously helpful. It's written sort of as a choose -your -own -adventure novel, so you can pretty easily just flip to where you need to be.
But you'd be like, "Oh, late pretermers. Okay, here we are." But you could also, like, there's sort of a, it describes in the introduction, like where to read to prenatally. Oh, Um, so I think those things all go together, um, what, I think that in general, learning to navigate medicine is its whole own skill. And so I think in terms of advocacy around that is to ask your medical team
to slow down and talk through the risks and benefits, right, is to say like, okay, you've handed us this formula for slow weight gain.
What's the rest of the plan? What's the plan going home? What's the plan tomorrow? What's the plan the next day? Who do you recommend we follow up with? So like, yes, it's totally ideal. More and more lactation consultants are able to take insurance now. It's great to follow up with someone and have somebody in your pocket that you can reach out to but also asking the people in front of you to slow down and talk through like, OK, why do you think the weight gain is slow? And what are the risks and benefits to this tool? And what is the plan to move from this point?
Yeah, I think that's so important. And we haven't even scratched the surface of all of the reasons why these things could be happening shortly after birth, you mentioned like preterm can be a really tough thing. And then, you know, there's also tongue ties and all sorts of things that could be happening. So I think that's a really important piece is to just do the cost benefit and have somebody really slow down and talk you through your options and things that could be going on so that you have more of a full picture.
And I know that so many parents want to breastfeed for, you know, whatever reason. And they're either unable to or it just feels really hard for them to sustain. And I love that you kind of talk about the power of being able to change your mind. Can you talk a little bit about that and why you think that's such an important piece for parents to really understand?
Yeah, I came to this from the School of Hard Knocks. I'm a really stubborn person, I don't change my mind easily. And everything about the way that I became a parent forced me to change my mind. Like I got no easy gentle grace period into knowing exactly who my kid was and exactly what she needed. And I think that we often go into parenting with a lot of is about how we are going to parent and we forget that parenting is a relationship and there's a whole other person involved who's coming with a lot of their own information. And so the best skill you can bring into parenting is the ability to change.
And knowing that good parenting is not adhering to the dogma that you thought was
important, but rather changing your mind to what the kid in front of you needs. And I think that is so important is to be able to say, as a family unit, what is the best thing for us right now? And it's when we're able to pause and make those decisions instead of sort of blazing through based on the books that we read prenatally or the ideas we have about how we were parented or those preconceived notions and really pause and look at the person in front of us, look at the family we have, look at the life circumstances we really actually have, and then leave space to change our mind. And I think that flexibility carries you all the way through paradigm.
And it's so, so true and that's such good advice. We are gonna take one more quick break and when we come back, I'd love to talk about partners and how we can have partners get involved and be supportive. We'll be right back.
All right, we are back with Victoria and I would love to talk a little bit about partners because I think sometimes partners of the birthing parent or the nursing parent often don't really know what to do or how to help so it can be kind of hard because if you are nursing, the partner that's not nursing might feel kind of useless or completely irrelevant and they want to get involved but they're not really sure how and if you are going to be incorporating formula how can they really take on some of that load so that the birthing parent can recover and rest? What is the most important advice that you think you could give to a partner who's about to see the person that they love, give birth and welcome their baby into the world?
Well, my number one advice has nothing to do with feeding and that's to have your partner
pack the hospital bag so they know where stuff is.
Yes, that was a game changer with our third.
There's just nothing worse than being like, I need the chapstick and they don't know what pocket the chapstick is in.
Yep, absolutely.
So that's my number one, like totally unrelated, but I think very helpful advice.
For sure.
Related to feeding, both parents having some education and grounding and this is really helpful. That's a big part of what I view the inclusion in this book to be about is dads. Like this incredibly common parenting figure that somehow gets very left out of these narratives.
It's convenient for them.
And yeah, I know so many amazing dads. I actually, I did have a funny thing where we were doing the illustrations and my agent had to be like, "You forgot dads." Like it feels weird to be like, there's not enough like men represented here, but like you have like all kinds of like trans people and different body shapes and all of this amazing diversity and disability and all that stuff. And she's like, "But you did forget dads." And that is actually relevant to your message. Like you actually like really do care a lot about it.
We should include straight dads.
Oh yeah, no I super do, that's so funny. - Straight dads, you know straight dads are also part of society. - They are. - And increasingly are like phenomenal in touch hands -on parents. And I think a lot of the like, parent who wants to maintain control and parent who doesn't help because They have a learned helplessness thing That we like then eventually solve with fair play cards down the road or something a lot of that Starts in feeding And I think a lot of it actually starts with anxiety around feeding If I'm being really direct about it.
So I think some things so like number one is like being educated. The book has a lot of stuff that's really directed at co -parents. The other things that I love, I talk to co -parents about being feeding architects. So if you are a nursing to look at a nursing person and notice like anywhere they're holding tension, can you get them to roll their body back silently? Like
just like a or rub, or put a pillow under them to get that recline. Like how can you sort of set up the space around them? And then a lot of it is being like the gerbil water feeder thing, bringing the Stanley to the mouth.
Be my snack, bitch, please.
Yes, did like the snack trays I've seen of like de -stemmed grapes, already pre -peeled cheese sticks.
That is precious.
Like a plate of food already, just like put on a plate before they go to work. Like that makes an enormous difference. And then I really love dads and non -pumping, non -nursing parents to become captain of milk prep. It's often hard to have multiple parents in charge of that. But like if they're in charge of the washing up and like pulling milk down and making bottles for daycare, like that's a great way to set yourselves up for them eventually being in charge of lunches. Like you just sort of like-- -
Like dream.
Start, like that's your area. And you know, like, I don't know if you're familiar with Fair Play, but sort of this like idea of like owning a whole task and sort of like owning that task completely, I think is really, really helpful. And then I'm a bottle person. I'm an all tools person. I love all the tools. So I definitely recommend that co-parents get good at non -feeding soothing, right? Which is going to become a big part of sleep down the road. And so if you start developing those skills of like wearing a baby, bouncing on a yoga ball while you listen to a podcast, like enjoy, that's your job.
And so I think like learning those skills is really helpful. And then I often have folks like pretty early, if everything, like let's say you're just having like the rare and perfect seamless nursing experience and everything just like goes exactly to plan. I have folks introduce bottles at two weeks. I have very rarely seen a baby that's given a bottle correctly, not be able to go back and forth effectively. And I think it's a really helpful modern tool. So I usually have folks add a pump right after the morning feeding, define that as you will. I think of it as like the coffee breakfast feeding.
So when you're having your coffee and breakfast, like that's usually when babies are really chill, they kind of do that like evening, like cluster, cluster, cluster, cluster, ideally longish sleep stretch, closer together, closer together, but like longer and to sort of like chill vibes. They have chiller vibes in the morning than they do in the evening. And that's when your milk production is higher. It also, for folks that are going back to work, often translates to that sort of like, either commute or like settling into email part of the day. So it starts to signal to your body like this is like a pumping time of the day.
And so you just like start that into your routine and then that replaces a feeding in the 24 hours that you don't want to do. And that becomes your self -care time. My favorite is if you skip that to sleep. But if maybe you have a miracle baby and you're getting enough sleep, then maybe you skip that to sit in the sun with your neighbor and gossip or listen to a podcast and walk around the block. but that becomes that time for you to reconnect with yourself and it becomes time for a partner to connect with the baby.
So that could be for some folks like they're like my spouse works, like he really can't be up in the middle of the night and I'm like cool that's like when he gets home from work and so it might be that like you go take a really big nap between five and eight and like they do that bottle, and you get three or five and nine, and you get that sleep then, and then you're a nighttime parent. If you're a sole parenting, is there a friend that can come over and after work and do that chunk so that you get a little extra rest and are bringing in that tool?
But I do think it's really-- I think bottle feeding-- people talk a lot about breastfeeding and
bonding. I think bottle feeding is really bonding. I think a lot of the equity and my parenting is because we had to bottle feed. My kid is really equally attached to both of us. I think there are lots of ways to attach in other ways, but we do live in a modern world where most people, my sister excluded, dragging her under the bus. She's the only person I know who just like, her kid's just like three of them, no bottles.
She brought a nanny to Sundance and just like would go nurse at the coffee shop 'cause they just like never took a bottle.
That's iconic. And there's simply people like, it can be stressful if your baby doesn't take a bottle.
Oh, I know. You know, like that.
Bottle refusal can be really stressful. And so I want to know early if there's a reason they can't take a bottle, like a tie, like something happening with their swallow, like I want to know that kind of early so we can problem solve it while they're squishy jelly beans. And I don't want to get to the eight to 12 week window where they're like, oh, I'm sorry. I have an opinion about that. Actually. No, thank you.
Right. That is because that's good advice
Yeah, for me. I would rather the like the logistical kind of like I don't really want to add in the pumping and the washing and all of that stuff Yeah, and I'm nervous, but an interrupting breastfeeding is scary, but usually much more manageable Then the like developmental bottle refusal that we see past three months that just like eliminates a tool that most people need.
Yeah. And you'll need it at some point. I mean, even if like your sister, there are ways around it sometimes, but just want to go to the movies. Or like I had to go on a bachelorette trip for both of my girls when they were much older and it was so stressful, like literally not knowing if they would eat without me. And they did, but it was stressful and could have been avoided.
And I also think like we with my middle, she was born during COVID. So she was just always with me. She was always home. We weren't going anywhere. And I had that like maternal gatekeeping thing where I said, Nope, it's just easier for me to feed her. I'm just going to feed her all the time. And like you said, with the bonding, my husband really did not feel as bonded to her in those early months, as he did with our other kids when he was a little bit more involved and bottle feeding was one way that he was involved with them and I think it kind of builds their confidence too so it's it's yeah like a win -win to do it early and I think that you I love that you talk about that because I think in the breast feeding space there is a lot of fear about introducing them too early and people just are resistant to it for whatever reason so I love that and before we wrap up I would love for you to just talk a little bit.
Yeah, it's a pretty old school fear -based mentality.
It is. And like you said, if there are going to be issues, it's better to figure them out sooner than
later, right?
Yeah, I think that some of that is that if we actually teach how to give a bottle we can really like manage what we see which is flow preference not nipple confusion. I've known a few babies who usually actually turn out to be neurodivergent kids who have a real like nipple confusion thing. And that's about motor planning. And it's about sensory information. It's not about eating.
But the vast, vast, vast majority of babies, it's about flow. And the reality is some people's nursing flow is like way faster than any bottle you'd give a baby. So I just think like bottles are different than nursing. Like we don't need a bottle that pretends to be a breast in some way. It's a different thing and that's fine and great and we're going to use that as a tool and we're going to teach that skill.
Also, I like sending co -parents out. You're like, "Oh, but the baby's going to wake me up while I'm napping." I'm like, "Great. It sounds like they could go in a carrier and walk around the block 67 times." Because most babies will chill out in a carrier. And outside.
Outside. I love that and I love also that you talk about protecting maternal sleep because I think all of us obviously want sleep. We all want more sleep. We need sleep, especially in that postpartum period when we're recovering. And I think so often it's just the easiest to throw away advice. I mean, I hear this all the time in my job where, you know, just sleep train or just, you know, and we can be a little more creative than that. And especially in the newborn phase, like you're not going to be sleep training your newborn.
So can you talk a little bit more about what you mean when you say protecting maternal sleep? And you talked a little bit about like introducing the pumping and the feeding shifts and stuff like that. Is there anything else that you think is really helpful for protecting
that sleep early on?
Yeah, I think it's talking early about how to share those responsibilities and how that can look like. Heck, if you're going through a rough recovery, I'll introduce a bottle whenever. I'll use a little formula. If it gets us to what you need in terms of your physical well -being, we can usually figure it out later. Or like maybe you're gonna always use a little bit of formula and you're gonna choose that the risk to your production in the long term, that maybe your kid, like because of that, your production's a little lower, you're gonna use a few bottles of formula for the duration, is worth it to you to have a less traumatic, less painful, or like better supported recovery in the short run.
Like that's a choice you get to make. There's also people for whom like nursing is actually really mood protective. And I think we don't talk about that enough that like for some folks there is an anxiety about bottles or there is something else going on. And that oxytocin loop is actually very, very protective. So I think we can be creative about co -sleeping or like nursing to sleep and having someone come and scoop a baby and ferry them away, if that's helpful. Like we can be creative in some of those tools.
And then my like, I think part of it is sometimes you're just like you're sleep deprived and you're like a little dumb postpartum. You're just like not supposed to be thinking that hard. And So a lot of these like complicated logistics is sometimes I just like have to write it down. And so like the like best just like sort of like scheduling schedule and I don't really love like schedules for newborn babies because then you feel like a failure when they absolutely always mess them up because babies are terrible at schedules, but like loosely the framework that seems to work pretty well for most people is like, at whatever point in this journey that you're like, "I need more consolidated sleep," you are going to use either your pumped milk, donor milk, or formula to skip one feeding per 24 hours knowing that that has both risks and benefits and that you get to decide that.
But if you have decided that those risks and benefits are there for you, You are going to pump after the morning feeding. You skip the first night feeding, so let's call that the midnight feeding. So you're gonna sleep from give or take, 10 to two. Partner does the midnight feeding, so they just stay up late and do that feeding. They can have a midnight walk around the block. They can be in the basement bouncing on that ball with that baby in a wrap. That's none of my business, but they are away and you are earplugs in, white noise on, phone in the other room, full shutdown. That's what protected sleep is.
If you're given that opportunity and you are not able to sleep, that's when we are gonna take that awareness to the next level. We're gonna call your birthing provider. If you're like, ooh, I can't sleep, and I am feeling having suicidal ideation, I feel obsessive about my worries, I have intrusive thoughts. This is one that doesn't get talked about a lot, but it's really common and really important is most people have what are called intrusive thoughts. So these are hallmark of OCD, but they everyone had almost everyone think it's 90 % in the most recent research, has some kind of intrusive thought. So this is a thought like, what if I drove off the road?
What if I touched the stove, right? And it just like comes in and you're like, that was weird. And you like don't attach to it. Some people do attach to them and they've come cyclical. What I've observed is that once you add a baby into this, those fears get even scarier. 'Cause that thought of like, what if I drove off the road? With your baby in the car, feels very different, and then you're like, is something wrong? I don't wanna drive off the road, but what if I did?
Right, and that can escalate into a cycle in perinatal anxiety. So if you're noticing that you're in some of those loops and you're not able to sleep, I actually want you to call like the 24 hour number you use for birth. Like we're gonna call that in right away. Because you might need
meds to sleep that are gonna help you, or you might need some like therapy or other meds that are safe, but like we're gonna make a point. I personally, I had to take Clonopin so that I could sleep. I was in really bad shape, and if I did not sleep, it was gonna get worse. And so I both needed Zoloft, which I still take, which is an SSRI, but in that immediacy, I needed something that was gonna just knock me out so I could sleep.
Yeah. Most people don't need that. So if you can go to sleep with all of those circumstances
and you wake up and you feel better, great. We're going to keep doing that plan. If you go to sleep and you wake up and you don't feel better and you're still in that anxiety or you're still feeling really low for long periods of time, you're having those intrusive thoughts, we are going to follow up with your provider and find someone who has that experience.
That's so important. Thank you so much for talking through all of that.
And then you're gonna take over nursing, you're gonna take over feedings again from two a.m. through the morning because that's when your hormones are most receptive.
And so that's when your partner can sleep a little bit.
Exactly.
I love that. Thank you so much for being here today. This was such an amazing conversation and I'm sure it's gonna help so many people. Before we go, I always like to ask what the one thing, we kind of talked about this at the beginning, but what's the one thing you wish that someone had told you before you became a parent?
Hmm, what do I wish someone had told me? Well, I think in my circumstances, which again, we're a little more intense than most folks, but if someone in the NICU could have told me, a lot of your worst fears are gonna come true and it's still going to be awesome and you're going to be okay not because it's easy but because you're tough and like you're gonna actually rise to this occasion like that's what I needed to hear oh and I wish someone had told me to stop pumping sooner. I exclusively pumped for nine months, it not good for me…
Oh my god.
It's great for a lot of people it wasn't good for me and I I have in therapy, like gone back to visit myself and just like taken the pump away. I'm like, no, no, we're done. All done.
You're my hero. That's incredible. And I think, yeah, that is such good advice. Thank you for that. And thank you so much for sharing parts of your personal story with us, too. I know it'll resonate with lots of folks that are listening. Victoria, where can people find your resources and your book and all of the other things that you offer.
Yeah, so you can find me on TikTok and Instagram at victoria .facheleibclc. And you can find my book Everywhere Brooks Is Sold, your local bookstore, bookshop, Amazon, Target, all those and just feed the baby.
Perfect, it's such an incredible book. It would make such an amazing gift for any baby shower you're going to because it's like non -assumptive right? Like you can give it to anybody whether you know that they're gonna breastfeed or formula feed it's just all inclusive it works for everybody so I absolutely love that.
Yeah thank you so much have a great rest of your day.
Yeah my greatest honor is when dads give it to each other. A cute dad that gives it to like everyone in his office. He gives it to the moms, the dads like anybody who's having a baby and like there's just truly nothing sweeter to me than when Dad's like, "No, this is me."
That's a flex for sure. That is really adorable.
Thank you so much for being here. Have a great rest of your day.
You too. Bye.
Thank you for having me.
