How Feeding Babies Works: The Breast

Breast milk is considered a perfect food for infants, so much so that for the first four to six months of life, a baby can subsist on mother’s milk alone. Learn all about the most fascinating milk around and the science behind it in this episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
San Francisco, the s s K treat Yes, San Francisco, Oakland,
the entire Bay area and dare I say, all of
Silicon Valley. Yeah, we love you. And we're coming back
to Sketch Fest this year in January. Yeah, we're gonna
be there on Sunday, January at one pm, a very

(00:21):
rare afternoon show. Uh, and we will be ready to go.
So you guys better be drunk from the night before
or getting drunk for that evening. Yeah, however it crosses over,
I think it'll be proof positive that uh we endorse
afternoon drinking. You know, yeah, you know, a couple of drinks,
maybe i'd be bloody Mary. What were we talking about. Oh, yeah,

(00:43):
we're promoting our show. Oh, that's right. So we're doing
that show on January. Uh. You can go to the
s F Sketch Fest website to get tickets and it's awesome.
It's a great, great comedy festival. Lots of awesome shows
that weekend and for the following weeks. So I I
encourage you, like to buy lots of tickets just by
our first Yeah, and hurry, hurry, because they're selling out fast.

(01:06):
No joke, that's not a ploy that's not as a
marketing ploy. They're really selling fast. We get emails every time. Guys,
you told me to hurry, I didn't hurry. I'm shut out.
And since this promos petered out, it ends right now.
Welcome to Stuff you should Know front House Stuff Works
dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh

(01:33):
Clark and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and this is
stuff you should know. Just two of us again, that's fine, yea,
two dudes. We're nipples, right, totally useless nipples though, Uh yeah,
we did a show why do men have nipples? In

(01:54):
um By the way, I think we should change the
name of the show to two dudes, four nipples. Okay,
might be onto something. Uh, And that factored in not
much to this podcast, but it just's worth mentioning. Yeah, exactly.
And you have been wanting to tackle breastfeeding as a
topic for a long time. Yeah, And as I got

(02:17):
into it, I was like, we can't just to uh
how breastfeeding works. It's just too unwheeldy. It's got to
be too party. And I realized that it would be
folly to also name it how breastfeeding works, So we're
calling it how feeding Babies Works Part one in part two. Yeah,
we may friendship up though and call the second one
part who knows? Uh Yeah, And this one is, um

(02:39):
you you have been reticent to do this one because
it is fraught with anytime you're dealing with babies and moms,
it is fraught with differing opinions. Differing Ah, not just
among people listening and how they feel about everything, but
from the medical commune, any differing different recommendations. So like

(03:04):
there isn't really one set way ever, and people think
like their way is the way. Your way is not
the way. There's a straight up culture war going on
over it. Yeah, and that's an easy way to say it.
So I see why you waded into this gently and
with some trepidation. But I feel like once once we
got in there, you know, we can we can talk

(03:27):
about anything agreed. But I think I said some of
that is a way of just saying, hey, if we
get some stuff wrong, if you if you disagree with
some of the stuff, we're just throwing it out there. Yeah,
And we're also we're going to try our best not
to man spain because this very easily could end up
being the very definition of man spaining what two men

(03:48):
doing a two part show on breast belt So we
we try not to do that. So if we do,
you can hold us accountable. But yeah, we're just trying
to deliver information that we found. Yeah, I'm none of this.
I have no opinion on any of this. Actually, ready, okay,
So to start. Actually, one of the things that inspired

(04:08):
this was a really great, um, a really great article
by a woman named Angela. I'm not quite sure how
to say your last name, Garbage, maybe I'm It was
in The Stranger and um. She she was breastfeeding at
the time and was just fascinated by it. So she
wrote this really great article in The Stranger about breastfeeding

(04:32):
and um. One of the things she points out is
that when women breastfeed, they literally, she they quote literally
dissolved parts of ourselves, starting with the gluteal fomoral fat
a k a R. Butts and turn it into liquid
to feed our babies. In your mind was blown. Yeah,
there's just a lot of um, a lot of really

(04:52):
amazing stuff. When you start to look in the breastfeeding,
breast milk, what what the body is doing, it's pretty
mind blowing. Actually every single aspect of human reproduction. To me,
it is mind blowing, and not just human just period reproduction. Right.
Making a little thing inside of a body PEPs and

(05:14):
wee wee's cps and we's coming together to make another
living thing is just one of the most amazing, miraculous things.
It is pretty neat, just unbelievable. So with breast milk, right, um,
there's different stages of of of breast milk production. There's actually,
I think, as far as I know, three stages of

(05:36):
what's called lacto genesis. Right. Stage one, um is the
basically the pre milk stage that happens before birth. Stage
two is what's called colostrum, which is a kind of
milk and not what you think of his breast milk. No,
it's it's basically and I'm going to accidentally use the

(05:57):
word designed a lot, but it's basically specifically designed to
feed of a baby for the first few days after
its birth. And then there's the third stage, which is
called milk maintenance. But the but the milk is made
this is pretty nuts. So you've got these little tiny
cell clusters called al viola, right, and that's where actual

(06:19):
milk production occurs and in these alveola, they basically they
have something called lacticites, and lacticites go into the bloodstream
and gather nutrients it needs to form the milk, right,
and depending on what is needed at any given point
in time, it will retrieve those nutrients and antibodies and

(06:40):
all that stuff and put them together and then create
the milk. That's pretty awesome. So the milk is literally
made from the woman's body. Okay, it's not delivered my
guy in a white hat, right, but there's no like
milk store or anything like that. At any given point
in time, the the actual components of a woman's breast

(07:02):
milk is different from maybe what it would be the
next day or later that night or a week before. Yeah,
it's pretty cool. It's its own recipe on a day
to day basis. Um, which we'll talk more about that
cool stuff later too. Uh So it is uh low
and fat, but really high in proteins and carbohydrates. Well,

(07:22):
the the calostroum is Yeah, that that first yellowish um
thick as you call it, a thick golden liquid, which, um,
that's a good way to describe it. If you've ever
seen it. Like you know, you can just type it
in and images and that'll that'll have pictures of it
next to um breast milk, and you can it's a
pretty stark difference and it looks like But the whole

(07:44):
point is that is it's super easy to digest for
a newborn baby and gives that baby exactly what they
need two get going in life. Uh, including you know
that it gives them a head start, including having lacks
of effect to get rid of that first poop, which
is called the maconium um, which is as a waiting

(08:07):
on that first poop is a very big deal because
then you know things are moving as it should, and
then you know then it's nothing but poop. Um. And
a breastfed baby has a little bit different poop than
a formula fed baby. Um. It's a little more yellowish
than brown, and supposedly doesn't smell quite as bad. Um.

(08:28):
That's what they say. I've seen that it actually smells
a bit like buttermilk. I don't know, altogether unpleasant and um.
Because the breast milk is well absorbed. Babies who are
breastfed are very rarely constipated too. Yes, so you got
that's the colostrum, and after several days, the colostrum um
goes away and is replaced instead by what's called mature

(08:51):
breast milk. The good stuff, the yeah, the stuff you
think of when you think of breast milk. So um.
It's about three to five percent fat and is chock
full of minerals and vitamins UM, sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus,
vitamins A, C, and E long chain fatty acids uh

(09:13):
that are both omega three's and omega six is UM.
And then you also have lactose. It's the principal carbohydrate,
right and um. Liketose is important because it's just a huge,
wonderful energy source. Um. And it also has the proteins
in it are a specific kind of protein their way proteins, right, So,

(09:38):
in in cow's milk or in um livestock milk, the
proteins usually casein, which isn't as easy to digest. In
breast milk, the protein is way, which is extremely easy
to digest for human babies. And then even more interesting, chuck,
there's something called oglio sacc rides. Yeah, this is amazing.
These are sugars uh, like a hundred and fifty or

(10:02):
more and they are only in human milk. Yeah, that's
pretty astounding, right, So you're thinking, well, it's neat they're
they're nutrients that are only found in human milk, which
is for human babies. Makes sense with The weirder thing though,
is that these oglio sacarides can't be digested by the baby.
They're not actually for the baby. They're actually nutrients for

(10:24):
the gut flora in the baby's guts, in the baby's
stomach to help it digest food. Even better, so it's
actually food for the microbiome of the baby in the
breast milk. It's amazing, man, I just keep wanting to
drop this mind. I think you're saying oglio sacarides. What
was it? What is it? Oh? Yeah, that's all right,

(10:44):
I misplaced the g That's okay, that happens, um. So
I know one of the big things too, that that
um has been amazed amazing you for a while because
you've dropped this fact a lot lately, is that the
the human body. Uh, we know how the human body

(11:04):
fights off immunity, but something really unique happens when a
mother's breastfeeding a baby is it's a bit of a
two way street. There's a vacuum created um when the
baby is breastfeeding on the nipple, and if a baby
needs uh some sort of immune immunity response boost, then

(11:27):
the baby's saliva will actually enter back into the woman
through the nipple and Mommy, all of a sudden her
body says, oh, you're telling me that you need this
to fight off some sort of sickness perhaps, so now
my body will produce that and then render it back
to you in the breast. Unbelievable. Yeah, it's pretty pretty amazing.

(11:48):
There's like receptors in the memory gland that analyze the
saliva for pathogens and then produce antibodies as a result.
That's crazy awesome. Yeah, So the breast smoke is chock
full of nutrients. It's chuck full of um proteins and
fats and all this great stuff, as well as antibodies.
So the baby being breastfed has um this uh, this

(12:12):
established um microbiome, thanks in large part to what the
mom's breast milk is giving it. Yeah, and like you said,
like her despite all the things in the breast milk,
a woman's body can also say, oh, you need this
to let me whip some of that up, right, because
I deliver that to you as well. Yeah, it's it's
pretty cool um and even cooler. Well, I don't know

(12:32):
if it's even cooler, right, I'm gonna keep saying that.
But there's when when UM a woman nurses, there's basically
two stages of the actual nursing. The first stuff to
come out is called four milk. It's kind of Finnish
and bluish and it's mostly water and it's meant to
look like for the baby's thirst had for hydration, right,

(12:55):
because a baby can subsist for the first four to
six months of his life solely on breast milk, doesn't
even need water, it's getting it from that fur milk.
And then the stuff that comes out after the four
milk UM is called hind milk, and that's the creamier
stuff that's higher and fat, and that's what fills the
baby up. Yeah. And so if if all this talk
of immunity of building and UH and stuff like that

(13:18):
makes you think that a breastfed baby might potentially be
UM less susceptible to illness than a formula fed baby,
some studies show that that is possible. UM every situation
is different, of course. Uh. You you can have breastfed
babies that get sick a lot. You can have formula
fed babies that never gets sick. There is no like

(13:40):
across the board thing. But the World Health Organization and
the American Academy of Pediatrics both recommend exclusive breastfeeding for
at least six months because they do think it can
lead to fewer illnesses, fewer hospitalizations, or at least milder illnesses. Right.
And it's not just those two, the the UM, government
of the UK, Australia, Canada, Ireland, India, Japan, all of

(14:04):
them recommend that women breastfeed exclusively for six months. Right um.
But as Angela Garbas pointed out though this those health outcomes,
those positive health outcomes, they're relatives. Right. So, if your
baby is born in the West, in a developed nation
UM with state of the art technology, and is born

(14:26):
a relatively healthy baby, the the benefits from breastfeeding are
going to be much less than if you compare that
baby to a baby that's born in a developing nation
where the water um, the water available is um impure,
a lot of disease perhaps um and uh and and

(14:48):
the country is generally poverty stricken, that baby will benefit
tremendously more from breastfeeding, uh than would the kid born
in the modern, developed, richer country. Yeah. Absolutely, um. And
also we'll see, we're gonna get into it for sure.
We we can't avoid it. But there's there's a lot
of conflicting studies on breastfeeding and health outcomes and the

(15:13):
benefits of it. But we'll wait into that later. Yes,
with our kevlar vest. Uh. So let's talk a little
bit more about some of them, the benefits of breastfeeding. Um.
One of them is, if you just want to look
strictly at numbers, Um, if a woman's body produces something
for free that you would normally have to purchase in

(15:36):
a store, in the form of formula, then it's just
gonna be flat out cheaper. Um. This four number in
here is way low. Oh really, Yeah, it says in
the US, families can save an average of four dollars
a year even with the cost of a breast pump. Um. Yeah,
that's gotta be low because because you spend I think

(15:57):
the average cost of formula for a year is closer
tous um. And then subtract, of course for the breast
pump and stuff. But let's just say you'll save some money, right.
You'll also save having to get up and go to
the kitchen to make some formula or um, having to

(16:21):
uh wash out bottles, sterilized bottles, stuff like that. Yeah,
although I think most women probably do pump and dump
in bottles yeah these days. Yeah, so um yeah, saving money,
maybe saving a little inconvenience, that's one positive. Yeah. The
funny thing is that this little section this that comes

(16:43):
from the house stuff Works article on breastfeeding, it makes
it sound like breastfeeding is just so easy and convenient,
you know, like there's definite to it. Stop complaining. Yeah,
so we should talk a little bit about these two
hormones that are super super important uh to breastfeeding and
period in life. Yeah, because these are definite benefits of breastfeeding.

(17:06):
It's it's just not you can't argue with it. Yeah,
we're talking about oxytocin and prolactin and um. Prolactin. Prolactin
tells the milk hey make more milk, tells the glands
that it basically makes that production happen. Oxytocin is what
gets the breast milk to your baby. Milk let down

(17:26):
is what it's called. Yeah, which is kind of a
let down. Sounds like something bad, it does. I don't
know how they called it that, but yes, let down
is good in this case. But as long as you're feeding, breastfeeding,
or you're pumping, then your body is going to continue
to release that prolactin and it's just sort of a
feedback loop, right exactly. And and there's there's this neat

(17:48):
kind of um. It's all hormonal, right, prolactin, oxytocin, the hormones,
but there's this neat like hormonal balance where when your
breast gets full, milk productions throws down and then when
your breast empties, milk production speeds back up. It's pretty cool.
It is so Oxytocin specifically is really amazing. Uh. That

(18:09):
is a chemical messenger and it releases um released from
the brain and a lot of it. I mean, it's
not just something that happens with women. Oxytocin. We all
have it. Yeah, it's a social, promoting, promoting hormone exactly.
And skin on skin contact is where things is where
things get really interesting, right. It actually triggers the release

(18:30):
of oxytocin. Right, and there's if there's one thing that
a new mother's brain is primed to um to experience
its floods of oxytocin. And there they actually believe that
this is the the basis for the the incredible mother
infant bond that occurs. It's this huge surge of oxytocin

(18:56):
that takes place during labor after birth and is sustained
through skin to skin contact including breastfeeding. Yes, uh, and
this happens. This is another pretty amazing fact. In those
early stages of that that flood of oxytocin, nerve junctions
and parts of the mother's brain actually reorganized and it

(19:18):
becomes like, uh, maternal instinct becomes hardwired at that point, right, Exactly,
like the oxytocin receptors start to um to spread all
over the place in vast numbers. Right. And so when
the when the um these maternal behaviors, I guess you'd
call it if you want to talk about a woman
like you're a biologist, right, Um, the the oxytocin is released,

(19:44):
and so the the pattern is reinforced and it's like
you said, like the brain is structurally reorganizing into motherhood. Yes,
it's pretty astounding. Yeah, and they recommend, Like I've said
that after everything we've said, Um, let's say you don't breastfeed.
Let's say you uh aren't able to breastfeed, let's say

(20:07):
you have adopted your child. But there's all sorts of
scenarios maybe where you don't breastfeed. They still recommend that
skin on skin contact as soon as possible and as
much as possible. Um, and not just for mom. Um,
Dad's get in on that action. Uh. There's nothing better
than than laying chest to chest with a newborn baby.

(20:30):
And that skin on skin contact works the same way
with men. It's just not quite as a robust release
of oxytocin, right, But that there have been plenty of
studies that have shown that children who um don't have
that skin to skin contact, don't develop um as securely
in their brains, don't necessarily develop as robustly or at

(20:52):
least socially um as kids who do have the skin
to skin contact. A lot of people take that to
mean that breastfeeding is what's responsible for that. That's not
the case. Breastfeeding allows for that skin to skin contact,
so it does allow for that oxytocin release and the
child to develop more securely. But you, like you were saying,

(21:13):
you can also get the same thing from holding the
baby skin to skin without even breastfeeding. Yeah, and the
and the When this insecurity and underdevelopment occurs, it appears
to be from neglect, maternal and paternal neglect rather than um.
The fact that the breastfeeding is so great at it
the breastfeeding forces that essentially. Does that make sense? Yeah, okay,

(21:37):
so there's even more on oxytocin, right, the the oxytocin
prevents I saw a study that showed that mothers who
breastfeed had about half the levels of stress hormone release
as um mothers who didn't breastfeed. Um, it allows for
imprinting odor imprinting, yeah, for baby and mom. Right, so

(22:00):
I recognize your smell. Right. The baby um became accustomed
to the smell of its amniotic fluid in the womb
thanks to oxytocin. Well, the mother's breast smells similar to
the smell of the amniotic fluid, so the baby is
able to um find the mother's nipple after being born

(22:23):
just from that smell. Right. All of this is fostered
from oxytocin, and it's it's um hardwired through oxytocin as well.
But our understanding of oxytocin and how it does it
is we basically you can replace oxytocin with saternal magic. Right,
there's like we just don't understand how it's doing all this.

(22:44):
We just know that it does thanks to rodent studies. Yeah,
that sounded funny, but it's true. Yeah. Um, and it
also reduces the your baby's stress hormone responses. So they've
done studies where they found it in um. Like let's say,
and I'm a continent of Africa where mothers tend to
carry their babies a lot more than like here in

(23:05):
the United States. Maybe that there the babies tend to
cry less and are able to soothe self soothe more,
and are just more suitable period because they're just simply
um held more. Yeah. Well, there's also supposedly studies of
i think children in Eastern Europe who are raised from

(23:25):
infancy and orphanages that were had had tremendous like social maladaptations,
and they traced it back to not having been held
as children. Like that's huge, it's huge. And apparently skin
skin on skin holding is the solution to that. Yeah,
we amly. I call it ski wee skin to win.

(23:47):
That came from our friend. We didn't make it up
except he was talking about like Friday night in the
hot tub. You guys just adapted it. Yeah, exactly, one
of the other amazing things. And then, um, we'll probably
take a break after this. But finishing up on oxytocin.
I feel like we could almost do a whole podcast
on oxytocin. Yeah, we really should. The wonder hormone. Um,

(24:09):
but with that high level, that big rush of oxytocin,
Mom's priority has actually become altered. And the brain says,
you know what, you don't have to uh groom yourself
and and try and make yourself look a certain way
to obtain a mate anymore. Now your priority is feeding
this little babe. And so it literally kind of switches

(24:30):
that off in the brain. So Mom's like, great, I
don't have to, like now I groom my child. I
don't have to worry about myself as much. Why is
my hair so long? I'm gonna chop this off stupid necklace? Yeah,
pretty much. And it's I don't know, it's kind of
funny when you think about it. But uh, it's almost

(24:50):
like the body saying, take a break from that stuff,
focus on babe for a little while, and uh maybe
later on once the oxytocin goes down, once you want
another baby maybe. So uh. And prolactin is similar in
a lot of ways. We don't want to sell that short,
but um, it's in the maid in the pituitary gland
in the brain helps people sleep, helps maintain reproductive organs,

(25:15):
your immune system, and it's what prepares the mommy's breast
to make breast milk. It also, um, while the mom
is nursing, it is released and it has this kind
of relaxing effect so that mom's just happy to sit
there and breastfeed, not after like worry about getting up

(25:36):
and doing something else. She's just content doing that. Yeah,
it's all it's all of this is design to keep
mommy kind of doped up and happy to just take
care of a baby and like to love that baby.
Her brain is physically rewired by oxytocin to love that
one baby right there, all right before we say amazing again,

(25:58):
We'll take a break. We'll I'm back right after this.

(26:26):
So um, chuck. A lot of the talk of how
magic this is and how natural it is, and how
hormonally driven all of this is has led a lot
of people, um, and I'm sure there's a lot of
women out there who have experienced a lot of difficulty,
um with breastfeeding right from the get go and probably

(26:48):
felt a lot of um, frustration, shame, rejection, yet rejection, resentment,
all sorts of like seemingly horrible feelings because breastfeeding didn't
come naturally. That's right. Apparently breastfeeding is as natural a
thing as it is. It's actually not like no one

(27:08):
walking around just naturally knows how to do it. It
takes some practice. You have to learn how to do
it first. Yeah, Like sometimes the breast milk won't come
in for a few days. Like ideally you want to
be breastfeeding, like within a few hours if you can
one hour, within the first hour is what's recommended. Yeah,
And and if that doesn't happen, at least get that

(27:28):
ski wee going. Um yeah, yeah, but sometimes it takes
a few days for the breast melt to come in.
There are conditions where breast milk may never come in. Um.
What I would advise is to stay off the mommy blogs. Uh,
they can be helpful, but they can also really be
tough on a new mother. Yeah, if you feel like
you don't measure up to breastfeeding ideal, there's a lot

(27:51):
of judgment going on. Um. Even if you just look
up like breast milk didn't come in, you'll find some
women that say, yeah, you know sometimes that happens, and
their women say like, you just gave up, you got
lazy with it, and you didn't work at it right. Apparently,
the recommendations that I found, and I didn't find them judgmentally,

(28:12):
they seem to come from non judgmental place was keep trying. Basically, Um,
I'm sure that there is some line, and every mother
has her own line. Once she gets to that line,
just done. But apparently, if your if your milk isn't
coming in the best way to get it to come

(28:33):
in is to keep nursing, to keep getting the breast
milk flowing, because it's eventually going to get the prolactin going,
and the prolactin is going to get the milk in,
and it's going to get the oxytostin going, and the
oxytocin is going to let the milk down. So just
trying to breastfeed apparently is the best fixed for breastfeeding problems.

(28:55):
Another thing to do is to reach out to what's
called the lactation consultants. Yeah, there are professionals out there
who will um advise you. I mean, they're all kinds
of services that can help you with everything from advising
you are counseling you UM to literally um showing you
um different methods which will get to on how to

(29:19):
literally physically breastfeed, like how to hold the baby, how
to do all that stuff. It's just it's sort of
like a coach in a way. Coaching counselor I think
is a good way to put it, and they can
really really help. And don't don't hesitate to reach out
Like it doesn't mean that you're not a good mom
or or that things aren't coming naturally to you. So
something is wrong with you. This one that that shame

(29:40):
needs to get out of your head. I know, it
needs to get out of society. Yeah, but it's it's tough,
you know, right if you have a baby, there's you know,
I mean we should do one on postpartum depression too.
It's um. Sometimes you are at the whims of what
your body and your hormones are doing, you know, and
someone who might normally not feel those things feel those
things right. Um. And then you add on top of

(30:02):
these social expectations and friends and neighbors and the nurses
and the doctor and everybody will just showed up. You know,
Oh you're not breastfeeding. Yeah, there's this really this is
great article that um Hannah Rosen wrote. It was published
in the Atlantic in two thousand nine, called the Case
against breastfeeding controversial, and she um, just some of the

(30:25):
stuff she she mentions just some of the casual vibing
out that a mom encounters when she says she doesn't breastfeed,
and just there's a lot of um, a lot of
social pressure to breastfeed. If you if you've chosen to
breastfeed and you're having trouble with it, what we're saying
is there's yeah, go find a lactation consultant. That's fine.
At the same time, make sure you're also in close

(30:48):
contact with your doctor, your child's doctor, because if your
breast milk isn't coming, your baby still needs to ate something, right, UM,
So you're doc, you will be able to tell you well,
you might want to go buy some some human milk,
or you might want to introduce your baby to formula
while you're also nursing too. We're trying to nurse to

(31:10):
get your breast milk coming so that your baby has
enough nutrients and calories and everything, or um, if it's
not coming in as much. Uh. Like, some women might
not go to the doctor, like because they're producing breast milk,
but they're not producing enough on a daily basis. So
there are cases where a baby is like hospitalized and
they found that the baby is actually suffering some from

(31:32):
a form of dehydration hypernatrema, which is like a slute
imbalance that that a baby can die from. And yeah,
it comes from basically women being so so thoroughly scared
off from formula or shamed away from formula that their
their baby is not getting enough milk, but they they

(31:53):
are afraid to supplement it with anything like formula, so
the baby ends up in dire straits. Uh. I want
to take this chance to recommend another podcast. We're talking
about Judge e um people um One Bad Mother, Great
Great Mom actually parenting podcast. It's called One Bad Mother,
but plenty of dads listen as well, uh. And it

(32:15):
is on the Max Fun Network and our friends, my
friend Teresa Thorne and biz ellis her co host. Uh.
It's just a great, fun, funny podcast, very supportive, not judgmental. Uh.
And I was a guest and told a bit of
my adoption story a while ago. I can't remember what
it was his last year. I remember that it was

(32:35):
obviously it was sometime after Yeah, Midsummer last year. Do
you remember the name of the episode or the number?
Now people are gonna want to know. You can google it,
google that junk. But anyway, one one Bad Mother is
great and find if it's not them, just find some
good resource that is trustworthy and that you feel good about. So,

(32:57):
with all that said, here's how you breastfeed. It's easy,
all right, Josh just took a shirt off. It's a
little weird, you know, it's funny, Like some of these
I was going through, like making the actual the can
motions and everything. Yeah, some of it's tough to visualize,
but others. And you may walk through and she's like,
why are you cradling a loaf of Rye bread? And

(33:19):
why is it crying? You could make Rye cry. It's
pretty powerful. So apparently the latch is everything right. The
baby's got a latch on, and like you said, that
vacuum has to be formed, and to form the vacuum,
the baby's got to get a big old mouthful of
boob nipple specifically, So when you're getting the baby to latch,

(33:44):
you grab the breast around the nipple, around the aerial eye,
and you basically um tickle the baby's mouth with your nipple,
and she's like, okay, I'm opening wide, and you take
her the bottom of her jaw and put it underneath
your breast. Apparently are underneath your nipple. I'm sorry. Also,

(34:06):
don't listen to me. And then you you move her
head forward onto um so that the top of her
mouth is now on the nipple and taking in at
least one to one and a half inches of airy
od I as well. Yeah, isn't the idea that baby

(34:26):
comes to mommy? Mommy doesn't like kneel down or lean
over to baby. Isn't that the how it goes? That's
what I saw. Uh. There are various types of holds.
The suplex, the figure four now sorry, that's wrestling, sleeper hole,

(34:46):
the cradle position that is one of them. That's when
you you have the baby on your forearm, her head
and the crook of your arm and support the bottom
with the other hand. Then pull a little baby close
to you belly to belly, which is a great thing,
with her ear, shoulder and hip in a straight line. Ye.
So that's the cradle the football, Yeah, I call it

(35:07):
the heisman. So you're you're laying on your back, right,
Is that what I'm getting here? Right? Well? The mom
and then there's a pillow very close to your side
with your baby on top. And I think you're both
facing in opposite directions, right, or you're facing one another,
but you're pointing in opposite directions. Yeah, okay, and um,

(35:29):
you just lift the baby's your baby's head up to
your breast from the side, and that's really good if
you had a cesarean section, because I'm guessing you don't
want a baby anywhere near your belly after that. Yeah,
the football, and I couldn't picture in my head as much.
That was less clear. Okay, baby's facing this way, I'm
facing that way and nothing's coming out. It's getting very

(35:51):
disturbing here. Then you have the old sideline. Poor babies
is getting a lot of hair in her mouth. Oh god. Uh,
the sideline not the anything as a side eye. That's
much different. Um. This is also good if you've had
a c section or if you want to rest, if
you're worn out, um, while you nurse. So this is
when you lie on your side, Uh, place your head

(36:13):
on a pillow as mom, and pull the baby in
close to you and use your arm to support her
little baby bottom, which is adorable, and use your other
hand to bring your breast up to the baby's mouth.
So I think that would make sense to me. Yeah,
all of it made sense to me. Well, you're I
practiced that you had to look for bread. I did not.

(36:33):
So again, if this isn't working at first, don't worry,
don't be discouraged. Don't take it like your baby doesn't
like you or is rejecting you. That it's not the case.
Try try again, Try try again, but also again if
you reach your point. If you reach your limit, well
then come up with plan B or go with plan
B like no judgment. Yeah, and here's a pretty amazing fact. Uh,

(36:56):
if you have adopted your baby, or if you use
the surrocuate, or if you're female partners and new mothers.
You can Actually the point is if you didn't give
birth to the baby. It's a long way of saying
that you can actually induce lactation with a lot of
time and patients not always, but it is possible to
breastfeed a baby that you did not bear, which is astounding. Yes. Yeah,

(37:21):
Like there's a lot of techniques you can use. Hand
massages help quite a bit. You want to try UM
hand expressing uh like eight to twelve times a days,
basically squeezing shadow puppets UM. And you can also take
something called UM. I love this word. Galactagogues. Yeah, that

(37:42):
totally sounds like a video game from the eighties. It's
a type of chemical um that crew that's that spurs
a woman's body to start creating breast milk. Right, And
there's some that have been proven through scientific study, drugs
like meta clodpromide. Right. Then apparently there's herbs that anecdotally

(38:03):
work wonders, including fenny Greek. They don't have quite as
much evidence based efficacy, but they may still work for you.
It's worth trying. Yeah, And I think if you watch
a lot of Gilmore Girls that might help. Yeah, maybe
popping steel magnolias any mother centric plot line, right, Actually,
mommy dearest, I was about to say, psycho, Mommy dearest,

(38:25):
you might want to stay away from those. Um, should
we take another break? Oh? But sure? All right, let's
do it. So, Chuck, let's say you've decided to breastfeed. Yes,

(39:00):
how long should you breastfeed for? Well, that's up to
you as an individual, obviously. Like we said, they experts
do recommend that first four to six months is pretty key. Um,
And that doesn't mean it has to be exclusive. You know,
if you want to augment with formula, you can do that. Uh,

(39:21):
it's everyone's decision to make on their own. And then
there was that lady. Remember that one lady made a
lot of news because she was on the cover. I
should have looked this up. She's on the cover of
some magazine at the time or news week. Yeah, with
a much older like a four or five year old.
I could remember the age of the of her sun
that was breastfeeding and got a lot of flak for that.
But um, it was like an article on attachment parenting,

(39:44):
and I think that stuff. I can't remember exactly. I
should look that up, but I'm pretty sure it was
either Time or news Week, but anyway to make the point,
like some women have done that where they breastfeed, like
to their point where their kid is coming up and saying, hey, Mom,
I would love some food. Sure breast If you're doing that, Um,

(40:05):
you want to make sure that your kid is eating
plenty of other stuff as well, because the point of
breastfeeding or breast milk is that it can sustain a
child exclusively for the first four to six months of
his or her life. After that you have to start supplementing,
either with formula or solid foods. And the rule of
thumb that I saw um when knowing whether or not

(40:26):
the baby was ready to start trying solid foods is
if he or she is coordinated enough to let you
know when she's full, then you could try to start
supplementing with solids. But you you can breastfeed exclusively up
to four to six months. After that, you just physically can't.
There's not enough nutrients for you to produce to sustain

(40:46):
your kid with breast milk alone after six months of age.
We've mentioned pumping a couple of times. We'll get more
into that in Part two. But um, if you live
under a rock you don't know what that is. That
means you are just storing your breast milk. You're using
a device, a machine. I guess you want to call
it to um to store your breast milk for later.

(41:07):
It means you like to have a drink once in
a while, some layoff. Well we'll get to that too.
But as far as storage goes, here's the deal. It
depends on how what kind of fridge freezer you store
the breast milk in and how often that is opened.
That Yeah, So like if you have one of those Uh,

(41:31):
if you have a small old school fridge that has
the little freezer section in the top of it, that
is the shortest amount of time. That is only two
weeks of storage, even if it's in the freezer. Um.
If you have a separate freezer in that same within
that fridge, like the little freezer on the bottom or whatever,

(41:53):
you can store it as long as three to six months.
If you have a deep freezer in the garage right
with the audience, keep your dead bodies like burning, keep
your delivered steak subscription service and dead bodies of some
guys pickup truck. Uh, you can actually store in the
deep deep priests or six or twelve months, even though

(42:15):
uh they say it's past six months, it's not optimal. UM.
So I think, like, you know, if you were through
the zombie apocalypse happen and you have some twelve month
old frozen solid breast milk, you can try and use that. Yeah,
that we'll give our thumbs up on that one. In
room temperature, apparently if it's a you know, coolish room

(42:37):
and it's not the heat of summer with no a C,
we're talking about six hours, which is longer than I thought. Uh.
And then up to five days in a fridge, although
that's not optimal supposedly after about three days, and you
just want to make sure in the fridge in anywhere,
really everything is super super clean. You got a bottle

(42:58):
cap on there all. Yeah, everything is is really really
especially early um, early in baby's life. You want everything
really really really clean. So the UM one of the reasons,
one of the big reasons that a lot of women
pump is because they want a breastfeed, but they also
either want to or need to get back to work. UM.
And this raises a big issue as far as breastfeeding goes. Right,

(43:22):
there is some really great New New Republic review of
a book called l Activism, and the reviewer is named
Katherine Joyce, and she points out that and it's great
that the World Health Organization, in the American Academy of
Pediatrics and all of these guys say women should breastfeed
exclusively for at least the first six months, but that

(43:46):
that demand it puts a burden on basically no one
except for the mom. And then simultaneously we're saying breastfeed
for six months and get back to work because we've
got an economy to to uh to keep going, or
you have rent to pay, or get back to work
because you have your family need it right. And so
Angela Garbas points out, like basically everything about breastfeeding is

(44:10):
at odds with holding down full time work. That breastfeeding
for the first few months can take eight hours a
day of time easily, but hey, go work for eight
hours on top of that, And she says, I think
quite reasonably that if we're telling people, for telling mothers, hey,
you should breastfeed exclusively for six months, then they should

(44:32):
also be given six months of paid maternity leave at
a minimum, and that that should just be um should
be enshrined in in American law. It may sound radical
to a lot of Americans. In fact, America is the
only developed nation that doesn't guarantee paid time off for mothers.

(44:52):
There's not a day of paid time off that a
mother gets guaranteed under federal law in the United States.
It's the only developed nation that doesn't have that law.
It's one of only two nations that doesn't have it.
The other one is Papua New Guinea. In Papua New Guinea,
of the people who lived there make their subsistence off
of agriculture, they don't need to have a law like that.

(45:15):
It's pretty amazing. Uh, that's amazing too, But in the
opposite way that amazing. Um yeah, I mean, these days,
there are a lot of jobs that are way more
flexible as far as working from home or having lactation rooms, um,
flexible scheduling. Like a lot of companies have made it

(45:39):
much easier for you with a combination of pumping and
dumping to uh to still be able to do that.
But if you're not lucky enough to be in one
of those scenarios, and if you've got a job that's
like nope, don't do that here, well then you gotta cut. Well, yeah,
they have to do something. They have to allow some

(46:00):
break time, and um, they have to provide some private place.
But there's no specifications that it can't be some old
shower stalls. And of course that's just the law. Like,
that doesn't mean every company absolutely does this across the board. Uh,
there are people that run a foul of the law.
You're right, and it is getting better though, it is
getting better among employers. But in the United States, there's

(46:22):
the Family Leave Act and it does guarantee twelve weeks
of unpaid maternity leave. Yeah, but your family might not
be able to afford that, so that equals like no
maternity time. Yeah. And they've found across the board that,
um that higher income families breastfeed longer. It's just the

(46:42):
way it is. Um. Here's some more stats for you
if you want to talk about how long to breastfeed. Uh.
Most women stop within the first year. Uh. In two
thousand thirteen, the CDC said seventy seven percent of American
women breastfed from birth. Uh, at that rate since birth,

(47:02):
and then after six months that dropped to six But
you make a big point, Well, you didn't make the point.
You source these points I I I arranged them to
make point. Yeah. Yeah, Now you make a point that
it's a it depends on where you live in the world.
Uh in Africa, on the continent of women breastfed beyond

(47:25):
twelve months, So it definitely depends on where you are.
And you make the point, which is what I was
getting to, is that a lot of these stats kind
of stink because they're old, man, they stink and outnumbered, contradictory, contradictory,
So it's really hard to kind of get great percentages
on this stuff. But everything that we looked at does
say that breastfeeding is on the rise, uh in what

(47:47):
the last probably twenty years. Yeah, and that it's on
the rise, especially among older, white, educated, wealthier women for
all the reasons we talked about. Yeah yeah, So uh,
let's pull out a Bummersville for a second, chuck, and
uh talk about the food food, Yes, like what a

(48:10):
mom eats. Um, If the mom is is producing this milk,
it would make sense in turn that the milk will
end up because we said each recipe each day can
be a little bit different. And if you had um,
General Sal's chicken, Yeah, the night before your breast milk

(48:31):
might be a little spicier. Yeah, there's actually there's a
study back in the the seventies at the University of
Manitoba that took breast folk from breast smolk from women
and had like a flavor professional tasting panel did an
episode on those um sample and one of the women
had eaten spicy food the night before and hers was

(48:53):
described as hot and peppery. Yeah, pretty neat. It is
pretty neat. Uh. And then this one woman, and she's
not the only one, of course, but it's lady named
Julia Manella of the monell Chemical Sense to Center in
Philadelphia said that she thinks and a lot of people
agree that these early flavor profiles that the baby experiences
developed uh, taste preferences for later in life. Right, that

(49:17):
makes sense to me. I see no reason why that
should not be true. No, No, I don't know that
it's proven though, but it does make a lot of sense.
So when your breastfeeding, the rule of thumb that I've
seen is that you want to eat about five more
calories a day than you were before you were pregnant. Yeah, right,

(49:37):
potato chips, candy bars, you know, you want to avoid
that kind of stuff. Man, You actually, um want to
avoid junk food instead, you want to eat the good
stuff that's right, the stuff that's good for you, the
stuff that's whole, This stuff that's chuck full of like
good vitamins and it's nutritious, aka the food you should

(49:57):
eat period. But all that stuff is gonna pass right
through you into your baby in the form of your milk.
It's so it's the stuff you eat is like a
gift to your baby. It's like passing that really great
food along. That's right. Sometimes like uh, something that might
give mom and baby problems if you eat like Brussels

(50:18):
sprouts or cabbage, or things that might make you a
little gassy broccoli. Everyone has different things that make them gassier.
Whatever that is for you that could cause some trouble. Um.
What else anything anything like heavy and additives or dies
like we're talking about like non whole foods, um could
produce a little bit more issues for you and baby.

(50:41):
Both onions, garlic, citrus is no good or just all
of these things can they can produce problems? Right, So,
if you've noticed that your baby um after eating, shortly
after eating, is um drawing her legs up to her
her um stomach and screaming that's colic. It's probably because

(51:05):
your baby has gas. You want to figure out what
it is that you're eating that is giving your baby gas. UM.
There's also other things that you can pass on to
your baby that the baby doesn't want that can result
in an unhappy baby. Caffeine UM that can pop up
not just in coffee, but also things like coke and
chocolate and all sorts of stuff. There's also worries that

(51:29):
babies can actually develop food allergies UM, which is entirely possible.
UM that usually is sourced back to milk. You might
not be lactose intolerant, but your baby might be. All
this stuff you can figure out on your own very
easily doing a very simple at home experiment. Take whatever
food you think is making your baby unhappy UM and

(51:54):
remove it from your diet for about a week. See
if that clears it up. If it doesn't, it wasn't
that food. You can reintroduce that food. Yeah, it's UM.
Like with any food allergy, it's just called an elimination diet,
and you get rid of the stuff until you see
a change. If it doesn't change, and move on to
the next thing, and um, mom's usually pretty in tune

(52:14):
with baby and UM ideally, and so it's um an
elimination diet is is pretty I don't want to say easy,
because it is time consuming and you should keep records
of things. Um, but it's fairly intuitive. I think it's
what I was looking for. So um. Apparently they used

(52:35):
to tell moms drink a bunch of beer because it'll
aid in milk production. That sounds so true. It's ridiculous,
all right, so it must be true. Yeah, so they
realize that, no, you should probably not do that. Not
only does it not aid in milk production, but apparently
the blood alcohol content uh that you have about the

(52:58):
same percentage is past slong to your breast milk. The
blood alcohol content of your breast milk is pretty much
the same as your blood alcohol level at any given point,
which is super low. Unless you've been drinking. Then it's
super high, and then you're getting poor baby blitzed, well
breastfeeding drunk. You would have to drink a lot. I

(53:19):
don't know that that's the case, man, No, it's absolutely
the case. Like your blood alcohol content, even if you're ripped,
is still super super low. As far as a percentage
of alcohol in your blood. But we're talking about like
that way like eight pounds. Oh no, no, no, I'm
not recommending it. I'm just saying it's not like you're
giving your kid a shot of booze. If you've um,

(53:41):
you know it's it's And this is another one of
those things that like if if you look at ten
different places, you're gonna get ten different opinions, even from doctors.
I saw one doctor was like, you know what, this
is one of those things that just makes it even
harder for a woman is to tell her she shouldn't
even have a glass of wine um when she's breastfeeding. UM.

(54:03):
So really, I like, I literally looked at like four
different things and they all said something different. What I
did see what is there's a direct correlation between the
amount that you're drinking and whether or not you're drinking
it with food. UM. Just like with the blood alcohol
tenant UH levels. It has to do with the mom's
weight um, and like the amount of fat like where

(54:25):
alcohol is stored. So there's a lot of factors that
go into it. UM. The American Academy of Pediatrics Committee
on Drugs considers alcohol compatible with breastfeeding. So they said
you don't have to abstain, but everything I read says
like keep it in check and maybe don't like drink

(54:46):
the wine while you're breastfeeding or within a couple of hours,
like maybe have the glass of wine after you breastfed
and put baby down for the night. So the rule
of thought myself is two hours uh for the alcohols
out of your system, which means, um, if you're breastfeeding
every two hours, you've gotta either pump and dump or

(55:07):
hand express or yet time it so that it's not yeah,
you're not passing it along. And this is after you know,
nine months of probably abstaining from alcohol. Two yeah. Yeah, Hey,
I'm I mean, I don't blame anybody for being like,
I'm having a glass of wine. You know, Um, people
always say a glass of wine. Why didn't see people

(55:28):
say I'm having a scotch. I'm having a fifth of Scotch. No,
don't have a fifth. Do you have an institution attitude
towards smoking and breastfeeding? Hum? Well, I mean I think
you shouldn't smoke a period. I think that's true. So

(55:48):
I guess you could say that in keeping with that
I would say you shouldn't smoke and breastfeed. Yeah, but apparently, um,
the nicotine is not good for milk. Milk production, It
diminishes milk production, yes, just on practical level. You're not
doing yourself any favors. It reduces the amount of vitamin
C president in your in your breast milk. Um, it

(56:11):
can increase nausea in the baby. That alone, that's sad
um and plus not to mention if you're actually smoking
around the baby, come on. Uh. And then there's that
woman in Arizona. Do you remember her? The mom who
got it just hugely, massively in trouble because she took

(56:31):
her baby to the hospitals, like, something's wrong with with
my baby and the doctor's tested it, and we're like,
that's weird. Your baby has a lot of cocaine in
his system right now, any idea, Why have you been
doing cocaine? Well, yeah I did, But what's that got
to do with my baby? Right? Are you breastfeeding? And
she was like yes, I am, Well you pass the
cocaine onto your baby. Yeah. Yeah. The old days of

(56:54):
walking around baby on breast with a cigarette in one
hand and a scotch on the other and a bump
of coke in your nose. Those days are long gone.
We know better at this point, I was not breastfed,
by the way, I'm pretty sure I was actually, now
that you say that, I'm not. I don't know. Yeah,
I feel securely attached. Yeah, my momy actually told me this,

(57:16):
just like in the last six or eight years even,
and I was like, huh, how did she tell you?
I don't remember. I think it was on my birthday card,
your birthday, Happy birthday. And by the way, no, I
can't remember. It just came up and I was like, oh,
I didn't know that, and she said, yeah, you know.

(57:38):
She I was her third kid, didn't have a lot
of help from my dad, so she was managing a
three year old and a six year old, and I
think had a rough time breastfeeding my brother. Um, because
my brother said she just wasn't organized enough. No, I'm
just joking out. Scott would have been like, let me

(57:58):
hand express this for late there, I'll feed myself. Um.
I think had a rough time breastfeeding Scott, and then UM,
I think just sort of decided like, yeah, I got
too much going on going with the formula for baby chuck.
And it was also at a time in the early seventies,
like starting in the fifties through the seventies and eighties,

(58:22):
even to a certain degree, there was a bigger move
toward formula feeding and away from breastfeeding, because the notion
was like, this science has finally figured it out. You
don't need to breastfeed because we have this wonderful new
thing called formula, which the name formula just cracks me
up that that's what it's called. That they didn't think

(58:43):
of some name of it. I know, it's like the
most generic clinical term they could have come on, like, hey,
we came up with this formula that mem express milk.
What should we call it? Formula? The originally is called
formula X, but they thought that was too well, that
makes more sense even than just formula. It's like, hey,
we got this new recipe for chicken. What do you
call it? Recipe? Good point, But that whole that whole

(59:09):
um push starting in well as previous of the fifties.
We'll talk more about it in part two. But there's
a lot of push back that came out as a
result of this um trend toward formulas, right, And there
are actually groups that are called l activist groups that
UM started beginning with the lech A League UM, which

(59:31):
was established in the fifties and the States among a
group of Catholic moms who decided that it was their
their biblical right, their biblical heritage to breastfeed their babies
and that like that was what God wanted them to do.
And the League UH is still around today. It's one

(59:53):
of the most prominent l activist groups around. UM. They're
very active in in you know, public aware this, teaching,
breastfeeding classes, all that stuff. But they grew out of
this group of Catholic moms in the fifties who actually
took their name from UM shrine down in Jacksonville. Oh really, yeah,
the Jailorida, Jacksonville, Florida. Yet the name of the shrine

(01:00:14):
is called Newest Dress Senora de la boene Parto, which
means our Lady of Happy Delivery and Plentiful Milk. Yeah.
And they published UH in night a very famous pamphlet
called The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding that eventually became a
book and it was very very popular. It's now in

(01:00:36):
six languages and its eighth edition and also in the seventies.
We've talked about Hannah Rosen before. She said, there were
other groups that, um, we're a little a little more hip. Yeah.
Then the the L L right that came out, and
she said, notably one in Boston. Do you know the
name of this one? I don't know that they had

(01:00:56):
a name they had They created a sort of a
move it. Yeah, they wrote a book called Our Bodies, Ourselves, right,
and that was that was basically the foundation for what
she calls the second wave of lactivism. Yeah, and she
said they were just she said, quote were more groovy
types than the L L L moms, h slashy jeans, clogs, bandana's,

(01:01:17):
holding back their waist, lenked hair. She said, but the
two movements grew out of the common frustration and anger
of this condescending medical establishment, this paternalistic, non informative, judgmental
group of men basically who are just like, just do
what we tell you, you don't need to ask questions.
This trust that pretty much in these groups came out

(01:01:38):
and said, you know what, um, these are our bodies
and our decisions. I don't think beer aids and milk production.
They so they took their um there well, I guess
they're they're womanly art of breastfeeding, and they they they

(01:01:58):
kept it, they took it back, they young to back.
And so the lacktivism has always had this kind of
tinge of the moral authority because of the religious roots
of the Light Cha League and radicalism because it was um.
Both waves came counter to the medical establishment at the time.

(01:02:20):
So there's a lot of um. A lot of current
understanding of breastfeeding is not necessarily based on accurate scientific information. Right. Yes,
we already talked about how the benefits of breastfeeding are
fairly relative, but there's also a lot of like misinformation

(01:02:41):
or misunderstanding about how like what breastfeeding and breast milk
can do for a developing baby. Yeah, there's a lot
of correlative effects that it's tough to put the hard
science behind because um, as Hannah Rosen says, it's tough

(01:03:01):
to do us really ideal study because what you would
have to do for it to stand up to scientific
rigor would be to divide up two groups of mothers
and say you breastfeed, you don't, and then measure the
outcomes for years. And you can't do that. You can't
tell a woman not to breastfeed for the sake of
this study. So what they end up doing is they
just look at observational studies where they look at differences

(01:03:24):
in the two populations over the years. And this is
where you get that that skewed perception, or where you
can get a skewed perception because they may be looking
at us mothers of a certain social strategy. Well, yeah,
there's all sorts of confounding factors that are variables, right
that that you know, women who tend to breastfeed these

(01:03:47):
days again tend to be um from a wealthier family,
so they make maybe you can stay at home more,
or they have more money available for preventative healthcare measures.
There's a lot of other things that could be accounting
for these better health outcomes that studies have found but
have been able to say, yes, this is directly because

(01:04:08):
these babies were breastfed. The problem is is that these
studies that say, hey, these breastfed babies had these amazing
um increases in i Q. That's what gets reported through
lazy scientific reporting, and it hits the popular media and
then all of a sudden, that's gospel fact. And if
you don't breastfeed your baby, You're a horrible mom. Yeah.

(01:04:31):
This In two thousand seven, the World Health Organization UH
did a survey of all this literature and they looked
at these the big five claims about benefits of breastfeeding
lowers cholesterol, lowers blood pressure, lowers risk of obesity, lowers
risk of type two diabetes, and increases cognitive ability. And
they didn't find a lot of hard scientific support for

(01:04:54):
one through four, but they did see, like you said that, UM,
there was a correlation between an increase i Q right,
but they found it was a relatively small increase. But
if you're one of those like dog eat dog and
role my kid in preschool before she's even born type
of parents, you'd be like, I'll take those extra five

(01:05:14):
i Q points. Sure. Yeah. UM. So this is part one.
Uh but before we go, Chuck, do you have anything else? Uh?
You know what for part one? Just since we talked
about breastfeeding at work and stuff, UM, I feel like
we would be remiss if we dot did not mention um.

(01:05:35):
Donald Trump remember that in two about five years ago,
he was in a deposition and one of them opposing attorneys,
Elizabeth Beck, went to UM went to pump okay, breast
milk in this deposition. And he got up and said, uh,

(01:05:57):
you're disgusting. You're disgusting, and he got out of the room.
And this was a very I can't believe you don't remember.
This was a huge deal or a huge deal. And um,
what she says, Um Elizabeth Beck from her side said,
you know he called me. You know, there's nothing disgusting
about this. He can't say that to a woman who

(01:06:17):
is breastfeeding or pumping or doing whatever, no matter where
it is. And then um Trump and his uh general counsel,
Um what was his name, Alan Garton, they contend like, sure,
he said she was disgusting, he said, but like they
didn't deny that. They said, but that this is not
about breastfeeding. They said that she was in a deposition,
right in the middle of a deposition. This is a quote,

(01:06:40):
attempting to breastfeed, to pump in the middle of a
deposition with five lawyers, and was not excusing herself. And
he claimed that Beck orchestrated the stunt because she ran
out of questions, didn't know what to do, and so
she just like pulled this breast pumping move. Uh, the
old breast pump um. So you know, those are the

(01:07:03):
two sides of the story. I'm not going to comment
one way or the other other than saying you should
never use the word disgusting when a woman is bread, breastfeeding,
or pumping or anything. He said, I'm gonna be president
one day, and she was like, you're not, Like, I
don't care what the circumstance. Don't say that even if
you if you think it's inappropriate. I'm not even gonna

(01:07:26):
say whether you know, I'm not even weigh in on that.
But if if you think it's inappropriate, then you say, hey,
maybe I think this is inappropriate. Don't say you're disgusting,
not not right. I agree this is political as I'm
gonna get on this one, and that is feeding your
baby Part one. Man, this one is a robust. Yeah

(01:07:46):
that's just part one. Uh so be sure to join
us for part two. Do we have a listener mail
or these things so thoroughly conjoined that they can't be
separated by listener mail? Yeah, let's uh, let's skip the
listener maail on this one. Okay, good idea. All right,
we'll join us for How feeding Babies Works Part two.
Come and at you soon and in the meantime, if
you want to get in touch with us, you can

(01:08:06):
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(01:08:28):
of other topics, is it how stuff works dot com.