Episode 159: Breastfeeding and listening to ourselves and our babies with Carly Facius

I'm so delighted that Carly Facius is back again! Carly is a Registered Midwife, International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, and holds a Master of Primary Maternity Care and is an Aware Parenting instructor. Carly has already been on two episodes of The Aware Parenting Podcast: Episode 149 on Communicating with babies and Episode 154 on Reclaiming our power through birth. I absolutely loved this conversation! We are sending so much love to any woman who gave up breastfeeding before they were ready. We discussed: How birth affects breastfeeding; What we can do in the hours after birth to support breastfeeding; The centrality of observing our baby; The research triangle of observation, information and listening to ourselves as parents; Why the parent is the expert; The importance of listening in to ourselves when we are given information about breastfeeding; Learning to trust yourself and trust your baby; How Aware Parenting is based on trusting a baby's innate wisdom; The de-conditioning process in Aware Parenting to unlearn all the ways we learnt to not trust ourselves and our innate wisdom and the wisdom of babies and children; How women often stop breastfeeding sooner than they want to because there is a lack of information or support; Doing what feels right for you in terms of breastfeeding; How any amount of continued breastfeeding benefits both baby and mother; The incredible intelligence of the human body and how breastmilk adapts to protect babies' health; Why mothers might worry that they don't have enough milk; The size of babies' stomachs as they get older; How I helped my son heal from the effects of his fast posterior birth as a newborn so that I could breastfeed him comfortably; How a lot of confusion about why babies come on and off the breast can be clarified when a mother understands Aware Parenting; What's really going on if a parent thinks that their baby is hungry but doesn't want to feed; How understanding Aware Parenting can prevent people from offering solids earlier than recommended; How the goal of introducing solids is building a healthy relationship with food; What parents can do in terms of Aware Parenting it they're thinking of introducing solids early to help their baby sleep more at night; How our culture likes to see babies as faulty or immature and Aware Parenting seens their innate wisdom that they are trying to help us understand; How instead, we can focus on observing our baby to see what they're really communicating; How important it is for us to have our feelings heard so we can actually see our baby's behaviour more clearly; How natural it is for our own feelings related to food from when we were babies will come up when our babies are feeding; How Aware Parenting can support mothers to continue breastfeeding for longer; How Aware Parenting can create more ease and enjoyment in every stage of the breastfeeding journey; Using limits and loving limits with breastfeeding; What happens if a mother is saying yes when she has a no to breastfeeding; How we do offer loving limits with breastfeeding but not solid foods; Supporting mothers to say yes to continuing breastfeeding if they want to, when they might be coerced to stop or not ready to stop; And to say no to a breastfeed their toddler if they have a no, either because of their own needs, or the toddler's; How the journey of breastfeeding invites mothers to connect with our yeses and noes and our innate wisdom and to support our babies to be deeply connected with their innate wisdom with food; Carly normally offers 1:1 sessions on breastfeeding and birth preparation and Aware Parenting but is 35 weeks pregnant and not working until next year. However, you can find Carly and her work at www.seedpodfamilies.com or at https://www.instagram.com/seed_pod_/ If you want to find out more about breastfeeding and Aware Parenting, I recommend The Aware Baby by Aletha Solter and The Emotional Life of Babies by me!