Fed Is Best: Let’s Talk Breastfeeding

Breastfeeding Awareness Month Intro 0:00

It's August, which means it's also Breastfeeding Awareness Month. You're a brand new mom or dad, and you've decided to take the plunge into breastfeeding your newborn. Do you have questions like, what if I can't latch? Is formula still okay to give? is it really that important to breastfeed? In this episode of the Jaffer'd cast, we're talking about breast feeding, the social stigma surrounding it, The science behind it and just exactly how family and social media shames moms everywhere for not doing enough, doing too much, or not do it the way they did it.

Buckle up, let's get going. Welcome everyone to this episode of the Jaffercast. I am your host, Dr. Mark Papadakis. No one particularly special, just another freaking ER doctor. This week is actually going to be breastfeeding awareness week. Well, more specifically breast feeding awareness month. So to kick things off, we decided to bring in Dr Maggie Gowron again to talk to us about breast-feeding. Everything and all things breast feed. If you join the content, please be sure to follow us on your favorite podcast apps as well as on YouTube.

Find us on social media as well, as I regularly post clips and episodes and generally spam the ever-living daylights out of my followers, with medical nonsense. Alright, without further ado, let's bring her in. Very, very good. All right, so we're talking about breastfeeding this time around. And you know, you're a mom, I'm a dad. We've all kind of been through the breast feeding route, but there's a lot of still questions, stigma associated with breast-feeding, even though for the past, i feel like 10 years, it's been pretty much well known that there has been a, should say there is a huge push to breast feed over the last 10 year.

Way more so than our parents generation, because I was a formula fed baby. I don't know about you. Yep, same. I think my mom breastfed for a month or so and then switched over. Okay. So what is it about breastfeeding now that we're pushing for new moms to really do? Is there a reason compared to our parents' generation? I'm going to preface all this by saying that our country is very good at making parents feel bad, right? So no matter what we do, it's going be the wrong thing, and the guilt, the parental guilt the mom guilt is pretty strong.

Why Breastfeeding Is Recommended 2:06

So breastfeeding is kind of this charged topic, because there are benefits to it, but it is also very hard and not well supported in our society, like you were saying. So talk about the benefits of it. You can't ignore it, right? There is science. It is beneficial to breastfeed for both mom and baby. So as you were asking, we now know that breastfeeding for mom can reduce risks of ovarian and breast cancer. Those cancers, the longer we breast feed, more the risk goes down. And how does that work?

Do we know what correlation is there between the two? Yes, someone smarter than me probably has a better understanding of it. Obviously hormonal, obviously there is an estrogen component to this. Similarly, how women who have children or who are pregnant lower their risk compared to women that have never had children. And so the hormonial changes that happen in women during breastfeeding are going to lower that risk for the ovarian and the breast cancer in the future for them. But I can't tell you what the full data on it.

Yeah, it's fine. It's interesting because we also think about breastfeeding being beneficial to the baby, but rarely do we think of it beneficial for a mother too. Yes, I'd like to bring that one up first. Because... Yeah. it is actually very good to know. Yeah, because it isn't, you know, obviously the babies are my domain. And so I could talk to that, but I think it is important to say that there is also a benefit for mom, right? Because like the majority of motherhood is focused on the baby and like must do everything to protect child.

Right. Well, and you know, plus also you bring the baby over to your relatives and everybody wants to see, oh, how's the Baby doing? How's a baby doing how you doing. Okay, fine. How is the, baby, doing, you, know it's even after, pregnancy and all that. It's mom is always second. So I want to put that up in the front and just say like off the bat, there is benefits to mom for breastfeeding. And so we got that going. And clearly from the biggest benefit that we've talked about and seen recently for breastfeeding is always the immune component for the baby.

The idea that, okay, you're getting antibodies from mom, passing on to the babies, there's this passive immunity that... you know, helps a child basically weather a lot of different viruses and infections that formula fed babies are not at risk for, going to completely immunize them, but it's also they're just a little more protected compared to your children who are on formula fees and things of that sort. Yeah, exactly. So, you what I'll tell to parents is that, all babies, are going have some immune protection, right, from mom from having been inside mom, and some of immune protection is going to last in the first few months of their life.

And then when you're breastfeeding, you are giving additional protection on top of that, especially when these babies are born in like the respiratory season, which we both know is now all seasons all the time. So it never ends anymore and we can't predict very well, where we used to be like, Oh, it's October, we're gonna see this, you know, so now everything is all the time, that extra added protection through breast milk, as mom is making antibodies and giving breastmilk to baby and baby is getting that Extra Protection.

But if you had a baby, Whether or not you continue with the breastfeeding. And that's the thing, at the end of the day, your antibodies, if you're a mom and you are carrying the baby, are passing into the utero, in the placenta. So you have, and that lasts for what? I think it's like four months? Six months. Yeah, four or six months we think. It starts to wane around there. And that's one of the reasons why, believe it or not, you're getting the vaccines timed more around the four to six month mark because that is when the immunity starts to wane away compared to what you had with the mom.

Obviously the breastfeeding kicks it a little bit longer down the line, but I think that also reassuring for parents who can't breastfeed because there's a stigma that if you are not breast feeding your baby right now, your doing it wrong.

Baby Immunity and Passive Protection 6:12

And it's very stressful, like you mentioned, to mom to say, well, I can't breastfeed for whatever reason. I think we're going to go into a little bit of that. But no, the answer is you're not doing anything wrong if you can breast feed your baby. If you choose not to, that's your choice. Right. Let's have an informed discussion about choice here if we can. And if can you breast-feed your babies, obviously that is way more ideal just for the immune component alone. Exactly and I think you know there is in parenting a lot of this like black and white thinking of like if I can't do this thing perfect then I'm screwing up my child's right I have to do everything like it's perfectly and that's just not the reality.

Well, so should me just telling me I'm screwing up my child by doing one thing or another. Literally, no matter what you do, you're screw up your kid. It doesn't matter how much you know or how you read, everybody's going to tell you something that you are messing up. I like to remind parents that there is an in-between. First of all, it's so important to me that the parents have this discussion and do they want to breastfeed? I see newborns in the hospital as part of my job. There's a big push for baby-friendly hospitals and breastfeeding right after birth and all of that, which is wonderful, right?

It's good for mom, it's for the baby. I sometimes come into a room and mom knows right off the bat she does not want to breastfeed for whatever reason. She does want, she can't, whatever. Being aware that that's the thing and not walking into the room saying how is breast feeding going, but talking about what are your plans for feeding. Yes. What's bringing some kind of awareness, starting the conversation in a very neutral tone and then laying the patient guide from there. That's the main thing.

You know, mom might say right off the bat, I want to try to breastfeed, but I also want to breastfeed and only breast feed, I don't want bottles, they only want direct breastfeeding. Okay, great. Mom might say I have zero interest in breast feeding. I just want formula. okay, Great. So yes, we know that there are these benefits, but it is definitely sort of a polarizing thing in medicine in pediatrics, in breastfeeding medicine, lactation consultants, all these different components that there is a middle ground.

There is. And it's what really we always say, and I try to reinforce this, a fed baby is happy baby. You know, as long as you're feeding your baby, you are doing something right. It doesn't matter what. So, the issue that my wife and I had was the initial latch was a bit of a problem for my life. And she ended up using a nipple guard. If you don't know what this is, it's basically like a a-nipple that attaches onto the breast around the areola. That kind of helps bring the nipples forward a little bit to enable and help the baby start to really latch and suckle and all that.

She used it for, really until her milk came in, she probably used for maybe five, six days or so. And then she had her follow-up with the OB and the ob noticed, hey, you still look like you haven't really done a lot of breastfeeding. That's how much the nipple guards protect the nibbles. All of a sudden, the Nipple Guards came off and all of sudden my wife is like, oh, ow, this is really what it feels like. But it was the idea that her goal was I want to be able to breastfeed, exclusively breast feed until our daughter is one years old.

And thankfully she did ultimately obtain that goal. Barely, we feel like, you know, she was not somebody who was an overproducer. She wasn't really an underproducers. she produced just the right amount. So to that end, pumping was actually a challenge for us. And that meant that I and relatives had very limited access to actually feed our child with, well, outside the confines of just my wife breastfeeding her. So everybody's going to have challenges. And I think it's also understanding for people to know that just because you're having one particular challenge doesn't mean you can't overcome it.

If you are frustrated, other people have these frustrations. Ideally, you want a support system that can help you go through that, but not everybody does either. It's tough. Exactly. That's a really important thing. Breastfeeding is really hard, physically difficult. mentally, emotionally, totally exhausting. For myself, my daughter, we had a crash section under general anesthesia. Not as expected. It was not the beautiful childbirth that I've seen a million times in my job, but it was fine and we both made it out fine.

Choice, Stigma, and Feeding Flexibility 10:48

But because of that, I was asleep under anesthesia for like hours really after she was born. And so you'll hear a lot of people talk about this, like the golden hour skin to skin in that first hour after delivery can help with milk production. possibility that is a wonderful thing to do. I got to experience that with my second child. It's great. The first child, we did not have that. We were separated. My poor husband's holding her. And I was totally out of it for several hours. You're like, yeah, I'm out.

Yeah. The start of our breastfeeding was really tough, similar to how you're talking about, and we did everything. We did the nipple guards, we were hand expressing in the hospital. As a pediatrician was focused on, I want to exclusively breastfeed, because in my science brain I was saying that's what I needed to do, but in hormonal postpartum brain, it was like I couldn't remember that there was this middle ground. Those first few weeks of trying to breast feed exclusively were really tough, right?

And they were tough because breastfeeding is hard and because our delivery was hard. Now, did you have a support system that kind of reminded you, hey, there's a middle ground here, you don't have to do this, do that? Like, how did those two brains of yours tend to intertwine after a while? Not well, not well. So my husband was like so supportive. He's like, I don't whatever you want to do, you know, breastfeed exclusively fine. You want a formula feed exclusively. Fine. Like, yes, he's not medical.

And so he trusted my judgment in terms of like saying that there was this benefit for breastfeeding. But he also was, like you're making yourself crazy over this. Is there something else we could do?" A lot of moms were just so fixated on it, and it really took away from some of that what could have been a nice postpartum experience. um you know breastfeeding journey and we we did it we got through it but like for me in that scenario the first time around like it was not enjoyable and I felt like a lot of it.

Was this pressure I was putting on myself to have this perfect breast feeding relationship that was all or nothing you. Definitely so because you're also like you say in the medical field you are a pediatrician you the benefits there, you know what can be at stake, that developmentally is good for your child. So you especially have this extra push in your brain to say, I need to do this. And that's something that not many women know about unless they're in the medical field. They hear peripherally, they hear from their doctor, it's cultural, whatever.

That's tough. Thank you for sharing that story too. I didn't even know that. And I think, you know, especially coming out, my daughter was born in 2021, right? I got my first COVID vaccine while I was pregnant with her in the first trimester, when we were kind of like, we don't know what this is going to be, but we think it's going be fine. And having worked through COVID, it was like I knew that that was something I had to do. But after she wasborn, wanting to keep her protected, was going back to work, I was gonna be exposed, wanting to keep that going.

That was really important to me. Now, so I guess how does, and I don't know if you know this, but how it does drinking breast milk, it goes into your stomach. How does that protect you from a respiratory virus, right? Because you're in taking the milk. It goes in your. Stomach and you have these antibodies that are in you stomach and your assuming that it's kind of like. Diffuses like, like pixie dust in. Your body, Right. But then a virus comes in, It doesn't come in through your mouth or your gut goes and by your nose.

So how. Does that from your, stomach go to here? Like, how is that protection even? Having like flashbacks, immunology flash backs. That's right. All the little drawings of them. I could draw what they look like, but I couldn't explain that to you. Because I remember talking to our pediatrician about that, about how is my wife feeding her rest milk going to protect her from like all the viruses? And his response, he's a little bit of an older, older school doc, was like, for the most part, yes, but it's really gonna protect you more from your rotavirus, you know, the GI virus, because that's gonna really hit your gut, lymph nodes and things first.

And then the respiratory viruses, ear infections, there's some, as to the peripheral stuff, it really is gonna help more with the gut than anything else. I'm like well then, what are we telling our patients here? If we're saying that breastfeeding is like a whole 100% complete immune response, is it really? And I looked into it and the answer is yes. Ultimately, those enzymes, the IgA, IgG, all that stuff we learned in immunology, oh man, it's like painful.

Latch Problems and Early Breastfeeding Challenges 15:30

It ultimately doesn't get broken down in stomach acid. it gets absorbed and it does go across all your different lymphatic tissue, your lymph nodes and mucous membranes and all of that kind of stuff and does provide protection that way. So there is that. There is some pixie dust. There is some pixie dust going on there. It's all pixy dust. I think that's an important thing also is like, you know, it does not mean that your child's not going to get sick because they are going get to sick. Whether you do it in the perfect all breast milk, never touch to drop a formula, they're still likely going getting sick, right?

But giving them breastmilk, giving some of this passive immunity allows that maybe they won't get as sick right. They'll have some immune protection versus being like a clean slate. Right. And that's the thing with, you know, including in the infant vaccines and things like that. It's maximizing their chance to not get as sick and not need to go to the hospital. You're going to be miserable for a couple of days with a cranky baby, fever, ear infections, whatever, but it will ultimately get better a lot sooner.

They won't be nearly as crank. Now did your hospital offer some kind of lactation support group? Did you go to that in the beginning? How did that, did you even take part in any of these extra things? There definitely was a lactations support and I didn't go. I did, my insurance had like Lactation consultant that was like included in my insurance that I was able to use, you know, and in both pregnancies I did do that and the first time we were struggling so hard and You know the lactation consult was great, but she also was just like, okay, keep keep going keep struggling Do your thing.

Good job. And I'm like, oh my gosh, like we're dying here. But yes, there there was support. Like you said, I think support makes a huge difference, right? Even talking about like you had in the beginning, our parents' generation was like give formula, and so a lot of times people in our generation are hearing that from the grandparent. You know, why aren't you giving formula? We gave formula. What's wrong with formula Exactly. I think there's also a component of you're saying that I did something wrong to you.

And we're not saying it that, you know, it's like, no, times change, studies change mentalities change. What you did was perfectly fine. It's just, we found that this is more ideal. So here's what we want to do here. But I. Some of that is also, well, give for that because that's, what I, did for you or we did. For you, so therefore, why are you doing this different thing? Are you saying, I wasn't good enough? No, There's a lot of feelings, a lotta intergenerational trauma that is going on around breastfeeding.

But all over the world, in all different species, there is smell of breast feeding happening. And I think, obviously, as humans, we get a lots of emotional turmoil into it, and so that can make it a little more complicated. There are a million reasons to give formula and it's fine. I think that's the bottom line. It's okay. Ultimately, we go back to a fed baby is a happy baby. As long as you're feeding your baby, you are doing something right. That's all you really did. Literally, that is step number one.

Feed your babies. Step number two is how do you feed that baby? But as long your child is being fed or growing, perfect. And I really love that you're using Fedbaby as a happy baby, because a lot of times, especially in these online parents groups and stuff, sometimes you'll hear this, Fed is best. Oh, that's even worse than, man. And Fedisbest, it's like, okay, we're not just, no. Like, fed baby is a happy baby, is the perfect way to say it, right? And it is important to me that mom is okay, because if mom's not okay baby's, not going to be okay.

Right. And dad is not happy okay either. Okay. Let's be honest. You guys are there too. If mom isn't okay nobody's happy. Now, is there, so my, you know, my daughter very much attached to her mom. Definitely not a daddy's girl yet. We'll see, maybe when she's older. And she is obviously socially breastfed. Is there a component where you talk about skin to skin, do you talked about the connection between mom and baby that is now lost between the baby and their father or their other parent, male or female, because the babies spend so much time with mom at the breastfeeding?

So, you know, I think that there is definitely a special bonding that happens with breastfeeding. It's a bond at the expense of the other parent. That's kind of a question, that's the tough question because I Think there Is a lot of time of The day when baby is not feeding and so the Other parent can a Lot of times the Another parent Can be the the one doing that other stuff right like my husband did diaper changes because it was the feeding one so like any diaper changes, any getting up in the middle of the night to get the baby, to bring the babies to me when I was breastfeeding,

Support Systems and the Pressure to Be Perfect 20:36

right? We tried to share that goal. And I don't think that always happens in a situation where there are two parents there and involved. I think sometimes the breast feeding parent is also doing the diaper changing is, also, doing holding and comforting, so the feeding is one thing, but there's all this other stuff that can be done. But yes, obviously, that first hour of skin to skin and being held and comforted hours a day while feeding, there is going to be a special bond there. But I don't know that there's any evidence that that lasts in terms of years and years.

My daughter may just like her mom because she doesn't yell as much. I know there are other things involved here. You never know. And I think those kind of things like parental preference like changes so much as kids get older, you know, like I see it, my daughter's gonna be four and it's like, some days I am the queen, she's everything mommy and other days it is like no mommy, I don't like you, don t want you. I want only daddy and so I do not know that in the long term there is any like lasting benefit or risk or that.

Yeah. And I think it's come up for our discussion sometimes between me and my wife, because our daughter at night prefers mom. You know, mom has always put her to bed. I've done it when mom is not in the house. Like she can't even be in that house if the daughter knows she's in a house, it is done. And so that was very much the issue for many, many months, even until now, in a way. And a lot of that stems from the nighttime routine of she breastfed her to put her down. So in her mind, that is the routine.

Even as early as four or five months you recognize this. And now we have a situation where, okay, mom is no longer breastfeeding here, but it's still that preference for mom, especially at nighttime to go in comfort, to put down. And it can be frustrating for dads and other parents, you know, grandparents especially too. But at the same time, it is also temporary. I think that needs to be said to the other parent out there who are struggling with issues relating to comfort and other routines that revolve around breastfeeding that ultimately this is still temporary.

You know, there are things that are going to happen that you can be a part of too, that if you really want to be apart of their nighttime routine, stay in the room with mom when she's doing all this. Yeah, with my daughter, we are very big on like telling her like, it's okay that you're upset, but we're still doing it this way. This morning, because I'm here on the podcast, my husband took my kids out to go adventure to get them out so you don't hear them screaming. As they were getting ready, No, I don't want daddy.

I didn't wanna, you know, today was mommy day I guess, and I said, oh I hear you but you're going with daddy and i'm staying here. Okay, bye. And she was crying and really upset and for some parents that's really difficult, right? And it's a visceral reaction to I dont want my child to be upset but it is okay if they are a little upset. Yeah. And it's tough for me because I look at my daughter and she's crying her eyes out, not like fake tears or anything, but actually legit crying. I'm like, oh, this is really tough.

Like you're a monster. But you know what? But this also part of being a parent too. Absolutely. That's the point. It's so tough and going back to the breastfeeding relationship, I mean, there were times in the breasts feeding that like my kids are like clawing at my face, like they don't want to be near me, they're like screaming their head off and I'm like, you have to eat. They're congested or they feel good or something is going on and they want me to hold them and this rejection as a parent can really have an effect on you.

But I think it's important to just keep being there. So like as the non-breastfeeding parent, doing as much of the other things as you can. Not giving in. Not giving in, exactly. And we talk about, there's a lot of social media out there on gentle parenting. Yeah. It's, you know, it's almost like there are two camps. There's your, well, we didn't gentle parents. We were parents, that's again, the older generation, but it is the same mentality of for them, gentle, parenting is permissive parenting and the answer is no.

Gentle parenting, is not permissible parenting gentle. Parenting is explaining calmly. This is what we're doing. Here's why maybe. Or just, no, I'm sorry, but this is what we're doing. And you're going to go do it. You're not screaming or anything like that. Exactly. Wack across the head anymore, obviously. Right. There is that middle ground there. Again, there is so much in this age of social media where people are able to share their thoughts on things. Sometimes they are an expert and sometimes they're are not.

So you are getting all of this information all the time. I can remember like breastfeeding my baby and like being on my phone looking up like, am I doing this stuff, right? And like I'm a pediatrician and breast feeding is a very natural thing. There's not a right and wrong, I am doing it, a baby's eating and they're growing, okay, i'm doing right. They're not feeding and growing. Okay, well then we need to figure out what's going on and do something different, it's like not perfect thing And I think that's really hard for a lot of parents because they want it to be perfect, right?

You have this idea in your head of what it's gonna be like and then reality happens and it just, it bursts the bubble of the internet showed you what was

Formula, Self-Care, and Closing Advice 26:30

gonna look like. That's exactly it. The internet social media showed you what perfection is like and so therefore that's what I want. And the answer, the response to that I have is it is not perfect. That is staged and that is bullshit. Absolutely. I guarantee you whatever video you saw, whatever reel or whatever you see of mommy doing the perfect breastfeeding, you know, a kid in their high chair like eating their whatever with a spoon. You didn't see the 20 takes beforehand to get that perfect shot.

You did see sometimes maybe even the harsh structure that it got to that point. So don't put yourself into their shoes and say, oh, I need to do this. I needed to be like that. No, no, this is social media engineering you to think that way, but you need resist that really tough. It's really tough. It is so tough, like I know better. I've seen a thousand of these mom and baby breastfeeding dyads and I knew that everything is different and everybody looks different, and yet there I was in the middle of the night being like, why am I not doing this well enough?

What's wrong that I have to bottle feed or give formula or I'm not making it to a year or pumping isn't making enough? There's so much pressure and despite all of the amazing benefits of breastfeeding, there is a middle ground. I also want to show a little bit, if you do have a hospital that does have lactation group, having that shared experience with other moms that are in the room with you and present, you can discuss what you're doing, what's difficult for you, can do a lot for your mental health.

It can reassure you that I'm not the only one struggling here. This person is having this problem. Oh, here, I can help you because I had that same issue. I mean, you know, my wife went to these groups for months and then she saw new moms come in and she eventually became the more experienced. experienced mom of the group where she can kind of help them go say, oh, here's what I did or oh yeah, I couldn't do that either. And within the age of I mean, postpartum depression with, you know, they call the baby blues, not even post-part depression is even baby Blues.

Hearing those experiences can really help the mother get out of those blues and really reinforce that what i'm doing is right and this is normal. Yes, and on my experience breastfeeding my second child, completely different. I am still me. And I was still doing it. The same, I had the same boobs. We were like, like I don't know why it was different, right? But different experience, different child. It was so much easier. Was it because I had done it the first time? Was is because i put way less pressure on myself?

was it just a totally different dyad and totally a different experience? I don't know. But it doesn't mean that I was now the perfect breastfeeding mother, right? I was probably trying less hard than I tried the first time, you know, but there's just so much pressure that we put on parents. And of course, I think it's great if you can breastfeed your child, right? Of course as a pediatrician, I also see the moms who are just dying inside because they so badly want this and they're not able to do it.

And they think it's hurting their child if they can't do. Cause that's what, you know, Tabitha on social media told them. I don't support that. You know? I won't. Yes. Yeah. At the end of the day, as long as you're feeding your child, you are doing everything right. Is breastfeeding ideal? Yes! Is it the End All Be All? No. So you you were going to have so much more pressure as a new mom, a second time, or a fifth time mom that you don't need the added weight of, I need to make sure I am doing EVERYTHING by the book because you won't.

You're going screw it up and that's fine. will even deal a lot with like, parents do end up supplementing with formula, right? And then they're so stressed about what type of formula they are going to do. And obviously there are some babies who need like separate and, and special things, but a lotta babies don't and I'm so, I am always the person that's get whatever is on sale. Get the store brand, because all of this is tied up with a lot of emotional and hormonal stuff of targeting parents to want to do whatever is the best thing for their kid, even if it's at the expense of themselves, throwing, setting money on fire because they wanted the most perfect formula alternative or whatever, these things just don't exist, you know, it's not.

Yeah, they don t exist. And then at the end of the day, remember, this is such a brief moment in the life that there's so much other things to worry about, so many other thing s to focus on that this i s not something that should lead to so m ch stress and anxiety, especially because, and it does, and especially because it's also a time when I know it is contradictory, but as a mother, you also have to focus a little bit on yourself too, and self-care is extremely important at this stage. Definitely, definitely.

And then in our society, maternity leave is trash, right? We're like, hey, you need to breastfeed for a year, but we're only going to give you 12 weeks off, plus they're unpaid. By the way, here's a pump that you're going have to go into some small dark room that was a janitor's closet. Right. But we are not going give a space to do it, and we aren't going giving you time off to it. You're starving all day. Did you drink water? It's like a lot. How's the baby doing? Can I see for sure the babies?

All right. Well, Dr. Maggie Gorin, thank you so much for coming on. This was a very important episode. Breastfeeding Awareness Month, obviously a source of anxiety, a sort of stress for a number of people. But I think it's important to just, if you're a new mom, first time mom cycle, whatever, repeat in your head, A fed baby is a happy baby. Just say it like twice. You're doing great. as they're trying to get the right latch. Exactly, they are hanging over, but you're doing great. Maggie, thank you again for coming on.

Hopefully we can do a bit more in the future. Definitely. I guess we'll see you next time for sure. All right, that wraps up another episode of the Jaffer Cast. Thanks again to Dr. Maggie Boren for joining me. We talked about breastfeeding, we talked to about the challenges, the benefits, and again, fed baby is a happy baby. Say that to yourself multiple times in a day. If you're a new mom, find a support group, finding people who are struggling, fine people, who have done a successful and then share your experiences.

It helps yourself, it helps are the women and just advocate for yourself and your baby whenever you also reach out to your pediatrician or lactation specialist, all of these people. As always, encourage constructive thoughts, comments, and suggestions. You can leave them in the comment section for those on YouTube or email them to me at jaffordcast at gmail.com. If you're in a healthcare field and interested in being on the show to discuss topics in healthcare, or if you have a passing interest in health care topics, please feel free to reach out to as well.

Like with anything though, don't take my word for it. Do your own research, talk to your doctor, because at the end of the day, like I keep getting reminded of at work multiple times a day I'm just another freaking ER doctor. Make your choice everybody, we'll see you next time.