Alissa - Food Writer, Cook & Mother
I met Alissa during her second pregnancy, and after her baby arrived, she joined my postpartum circles, Baby & Me Nurture and The Motherhood. During one of these circles, a mother shared an article from the Guardian newspaper with the rest of the group titled ‘I felt rage. I had traded my sanity for milk’ . It struck a chord with all of us, as it looked at women's choices around feeding their babies, whether breastfeeding or not, without pitting one against the other. Out of this discussion emerged an important conversation about the significance of women being well-nourished in the pre- and postpartum period. Alissa shared with the group information and suggestions on how to nourish oneself in motherhood.
This blog delves into how to prepare for and support your breastfeeding journey, regardless of its duration, as well as some insights Alissa wished she'd known before motherhood. I believe it will be helpful to all new mothers, regardless of the choices they make."
Alissa is is a food writer and historian. Originally from Siberia, she comes from a family with a Ukrainian-Jewish lineage, whose history forms an important part of her culinary writing. She offers MotherFood a cooking course aimed at soon-to-be parents.
Alissa in her kitchen
Perhaps the experience of motherhood would not have been such a profound one for me were it not for the countless challenges of breastfeeding. As I have described in my Instagram post on this topic, it really has been a paradigm shift which enabled me to reevaluate so many aspects of myself, my relationship to my body, the ability to recognise and trust my deeper knowing, the importance of communicating, the powerful role of food, to name a few.
That post had the most heartfelt response from so many women that I have decided to turn it into a MotherFood Instagram Live session which in turn has prompted this blog post. So here I share a summary of what we have discussed with Marianne Grechko, a nutritional therapist and a mother of two, as well as add a little bit more of my personal insight into my breastfeeding journey.
The one thing I wish I’d known before giving birth is something I want to share here first. Your breastfeeding journey, no matter how long or short, challenging or easeful, is something you do need to prepare for in advance of your labour. It is absolutely natural for the minds and the bodies to be so focused on the milestone event of birth that we simply can’t gather any more mental energy to consider the details of our day-to-day lives as parents. However, the good news is that there is nothing particularly exceptional you’d need to do. Looking after yourself well during pregnancy is an essential contribution to breastfeeding. Nutrition and supplementation is key, of course. And while our bodies priorities the baby’s needs and will extract all the essential nutrients, I love Inna May Gaskin’s analogy to a plant growing in a soil that’s depleted. So while your body is doing its miraculous work, we can support ourselves through a balanced and diverse diet with plenty of water, protein, good fats (Omega-3, esp DHA, found in fatty fish or in plants like chia seeds), pulses and vegetables. This is a golden rule for a healthful life no matter your age, gender or childbaring preferences, of course, but it becomes particularly important during pregnancy and post-partum. Marianne recommends a few herbs that are safe to take from 2 weeks before your due date which will help you build up your milk supply and you can continue taking during your postpartum: fenugreek, nettle, fennel, and moringa leaf (a powerful galactagogue), as well as a multivitamin pregnancy supplement, such as the one by Wild Nutrition, which is also recommended to take after you've given birth.
Your emotional well-being after labour is another aspect that is likely to play a big part in your breastfeeding journey. So making sure you have a supportive circle to help you make sense of your unique experience is key, be it your family, friends or a professional. I love how many resources there are at the moment - numerous facebook groups, as well as postpartum doula’s offering regular mother’s circles and other modes of support. I list some of the resources below.
Both Marianne and I have experienced breastfeeding challenges and have found the help of an osteopath extremely important. I would highly recommend seeing one during pregnancy and carrying that relationship over to your post-partum. Many babies would need some gentle manipulations to relieve some contracted muscles which are common after vaginal birth or simply after spending a rather long time in a relatively small space of your uterus. Mother’s would also benefit from some realignment and gentle readjustment as well as from sharing the birth story with the practitioner - a process which is the most powerful healing experience.
During the initial stages of establishing breastfeeding, supply and demand are key. This was a great struggle for me: just the thought of having to sit still for hours on end caused bouts of anxiety, only matched by a thought of suffocating under water. However, the ability to stay still and remain present with your baby has been one of the most valuable lessons I have learnt which has benefited me in so many areas of my life outside of motherhood. I have also learned that there are ways you can support your ability to stay still and feed your baby, the key to your success here are: food and water. Make sure you have plenty of water nearby as well as food that can be easily put together for you by someone, or you will be able to do it yourself while feeding your baby (the stuff I've learnt to do while breastfeeding is pretty amazing!). I love the idea of ‘a breastfeeding basket’ brought to my attention by Amy Van Haren in the episode of the MotherFood Podcast. The plan is to have a few of those baskets around your house containing water, fresh fruit and a healthy snack like raw nuts, nut butter pouches, dried fruit and oat bars (preferably the low-sugar homemade stuff).
Milk is primarily made of fat and water so you need to make sure it is plentiful in your diet throughout your breastfeeding journey, but especially before your baby starts eating food. Marianne stresses the importance of Omega-3 fats to our diets during pregnancy and postpartum so it is key to ensure you eat plenty of good quality oily fish like salmon, mackerel and sardines, as well as taking a high quality supplement. I found that my favourite milk boosting meal was roast salmon with brown rice, roast sweet potato and a lemon-tahini sauce. This dish has had the most magical effect on the volume and the quality of my milk.
You can learn more about accessible recipes to support breastfeeding from my MotherFood cooking course where I offer recipe videos and share food suggestions for new mothers.
While these are the general safe and useful steps you can take to ensure good milk supply, you and your baby are likely to go through a phase of learning and adjustment, and like many mothers you’d probably be faced with the gnawing question: how do I know if I am making enough milk? This is an exercise in trust and intuition, and it is something that needs time to develop. I was too harsh on myself in the initial weeks of motherhood feeling like a failure for not being in tune with my ‘maternal instinct’. This fear and distrust of course went away eventually to be replaced by the most empowering sense of deeper knowing of my body and my child. Marianne also offers some practical tips on how you can judge whether or not your baby is content with the milk supply: they’d come off the breast happily or fall asleep after the feed when they are full. If the baby is fussy and doesn't settle after you think the feed is over then there might be a need to support your supply production and/or seek advice from a lactation consultant. And might simply need a bit more time to adjust. Often as new mothers we are too tired and are led astray by our hormonal haze to see the signs and cues clearly, in which case your partner or another close family member might be able to assist. What I have learnt is that maternal intuition is like a muscle that needs training and doesn’t simply appear out of thin air just because you’ve given birth. It takes some time as well as trial and error, but then this inner voice will become the most powerful guide and source of your power.
For some women the demands of breastfeeding ease somewhat once the baby starts solids however this might not be the case at all, as it wasn't for me and my daughter. We have not experienced a significant drop in feeds until she turned two. By this point my faith in my instinct and trust of the body began to wane slightly, as I began to wonder if such intense breastfeeding is interfering with my monthly hormonal cycle. I’ve still not gotten my period back, yet I was experiencing intense moments of PMS-like moods and sensations in the body, for almost 6 months. Having seen my wonderful osteopath and started working with Wild Nutrition’s practitioner Lorna Driver-Davies to address these issues, I have come to a realisation that I might need to initiate gentle weaning off the breast. I have practised an approach called ‘do not offer, do not refuse’, and have found that when we were out and about or busy playing at home, my daughter would simply ‘forget’ to feed. So in just a few weeks we have dropped day time feeds. I occasionally had to hand express a bit of milk but I've found that my body’s supply-demand system readjusted to this new pattern of feeds very quickly.
Next we dropped our night feeds. We have been co-sleeping and sleep-feeding pretty much since the very beginning, so night feeding was something that was as natural as breathing to us, and those of course were a little harder to drop. I got my cycle back pretty much as soon as we stopped day-time feeding, which caused a lot of cyclical breast pain and made feeding next to impossible at certain times of the month. Having gone through excruciating pain in the early stages of motherhood, I knew there was no reason for me to push myself any further. My daughter was 2 years and 4 months old, so it felt more than rational to continue dropping the feeds. When she’d wake up at night to ask for ‘boobies’, i’d offer her some water and a cuddle instead, more often than not that would be enough to settle her back to sleep, and it took only a few weeks for her to start sleeping through the night.
Our final phase was to drop the one feed to sleep - the one many would scare you about! Yet there was nothing truly scary, of course. My daughter was 2 and 8 months by that point and she had a perfect understanding of what we were doing. We’ve created a special ‘boobie calendar’ where she’d get a sticker every morning to celebrate falling asleep without a feed. There were some occasional tears and some necessary feeds, but the final stage was so playful and easful that we both enjoyed it immensely.
The completion of a breastfeeding journey for some can be as emotionally challenging as its beginning. And we discuss with Marianne, it is again so essential to have a support system around you: a person or a group with whom you can discuss your experience and hear theirs. The very act of talking has so much power to heal.
So true to the very essence of MotherFood, the key pillars to support you during your breastfeeding journey are food and conversation.
I want to highlight that I would be always more than happy to hear from you and answer any questions.
Some Links:
Supplements & Herbs
Omega-3
Pregnancy Multivitamins
Breastfeeding Multivitamins
https://www.wildnutrition.com/products/breast-feeding-collection
Wild Nutrition offers free 20 min online consultation
Alissa’s Offerings
Community & support
The Motherhood a monthly meet up facilitated by Lynn. May’s meet up in person will be hosted by Alissa
Womb & Bloom a wonderful collective of doula’s, thersapists and circle holders for pregnancy & the postpartum
Some Books
The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby and Child Care
Inna May’s Guide to Breast-feeding
Birth and Breastfeeding
The First Forty Days
Nurturing Your New Life