Born and Fed

I am against rushing to get a frenectomy. I would rather a family not get a frenectomy, than proceed when they are not prepared. I look at preparation through 3 lenses. Is baby prepared? Is the mother prepared? Is the family prepared? Baby is inextricably connected to mom and family and will require their support for favorable results.

Is Baby prepared? First I look at the body. Is your baby able to express dynamic movement on all planes? If your baby primarily looks in one direction, hates tummy time, or cannot look up when feeding, movement is limited. The tongue and baby’s ability to use it with full range of motion are connected to the body. If the body is restricted after the frenulum is released, the tongue’s mobility will be limited as well. Worse, it will likely heal that way. I am equally concerned with baby’s state of being. Do you have a fussy baby? Is baby dealing with reflux, or colic, or gas? While some may promise this procedure as the solution, it is not. A baby who is unregulated going into the procedure will be more so after. Now they have reflux/colic/gas and a sore mouth. These babies also tend to be full of tension which means the body is also not prepared.

Are you prepared? Momma, you are your baby’s foundation. Baby is going to need you to be there to let them know that they are are safe post procedure. If you are struggling right now, it is okay to wait. Find your footing and do not feel pressured to jump into this right away. In order for baby to thrive after the release, they need to feel safe and supported. If you are struggling, baby feels that. Find your footing before stepping into this. As a mom who did not head this advice, I can personally say I had a very difficult time post release supporting my baby.

Is the family prepared? First, the family needs to decide if a medical procedure is in alignment with their values and beliefs for their baby. If it is, then BOTH parents need to be on board. Separation between parents is acutely felt by children (and babies). This is a stressor that impedes our goal of freedom in baby and the family.

I am not against frenectomies. I am against frenectomies as a

So here I stand, fat, aching, anovulatory and snoring. Gazing out from where the sidewalk ends asking the scarecrow directions to Oz. “That way” he chimes arms crossed pointing to nowhere. Do I follow the yellow brick road or is it time to remove the emerald colored glasses? How many wrong turns do I need before I realize my treasure map was given to me by charlatans? None of the advice was exactly wrong, simply half truths hiding behind the curtain. I know it.

The realization is a shift, a transformational reckoning. My health journey and all the alleyways are really the same allopathic metric driven model I have been rebelling against. Same pig, new lipstick. My symptoms are not my body’s failings. My symptoms are my body speaking in a dead language our world no longer bothers to translate. Each cleanse, each diet, each intervention I take to “fix” my body is an attack. It is an unspoken judgement that I need fixing. Am I overweight? Yes. Are my hormones unbalanced? Yes. Do I have SIBO overgrowth? Probably. Am I a tongue tied mouth breather with poor lip competence? Yep.

But none of that really matters. Because it is my belief that my body knows wholeness. My body does not need me to fix it. My body is not only capable but fearfully and wonderfully made to find homeostatic balance. All I have to do is to stop willfully fu***ng it up. I believe in the divinity of nature and the beautiful web that connects us all. I believe separation is an illusion, me a drop in the ocean of creation. My body is a microcosm of the great universe whose pendulum swing is always arching back toward equilibrium. Balance restored when I quit tipping the scales with all my meddling. If I am nature and she is me, the same laws apply.

I believe my body is leading me home. She is answering the call of the wild. Health is all around us and only when we dig our roots deep down into the earth and join the mycelial network connecting us all. The quest for healing is a lie. It is another way we condemn our bodies as broken. I have stopped trying to fix myself and my family. Instead, I am tending. Tending is an act of love.

This week was an ending for me. Over the past 8 months I have had the privilege to sit at the feet of Michale Chatham] . I found Michale because I was searching for something. At the time, I couldn’t even fully articulate what I was looking for. The serendipity that brought Michale into my field now reads like a well marked junction in my life path. She was exactly what I needed when I needed it. I started the mentorship looking to find answers both professionally and personally from Michale. She gave me neither. Instead, she gave me a shovel and taught me how to unearth the answers deep in my own knowing.

It is hard to put all that I have gained from Michale’s bountiful wisdom. I have shifted both professionally and personally after my time with her. She has been a fulcrum for me to pull and strain against. In the straining, I have grown and the expansion has left me fuller through my own power, not through syphoning off those around me.

Today, I stand alone. I am no longer at the feet of my mentor but preparing for the next phase of my evolution. I feel like a seedling, freshly sprouting from moist May soil. Fresh, abundant, and overflowing with the opportunity so bountiful in new life. There is a fragile nature to being so new. I am not the oak, not yet. But the sun is shinning, and my roots are set deep. I am ready to rise.

Thank you Michale Chatham] . Thank you, thank you, thank you.

The other day I was helping a family with a 3 day old learn to breastfeed. It was not a victory easily one, a consult that even left me sweating by the end. As we discussed a care plan for this family, the father shyly observed, “You know, I’ve helped delivery a lot of calves and almost all of them can nurse. It is probably a silly comparison, but it seems funny that it is so hard for our baby.” He laughed self deprecatingly expecting me to tell him how very different a human baby is from a dairy calf. But he had struck a softly thrumming cord already filling my days with a low hum. “Your absolutely right,” I responded. “Human babies should be able to breastfeed, just like the calves you helped deliver. It is a biological imperative that our young should be able to feed. The question is, why can’t they?”

I have been plagued by this realization in my practice. Babies are born to breastfeed, yet so many cannot. We place so much emphasis on the a mother’s right to choose how she feeds her baby we have somehow missed the fundamental issue at hand. Our young, just like any other specie, should be equipped with basic skills for survival, including the ability to eat. While humans have found a work around in bottling, a major gliche in our biology remains. Many of our babies cannot eat as biology intended, yet no one seems to be asking why.

It is not just our babies who are unable to breastfeed. Many mother’s are having more and more trouble lactating. Whether it is low supply, oversupply, recurrent mastitis, or the mental fugue of depression stealing their joy and capacity to manage these systems, it is impossible to deny women are struggling too. We can debate the origin of such trends tumbling down the rabbit hole of finger pointing, but I proffer it is conglomeration of inputs culminating in system failure. Just like an ecosystem going into decline, it is rarely one challenge that shifts cosmic balance toward destruction. It is one insult after another that tip the scales. It is no different with mother’s and babies.

It has been a while since I have introduced myself here… honestly it has been a while since I have been here. Over the past year, much has shifted in both my practice and my life. Time away from social media felt like the best way to get clarity. I have long dreamed that Born and Fed would be more than lactation care. I think many families who work with me would attest that we dig in a lot deeper than latch assessment. Yet, I did not have true direction, just an inkling that I would be veering off the well trod path. I have been growing and shifting which meant Born and Fed was too. Old ways of thinking, felt out of alignment. I am still growing… expanding but I feel that there is a flavor to my evolution that I am ready to share. Thank you for your open hearts and open minds. Here goes nothing.

Life is a grinding wheel, spinning us from our origins out into the wide breadth of a whirling world and then back around to our beginnings. Back to dust and energy and the unknown. For women, motherhood is both the alpha and omega of our lives.
We grow entangled, connected to our maternal life source only to be pushed out into the world. Each day and each step towards independence is a spinning outward away from our mothers. As young women, we rebel outwards seeking our own separate path. I am different. I am unique. I am me. Yet even in our apogee, we are but a moon orbiting her gravitational center.
In motherhood, I began the inevitable spin back in. My mother and her life were illuminated by the rising sun in my own life. Only as I sat enraptured and completely humbled by the small whirling bundle in my own arms did I fully comprehend the woman my mother was. Her successes and failures and even the root of her humanity were now familiar because it was a reflection of my own. The scene of my own infancy was mirrored back to me through new eyes.
Mothers are the at the epicenter of all our twirling lives. Their labors rocket us out into the world and then we spend a whole lifetime dancing away and coming home. As a daughter and now a mother, I can better understand my mother and have true gratitude for all that she is and all that she gave up for me.
I can see it because I am living it for my kids. I feel the power of a force greater than myself pulling my kids away as they spin out into the world. I understand what it means to be a girl, and wife, and mother, and spirit with a purpose ordained to me by God separate from all the moons who orbit me. A planet is not defined by her moons nor was my mother defined by me.
My mother is her own force pirouetting through this universe and I was only caught in the pull of her orbit. She is my axis defining the centrifugal force of my life, not the other way around. The mirroring of my own matrescence has guided me in the inevitable rotation back to my origin, back to my mother, back to myself. Thank you mother for guiding me home.

📸 cred: My father. This is me breastfeeding with my mother for the first time.