86. Mothers Protecting Motherhood: Unraveling Marketing Strategies That Undermine Breastfeeding

When Nicki, a passionate birth educator and mother, sat down with us, we knew her insights on the divine intricacy of women's bodies would illuminate our conversation. Her voice, seasoned by experience and advocacy through the Radical Moms Union, echoes a challenge to the formula industry's narrative (specifically to Bobbie). In the heart of our discussion, we tackle the critical debate of breastfeeding's natural supremacy over formula, digging into the predatory marketing that threatens to overshadow the profound mother-infant bond and the myriad of benefits that nursing provides. 

The journey of motherhood is often painted with broad strokes, yet our candid chat reveals the finer details, exploring the myths that imply breastfeeding may contribute to issues like postpartum depression. My own path from a soul-shaking hospital birth to a tranquil home delivery underscores the conversation, shedding light on the importance of support and understanding birth trauma. We navigate the hormonal seas of postpartum and dismantle the deception that nursing could hinder a mother's mental health, celebrating instead its role in deepening the mother-baby connection. 

As we wrap up, our podcast becomes a  call to mothers everywhere, urging them to trust their instincts against the grain of societal norms. We discuss the pressures that push mothers back into the workforce prematurely and how economic cycles favor profit over natural mothering practices. With Nicki's empowering stories and our shared reflections, we invite you to join us in questioning the dominant discourse, advocating for a return to the wisdom woven into the fabric of womanhood. Don’t forget to connect with Nicki and our community, and stay tuned for more episodes that promise to embolden and enlighten.

Transcript

Rebecca Twomey: 0:32

Hello and welcome to the Radiant Mission podcast. My name is Rebecca Twomey and we are on a mission to encourage and inspire you as you're navigating through your life and with your relationship with Christ. We are currently in a series called God's Design for Women's Health. If you're tuning in for the first time, welcome. We're so glad that you're here. If you want to start at the beginning of this series, it starts with episode 83. But better yet, start this podcast from the beginning.

Rebecca Twomey: 1:02

You'll discover that we have gone through quite a journey on this podcast. We started with spiritual warfare, we talked a bit about birth, we went into a bunch of other topics, we've talked about biblical holidays and marriage and so much more, but it really has been a journey, especially when talking about health and women's health in particular. So, of all these topics, you'll discover that both myself and my co-host, rachel, who's not here today, but we're extremely passionate about uncovering the truth about God's design for all things After all, he is the master creator and today we are welcoming a very special guest to discuss God's perfect design for women's bodies and how industries have convinced us mothers otherwise. Our guest, her name is Nikki. She is a mother, a sovereign birth educator, birth keeper, and she's paving the way for other moms with an initiative called the Radical Moms Union. You can find her on Instagram at Nikki N I C K I dot French F R E N C H, and definitely go check out her page. She has awesome stuff to share. Nikki, thank you so much for being here today.

Nicki French: 2:20

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to talk.

Rebecca Twomey: 2:23

Me too, me too I we were just chatting before we started recording about you know, just birth stuff that you and I have talked about and kind of how I discovered you and this conversation really started around the Radical Moms Union, because you're doing some pretty awesome stuff with that. But before we get into it, we're going to talk, guys, about a lot of predatory marketing tactics or you might refer to it as manipulative or disembodying. So it's going to be a great conversation. I'm looking forward to it. But, nikki, could you start us off with sharing a little bit more about you and why you have a passion for what we're talking about today and why you have a passion for what we're talking about today.

Nicki French: 3:06

Yeah, for sure. So my oldest just turned five, my oldest son this week, earlier this week. Happy birthday, yeah, and yeah, so I have three kids my oldest is five, my middle is three and a half and my baby is one and a half and I'm also pregnant and yeah, I felt like motherhood really radicalized me. That was one question when I was first joining Radical Moms Union and our campaign over the summer last year was, you know, going through that initiation into motherhood, whether it's our first time being initiated or our fourth time or whatever, um, it's really potent that our choices really matter. Now there are really lasting impacts and, oh my gosh, how do I want to give birth and, of course, I want to breastfeed, but what does that really look like? And it's all just really big. It's a, it's a huge initiation. So I felt like, for me, having children and mothering outside of all of these societal norms, um was really radicalizing and really um grounded me into who I am and solidified the choices that I make for my family.

Nicki French: 4:29

So joining Radical Moms Union for their campaign, which I'll just mention briefly, was yeah, Tell us about that. Yeah, Was targeting the formula company Bobby in particular because, while it's nothing new that formula companies have been marketing and lying to the public and using, you know, really bad ingredients in their products and framing it as just as good as breast milk like none of these things are new, but it was kind of like a new shiny version with Bobby. They were one of the first companies. Like you know, you don't really see ads from Similac or Infamil with like the power mom, you know, or like the gay dad.

Nicki French: 5:13

Like it was just this kind of like new shiny version of marketing, and so you know. The one comparison I heard when I was first joining was like Similac is like granny panties and like lingerie.

Nicki French: 5:28

Like it's like oh, it's spicy, because they're talking about mom's mental health and they're, you know, highlighting how hard mothering is and their, their angle was kind of sure Breast milk might be superior. You know, one of their whole angles is this idea of combo feeding, which is just, it's just marketing language for breastfeeding less. It's an idea that you could have the best of both worlds you could breastfeed and also, you know, gain your autonomy and get more sleep and have time for yourself. And, like you know, they're autonomy and get more sleep and have time for yourself. And, like you know, they're framing breast milk as maybe superior, yeah, but breastfeeding as inferior and breastfeeding as oppressive and in opposition to your career and your mental health and your sleep, and breastfeeding advocates as being very judgmental. So they came out swinging and actually I'll take it back a year, um August of 22,.

Nicki French: 6:33

They launched um on world breastfeeding day, which is the start of world breastfeeding week, which is the first week of August. Um, a big banner with, like all of these different kind of family dynamics, um of parents giving their children a bottle, and it says how's breastfeeding going? With the word breast slash out on world breastfeeding day, like they're, like as being with you know what they would call parenting, to try to be very neutral and inclusive, but really what they mean is incompatible with mothering, and so that was, of course, very upsetting for the people who, for the women who understand how important breastfeeding is. And so yeah, radical M breastfeeding is Um. And so yeah, radical moms, that's um Natasha and Andrea, they co-write the sub stack um radical moms union. So they, they gathered hundreds of women um to have a virtual nurse in on Bobby um on world breastfeeding day last year. So in response to their campaign a year later, um tell us what that means.

Rebecca Twomey: 7:48

What was the virtual nurse in?

Nicki French: 7:50

Yeah, so it was literally pictures of us nursing our babies and you know I don't I don't show my kids faces on social media, so it was kind of from the back of my son nursing, and people used old pictures if they were done nursing or they use their sisters if they didn't have kids or you know anybody who was involved in the movement. And we all posted pictures of us nursing and tagged Bobby and used hashtag back off Bobby and tried to get the message across, like you've crossed the line over from, because one of the things is that their formula is organic, right, they use better ingredients that use palm oil, but they're not framing it as better than other formulas. They're framing it as better than breastfeeding, like they're they're competing with breastfeeding. They're not competing with another formula. Because you don't you don't see Coke company Coca-Cola, you don't see Coke company Coca-Cola coming out and being like you know what's really sucky is water.

Nicki French: 8:50

Like they say, we're better than the leading, compete, uh, competitor, um, but that's not how Bobby operates. They are, um, yeah, competing with breastfeeding yeah, competing with breastfeeding, yeah.

Rebecca Twomey: 9:08

So let's take this conversation back a little bit of a level.

Rebecca Twomey: 9:09

I'd like to talk for us to talk a little bit about how God designed women's bodies to function for breastfeeding.

Rebecca Twomey: 9:18

You know, we were designed clearly by the Lord to grow a baby inside of our womb and when we birth that baby, or actually even before we birth the baby, we already have milk and the baby comes out and he created these two things right here on our chest to feed the baby with. And our breast milk is so wise that it knows when and how to create the right composition for that baby that just came out, with all of the different aspects that come along with that. And that is why this is so threatening to us as mothers that a company would come in and say that any product could possibly be as good as what God created from our bodies. So I'd love it if you could talk a little bit more about the benefits of breastfeeding, maybe even some of your own experiences, if that makes sense. But just why is it so important for women listening to understand how and why? Breast milk is not the same as formula, even organic?

Nicki French: 10:26

Okay, yeah, I mean there are certainly benefits. Of course. They've been very well documented, from the gut microbiome and immune function to white blood cells. There's millions of white blood cells in breast milk up into your body and tells your body what kind of milk that baby needs. So maybe they have a fever or they're teething or they just got hurt and they need, you know, some stem cells to come in and repair that. So of course there's. There are so many benefits to it.

Nicki French: 11:03

Um, you know, reduced risk of breast cancer and ovarian cancer for the mother.

Nicki French: 11:07

So it's not just benefits for the baby, um, and also benefits that have nothing to do with the, the composition of breast milk, but, uh, emotional intelligence that you're building by bringing your baby close to your heart. You're making eye contact, which of course you could do those things with, um, bottle feeding, but it's, it's all part of the same continuum of pregnancy. Like you said, it's designed to be another expression of mother-baby. So that's one word we use a lot in this Radical Moms Union campaign is this idea of mother and baby being one unit, and anything that comes in to kind of sever that, kind of sever that. And of course we all caveat with there are times and places where formula is necessary, or, um, you know, of course everybody likes to hold up the example of the mom with the double mastectomy and what is she supposed to do? And of course she needs formula and of course, yeah, and there are lots of other reasons why people choose to use it, and that doesn't make it the same right.

Rebecca Twomey: 12:12

So this isn't to be clear for those listening. This isn't an attack on using formula. That's not what this conversation is about. There is a time and place for some women to use formula to supplement with formula. What we want to talk about and point out with what's going on with Bobby and some of these other companies is they separate us mentally from breastfeeding with this dirty marketing and they convince many women and this isn't just these companies, because this happens with even lactation consultants at the hospital, for example, or even pediatricians. When you go in and you say whatever this is going on, they say just give formula, just give formula.

Rebecca Twomey: 12:58

There is a mom that I know who every single time something went on with her baby after she had her baby, the answer was, oh, just supplement with some formula for a little while. And you know what? This woman had an oversupply. She had no reason to give formula, other than it is what is being pushed and promoted by obese, by pediatricians, by the news you know, on commercials, advertisement formula companies. It's predatory marketing to get you to buy a product.

Rebecca Twomey: 13:35

It doesn't mean that we all need it. Some people do, and that's kind of the differentiator that we want to talk about here is. It can be super helpful to the mom who maybe does have a health condition that's preventing her from producing enough milk. But when you step into a new mother who's learning how to learning literally learning how to breastfeed her baby in that first week, two weeks, three weeks and you shove a formula bottle, you're not helping empower the mother to learn about breastfeeding. I have seen so many new moms who think that their babies aren't getting enough, who just don't understand that a baby literally needs a pinky nail size of breast milk for those first days. You're not going to be pumping out ounces and ounces of milk for a long time.

Nicki French: 14:30

If you're pumping when they, when they offer you the little, the little hospital, Similac, you know, I guess it would be a bottle. Um, it doesn't look like the like the round bottle that we think of, though. It's the little sample one, but it's huge.

Rebecca Twomey: 14:44

It's like it's huge.

Nicki French: 14:46

And it's like if moms think that that's how much milk their babies are supposed to have, of course they think they're not making enough because they're producing drops of colostrum. You know, for the first, most, most of the time, yeah exactly.

Rebecca Twomey: 14:59

We're being duped into thinking that we need to produce something that our bodies are producing at the speed at which it needs to produce, and that's one of the biggest problems that I see. And then, obviously, there's not a lot of support for women that have latch issues. Maybe their baby has tongue tie or a lip tie or cheek ties or whatever the case might be. There are hurdles that stand in the way for women, but what we as women want to say I think you and I are trying to get out there is that there are other ways to handle these types of things, rather than fall into the traps of these companies that are trying to sell you products. They're trying to sell you and listen. We can dive into many avenues with this right Because there are so many baby companies. I hear it all the time from moms of older kids, or even my mom, who had us many, many years ago. They didn't have this when I had kids. I hear that all the time. They didn't have that, yeah, because people figured out that they could make money off of mothers to convince them that they need things that likely they don't need. There's a lot of things out there that maybe they're for our convenience. Sometimes those things are helpful. You know they have the bouncers and the rocking cribs and the all kinds of different things that are being sold to us, and I love when I hear from moms that buy all the things and I was one of those moms. Just to be clear for everybody listening, I'm not putting anybody down or trying to say anything that anybody's doing is incorrect or wrong.

Rebecca Twomey: 16:37

I had the biggest registry you could ever imagine. I think I had over 300 items on my registry. It was crazy and I'm like I need. I don't know what I need, so I'm just going to put everything on there. So I had, you know, every bunch of different swings and bouncers and this and that and every little thing, and there was so much stuff I didn't use because I didn't really need it. At the end of the day, all baby needs is mom with no shirt on, the baby with no clothes on. We just went and spent thousands of dollars on clothes. The baby doesn't even need clothes. Put the baby in a diaper, hold it against you for like a month and you're good.

Nicki French: 17:15

That's all you need. What you need is like a freezer full of meals and a weekly house cleaner. There you go, your husband to take time off work and or you to take you know if you're going back to work or you know whatever the dynamic is like, that's real support going back to work or you know whatever the dynamic is like, that's real support. You need the family that just spent hundreds on your bouncers and swings maybe could have funded lactation support if you were interested in breastfeeding and you're coming up against some challenges and like.

Nicki French: 17:40

One other thing you said was kind of separating the choice to use formula or the seeing it as a necessity to use formula from a company that's marketing this product to you. You know, one of the things natasha from radical moms union says is to the effect of like we should be able to make our mothering decisions, our parenting decisions, free of corporate influence, and like it shouldn't be corporations coming at you saying you need this thing, you need this thing, you need this thing that oh, by the way, we're going to profit off of. Like it should be. I'm making this decision because I'm making this decision, not because you're telling me that breastfeeding is going to give me postpartum depression which, by the way, they they tell women that you know they on their blog it's called milk drunk, which there are all kinds of issues around them calling their product milk, you know they're not supposed to.

Nicki French: 18:38

That's not really milk and also, yeah, for the world health organization, they're not actually allowed to call it milk, because it's not milk there's, you know. They're supposed to call it milk substitute or whatever. Um, but, yeah, in one of their articles it was like combo feeding, which again is code for breastfeeding less than you are or less than you ideally or optimally would be. Um it, it got me through postpartum depression and anxiety, implying that breastfeeding gives you postpartum depression or anxiety, which there's absolutely no scientific basis for whatsoever. And like I had postpartum depression after my first was born and it had nothing to do with breastfeeding, breastfeeding was actually the only thing that felt like I really, really want to do this.

Nicki French: 19:25

The only thing that made me feel in my body was breastfeeding, even though it was hard, and being surrounded by people who are telling you that you know breastfeeding doesn't matter and you know your baby is a threat to you, your baby is an opposition to you. That's why you're not sleeping. Um, by the way, you have a ton of birth trauma that nobody's you know addressing. And, can we believe it? You have postpartum depression. It must be because you're breastfeeding, like it's just the scapegoat for all of the ways that women's mothering experiences are very, very fractured.

Rebecca Twomey: 19:59

They are and to kind of back track a little bit. And for those listening, be sure to listen back on some of our episodes where we've talked about birth, because you'll hear more in detail about some of this stuff. But I'll mention one thing. You'll hear more in detail about some of this stuff, but I'll mention one thing Postpartum depression, like you said, and we did an episode with Diana from the Healing Birth Podcast, so actually we had two episodes with her. So definitely listen to those because we talk about how the majority of many women experience birth trauma. They say it's like 33% or something I think it's way higher than that Experience birth trauma, which in turn, is why many women have depression or experience depression.

Rebecca Twomey: 20:43

But the other part of it is physical too. We have a placenta that's storing hormones and that baby is born and the placenta is born and now all of these hormones that were coursing through our bodies, that our bodies adjusted to, are gone, they flush out and we are now rebalancing as a postpartum mom with that fourth stage of labor I guess you could say after your placenta comes out. Stage of labor, I guess you could say after you know your placenta comes out. There are many reasons why this happens to us. But even that alone, if you think about it, you have all the baby which is impacting hormones. You have the placenta impacting hormones. They get, they come out.

Rebecca Twomey: 21:27

Of course, mother is going to have to readjust hormonally and in that period of the mother's body readjusting there are going to be some feelings that you're going through. I mean, our hormones are no joke. We've all had to go through cycles before getting pregnant and have experienced the rollercoaster of our cycles. Which we talked about in the intro to this series is that entire four-part cycle that we go through and how our hormones ebb and flow as we go through that. So to try to say it's one thing is crazy.

Rebecca Twomey: 22:04

But also the more we understand about our bodies as women and how complicated they are and how we have all these hormones that are doing all of these things for a reason, when we can embrace that and put our focus on our own healing. That to me is how we can get through these postpartum issues, not cut off more connections. Stop breastfeeding that's not going to help our mental state. If anything, it's going to stress mother out more because she's always going to wonder if she did the right thing. Was this really the right thing for me to do. If, let's say, they listened to Bobby's marketing and quit breastfeeding for the reason of potential depression, right, using that as an example.

Nicki French: 22:51

And breastfeeding is actually counteracting a lot of the things that would maybe dispose one to depression.

Nicki French: 23:00

Like the amount of oxytocin that is flowing through your body when your baby latches and you know the prolactin and it's all designed to make you fall in love with your baby. It's not designed to make you want to die Like. No, all of the all of this big story around postpartum depression, it's, for all, very misunderstood. Like you're talking about with there. You're assigning labels like postpartum depression to huge life change. You are never going to be the same person again. You're experiencing the biggest hormonal crash known in physiology over the course of like a day and like.

Nicki French: 23:39

Of course, that's going to take time to get used to, combined with living in a society that doesn't value postpartum, that doesn't value mothering, that tells you breastfeeding doesn't matter where pediatricians are denying that tongue and lip and cheek ties exist, like where they're looking at you like you have two heads If you say I took my baby to the chiropractor. Like it's all compounding and all kind of building on each other. And of course, it's hard to adjust in a world like that, especially when you've had a very traumatic birth. And so, yeah, saying that this thing causes postpartum depression, when it literally counters postpartum depression, using it as a scapegoat for all of the ways that women are not supported to be mothers in our society and it's just, it's really overwhelming.

Rebecca Twomey: 24:31

It is. You know, I'm thinking back to when I had my first and I had a terrible birth, which everybody that listens to this show knows because that's the reason I started this podcast was I had a horrible birth, hospital birth experience. They forced me into a C-section I didn't need cut my bladder, it was all kinds of nonsense. And then I went on to home birth and then ultimately had a free birth and it was such a redeeming experience. But I'm thinking back to after that birth and I was experiencing birth trauma as a first-time mom, not knowing that that's what it was at the time, right, but I was also learning to breastfeed at the time. But I was also learning to breastfeed and I pushed through because I had strong women around me who were encouraging me to keep going and to not quit. I was just learning how to do it and I had a little bit of pain. It turned out my daughter did have a tongue tie, but I didn't know about ties until years later. So I just managed through that somehow and that experience of breastfeeding with her arose around. Like three. Three and a half weeks was when everything clicked and then I didn't experience any more pain and we were good to go.

Rebecca Twomey: 25:46

I have to tell you, though, that bonding that I got with her from breastfeeding is what got me through my birth trauma, because if I didn't have that you mentioned before that oxytocin that just courses through your body when you are breastfeeding I feel like that was what healed me. Honestly, that's what helped me through those hard times when I really was just so depressed and bummed out about what happened. Really was just so depressed and bummed out about what happened. I'm sitting there with my catheter in weeks postpartum because of that bladder injury, but that oxytocin releasing from nursing, really, I guess what I'm just trying to say is that, rather than push something on women that's going to separate them further from their healing postpartum, especially when it comes to depression encourage them to breastfeed, because that will help you. It will help your hormones, not hurt your hormones. So that's really what I wanted to share.

Nicki French: 26:54

Yeah, and I also. You know it's important to differentiate between these ideas, because formula is, or offering formula is, a response to breastfeeding challenges that are very real that women come up against, whether it is, you know, tension in the mouth and jaw or a very, very fractured birth experience where they don't see their baby for hours or days and they didn't get the skin to skin, and now the nurse is telling you your milk hasn't come in and like now you're supplementing and pumping and then you're up all night and like you know all of the all of the things that women come up against, especially having very medicalized birth experiences. Using formula is a response to those challenges, but it is not a solution to the challenges. It doesn't solve any aspect of breastfeeding. It's not going to make the breastfeeding better, and slapping a woman with fed is best when she wants to breastfeed is very dismissive and minimizes what she wants. It doesn't. It doesn't change anything. It doesn't fix anything. All it is communicating is that breastfeeding doesn't matter.

Nicki French: 28:13

And so I think people are trying to be helpful with fed as best, and even you know, if they take that off, they internalize that idea for themselves. It's to hide from the pain that they weren't supported to breastfeed, and so it's. It's a very nuanced phrase that I disagree with the idea that fed is best, but I think that people say it in an effort to make you feel better. You know it's not your fault that you couldn't breastfeed or whatever, um, but it's also very dismissive of a woman's desires to breastfeed and and her like innate drive to breastfeed. You know, just like the, all that matters is that you had a healthy baby. It's like, yeah, and I was also assaulted in my birth, and like given surgery for no reason or or whatever it is, even if she doesn't have that articulate language yet, if she's still in the healing phase, but like it's not true that all that matters is that you have a healthy baby.

Rebecca Twomey: 29:17

It's not true, yep, and that's the problem with these industries is that there is this savior mentality that permeates through all of it. It starts with us being in the birth space, right, like they're just going to save us from all of our pain and problems, give you an epidural. And that's the thing that breaks my heart so much too. I know that there are really good, you know, hospital midwives and LND nurses out there that do want to help mothers, but I've heard so many stories from doulas and doula friends of mine who've been in a birth, where a mother does not want an epidural, she wants to have a natural birth. But then she that fear gets to her, the you know she can't manage the pain well and she wants to cave. And then everyone around her is like, okay, let's save you and we'll save you with this epidural, not understanding that they have now cut off the connection between the mother's mind and her body as she's birthing Right, and I went through this myself.

Nicki French: 30:18

Yeah, yeah, right. The solution to a lot of those things is like less intervention, like fewer people. You guys need to back off. You guys need to stop putting your fingers inside of her, like we need to scale this back, not ramp it up, right.

Rebecca Twomey: 30:32

Exactly, and I think that that's what we really do want to get across to listeners today is we want to be there for each other as women going through these experiences. When I was in my birthing time for my first, all I needed was for someone to encourage me and say this is normal, what you're experiencing, this is it, and you can do it, not cave and try to save me. I didn't need to be saved. I needed to go through it. But that's the problem is. Then they come in and they save you, because that is how industry works, because then they can put you through that C-section and they can put all those line items on your bill and bump it up from 12K to 36K or whatever it is.

Rebecca Twomey: 31:22

And then the same thing happens. Now the baby's out and, like you said, mom could be struggling with breastfeeding, not getting the latch right or whatever. Oh, don't worry about it, don't stress yourself out here. Just give the baby some formula and you're good to go. Here, just give the baby some formula and you're good to go. Not understanding that all mom needed was encouragement, all she needed was time.

Rebecca Twomey: 31:45

And the same thing happens with sleep too. Right, we have these newborns Now. We got to figure out how to sleep, work and instead of encouraging a mom that babies just are going to be babies it's, let's sell you a bunch of other stuff to help your baby sleep, be it sleep sacks or devices or whatever, whatever it is and again, I am not coming at anybody because I have all of the things that we talked about earlier. I have it all and I've tried it all. And I'll tell you, my baby doesn't want anything more, all of my babies than to be right up against me, skin to skin, on the boob. That's the happiest You're going to find a little baby that wants to go to sleep. And how often? Go ahead, go ahead.

Nicki French: 32:37

That's the way it's designed, yeah, to keep mother and baby together. And how many ways could we think of that? That women and babies are separated, like, whether it's through these really traumatic birth experiences or through abortion, or through this this story around breastfeeding that it's not good for you, like that's really what it comes down to is that breastfeeding doesn't matter, and what companies like Bobby would go so far as to say is that it's actually harmful for you or or just not worth it, you know.

Rebecca Twomey: 33:18

Yeah, we really have a convenience culture right now. That's kind of going on, that we just want everything to be convenient. And I don't even know if I should get started on this whole women in the workplace thing, because women are very duped by the feminist movement in thinking that it was about empowerment, when really all it has done is disempower us. The governments wanted feminism because they wanted women to be in the workplace paying taxes. They want money from us. They want us to be producing for them. When we're a mother, what are we producing for them? Maybe more workers? Sure, but if the government can get two parents paying taxes instead of one, they're going to go for that right.

Rebecca Twomey: 34:05

And so we now have this society of bounce back culture for moms. Get moms back to work ASAP, which? What does that mean? When a mom has to go back to work four weeks postpartum, six weeks postpartum, eight weeks, maybe, if you're lucky, 12 weeks, if you're super lucky In America anyway, if you're in another country, good for you, because it's not as long.

Rebecca Twomey: 34:31

But what are we promoting here? You're going to have to do some of this stuff If you don't just go straight to formula, because that's what you've got to do to go back to work, maybe you're pumping, which now you're in that whole industry and you've got to buy all the stuff that's related to the pumping stuff. It's just this cycle, vicious cycle that I see happening and it's so normalized now that even having this conversation, I can understand why you guys are calling it the radical mom's union, because this is a radical conversation. Can you imagine 200 years ago this would talking the other stuff, like we're countercultural right now, but 200 years ago this was all normal. And now here we are in modern day talking over the internet. You know, people are not doing any of these things that our bodies were designed to do because we live in a society that is based on products and product marketing.

Nicki French: 35:28

Yeah, and one of the things you said was like when we're, when we're just having our babies and we're just mothering, we're just living life, it's like what are we contributing in their eyes? Right, right, maybe workers, but embodied mothers create kids that can't be controlled by these forces. Like you know, my kids don't think that it's normal you know, air quotes loosely normal to have a baby in a hospital. Like that to them is like wait what? Like we have our babies at home, like of course you know to them, of course you'd have your baby at home, and like it's just, it's interesting that that, yeah, that we, when we're just mothering and we're, and we're actually embodied, we create people that can't be controlled by these forces absolutely.

Rebecca Twomey: 36:18

I've got another question for you. We've been talking a lot about misconceptions when it comes to breastfeeding, and on this podcast we've talked some about misconceptions with fertility and pregnancy, birth, all that stuff and how backwards things are in the medical paradigm. What are some things or something that you really want women to know about their bodies and our body's abilities?

Nicki French: 36:47

Yeah, I mean, it's really important for women to know that the vast majority of birth emergencies are avoidable, slash, preventable or caused by interference. And so that's a really, really big one for women, I think, because there is this big, like boogeyman, cultural fear of birth and that women's bodies are just gonna, you know, bottom out at any moment and we're unreliable and we're a threat to our babies and our babies are a threat to us. And like, because we're not robots, because we're spontaneous, organic human beings, that we all have different experiences and you know what might be high blood pressure for one is not high blood pressure for another. And like all of these nuances, because we're very nuanced beings, um, I think it's hard for women to like really take that in and allow themselves to be individualized, um, rather than just seen as robots, which is what, you know, the allopathic model would want. So, um, yeah, I think it's really important for women to know how intelligent the design of mothering is.

Nicki French: 38:13

Um, you know, god chose to come to us through a mother and it's not something that you know, it's just this, this like ticking time bomb of risk and you know you could just die at any moment. It's like, yeah, we couldn't die at any moment, just as beings on earth, like, because this is our home, that's life. Like death, death is a part of life and but it but. It is really important for women to know if they are open to knowing that birth works incredibly well when it's allowed to. That doesn't mean it looks the same one woman to another.

Nicki French: 38:58

There's, um, this elder midwife. She calls herself sister, morning star and she says there's as many variations of normal as there are women Like what's different for you is, you know, normal for you is not normal for me, because you're a person, you're your own person. Um, and so, yeah, I think that one big takeaway is that there are all of these forces looking to make sure that women stay disembodied and stay, you know I don't even know if quiet's the right word or just, yeah, disconnected from themselves and their babies. Yeah, disconnected from themselves and their babies.

Rebecca Twomey: 39:37

I get what you're saying More. Just submissive to what's going on around them, just accepting of whatever it might be, whatever they're told.

Nicki French: 39:45

Yeah, Do whatever you're told you know. Don't make waves, Don't rock the boat, Don't ask too many questions. Stay in your little box Like it's actually the exact opposite of what you know. Liberal feminists would say we're moving toward right um yeah, we're programmed.

Rebecca Twomey: 40:04

We're programmed to have belief systems, and that's the purpose of us having these types of conversations is to remind women don't be hypnotized, don't be hypnotized by the mainstream, don't be programmed by the things that you're seeing in front of. You Question everything. So there is going to be so much more that Nikki and I have to talk about, and we're gonna come back next week to chat about that. So thank you so much for listening and tuning into this episode. If you want to find Nikki, she is on Instagram at Nikki French, and if you would like to follow along the podcast outside of this listening here, be sure to join the mission on Instagram, at the Radiant Mission, or on Facebook or on YouTube.

Rebecca Twomey: 40:54

And today we are going to close with Colossians 1, verses 16 through 17. For by him, all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions, or rulers or authorities. All things were created through him and for him, and he is before all things, and in him things hold together. We're wishing you a radiant week and we'll see you next time. Bye, everyone.