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[00:00:00] Welcome to part two of this series. Last week we talked about contraception, conception, menstruation, fertility in general while breastfeeding a toddler. Today we're going to be talking about pregnancy while breastfeeding a toddler. And then next week we'll be talking about tandem feeding, so breastfeeding a newborn and a toddler at the same time.
Disclaimer
As a quick disclaimer as always, this is simply for educational purposes and is not medical advice. As well, if you're breastfeeding a baby, under the age of 12 months, there are special considerations for you while you are breastfeeding through pregnancy, , as your child's nutritional needs are just different than they are after 12 months.
If that's the case for you, then You might need to reach out for additional support and information. However, everything in this podcast episode is pretty much still going to apply to you. So stay tuned, hang around. There's lots of great stuff for you here too.
Topics covered today
As a quick roadmap of where we're going to be headed in this episode, [00:01:00] because I have a lot of information here for you, we are going to be talking about four main topics.
The first one is safety. The second one is milk supply. The third is pain and aversion. And then finally, we're going to be talking about weaning and making changes. I will try to add chapter markers to each of those areas so that you can click around if you need to come back as well.
There, I can only hit so much in this podcast episode, but I'm going to try to Answer all the questions that I've been sent in. Thank you so much for responding to polls on Instagram and sending DMs and emails with the things you want to talk about. I'm going to hit all of them.
Safety while breastfeeding through pregnancy
First up, we're going to talk about safety.
Now, this is a huge concern for most Breastfeeding mothers, families out there, when you either become pregnant if it wasn't planned or you're planning on becoming pregnant, is it safe to continue breastfeeding through pregnancy? And, as I said in my previous episode last week, [00:02:00] pretty much always, yes., A really great resource if you are breastfeeding through pregnancy and considering tandem feeding after pregnancy is the book Adventures in Tandem Nursing by Hilary Flowers.
I'm going to be referring to that a fair bit for a little bit more of the science and, and data. You are welcome to go and grab that book, of course. It's a great read.
I'll also be pulling from other resources, as always. But, , this book is the Bible when it comes to safety information around Breastfeeding and tandem feeding for sure. So when it comes to safety, I highly recommend that book.
Essentially all of the research we have to date shows that breastfeeding during pregnancy is very, very safe, particularly in low risk pregnancies.
We will talk about high risk pregnancies in a minute, but most of the time, you are experiencing a low risk pregnancy. All the way back in 2008, the American Academy of Family Physicians put out a statement that said breastfeeding during subsequent pregnancies is [00:03:00] not unusual. If the pregnancy is normal and the mother is healthy, breastfeeding during pregnancy is the woman's personal choice.
There are a number of studies that Hilary Flower quotes and References in the second edition of Adventures in Tandem Nursing specifically, and that edition came out in 2019, so a lot of those studies are much, much more current than they were previously. And it's quite interesting that a number of those studies show that Rates of miscarriage, for example, are actually lower in breastfeeding women than in non breastfeeding women.
Interesting, right? In fact, a lot of those studies, the researchers concluded at the end that should be discouraged to have a woman wean during pregnancy, uh, that she should be encouraged to breastfeed until there is a natural weaning that occurs.
So, yes, I think that it's really, really important to have all that information. If you have a care provider that has [00:04:00] blanket statements that they say around breastfeeding or that they immediately just encourage you to wean. I do encourage you to go and grab a copy of the book or to do your own looking around.
I will put some references in the show notes that you can bring and talk to them about so that you can really have an informed conversation with your doctor. So one of the big reasons that people are concerned about breastfeeding during pregnancy is the idea that breastfeeding causes contractions and Contractions can cause preterm labor.
Now, it is true that breastfeeding can cause contractions, especially postpartum, right? When you have, um, those lovely, painful contractions that can happen when you're breastfeeding and that are really, really important because they're actually causing your uterus to shrink and they're preventing hemorrhaging and all that stuff.
It's really healthy for your body to be going through that. Now, when you are pregnant, however, you do not have enough oxytocin receptors on your uterus [00:05:00] in order to go into preterm labor from oxytocin. And it's the oxytocin while you're breastfeeding that is causing those contractions. So when you are ready to give birth, essentially after 37 weeks or so, it depends on the person, but when your body's ready to go into labor, there will be more and more receptors around your uterus.
And once you start labor, there's way more receptors on your uterus. They proliferate. But, when you are breastfeeding during pregnancy, it doesn't matter how much oxytocin you have in your body, your body isn't ready to go into labor, so those receptors are not going to be signaling to your uterus that it needs to start contracting.
Interestingly, as well, when you are pregnant, nipple stimulation and breastfeeding creates less oxytocin than it does when you're not pregnant. As well, um, there are less receptors on your uterus the more oxytocin you have during pregnancy. So that means more oxytocin, your body actually pulls away those receptors, uh, which means [00:06:00] that you can have all kinds of oxytocin flowing around in your body and it's not going to cause preterm labor.
This is really, really important for you to grasp. Another thing that can be a cause for concern is the nutritional aspect of breastfeeding and whether or not it's taking nutrition away from you or your baby, and we just don't have evidence that it is.
Generally speaking, your body can compensate for a lot of vitamin and mineral deficiencies without depleting you. Or taking away vitamins and minerals from your baby. Your body does that in a lot of really cool ways, like it can make you more sensitive to those vitamin and minerals.
So you are more easily absorbing them, which means you have to have less of them in order for them to have an impact on your body. It also can stop you from peeing those out, right? So. Your body's doing some really cool stuff to make sure that you and your child, both children, are getting what you need.
It doesn't mean that just because you have a deficiency that [00:07:00] your body, is at the mercy of the food you're taking in and all that kind of stuff. It's actually doing things to protect you in that process. One thing that you'll want to consider though is making sure that you're getting your iron levels checked because you're already at a higher risk for Anemia when you're pregnant, and that can be increased when you are breastfeeding.
So, just get those levels checked. You might need to, to supplement, uh, and as well you can talk with your care provider about that and any symptoms you're having because it's possible that there's other pieces at play as well that you'll want to just check out.
Now, if we're going to talk about high risk pregnancies, someone who is experiencing severe nausea,
it's important to do risk benefit analysis with, with these kinds of situations. We will talk about in the milk supply section about what, how much milk you're producing during pregnancy. But in many cases, you're not producing all that much. So if you're not producing all that much milk, it means [00:08:00] that you're not really pulling from many stores inside of your body to be producing that milk.
So it's not having a huge impact on you. Of course, this is an individual case by case situation. There are cases where this is not true, right? Where it might be having too much of an impact on your body and weaning might be the right choice for you and your family.
Um, another situation could be a person who is at high risk for preterm labor. And if you're at high risk for preterm labor, then you might have more receptor sites on your uterus and oxytocin in your body could become a concern. It's also important to consider the fact that if you're likely going to have a baby preterm, Breastfeeding a toddler can mean that you have a better established milk supply in the postpartum stage. It can also mean that you have a toddler to help you breastfeed through, like, and produce milk through that postpartum stage.
And that might mean more nutrition for your preterm baby. So that [00:09:00] could be a benefit of breastfeeding through the risk of preterm labor. Again, that is not the case for everyone, i. e. it's not like, it could be still a potential benefit for everyone and the risks might be too great for you and that is 1000 percent okay.
But it's important to consider the risks and benefits as you're working through these things. Another piece to consider is the fact that you're actually more likely to become pregnant with twins when you're breastfeeding. Some studies have shown up to 10 times more likely. And in these you become a high risk when you're pregnant with twins, and those high risk pieces can be very complex and intertwined.
There can be a lot of, uh, things to consider. And often, weaning is the advice that comes. There are some anecdotal stories and evidence and case studies of Healthy twin pregnancies and deliveries while breastfeeding. However, generally speaking, even the biggest pro breastfeeding through pregnancy advocates [00:10:00] do recommend weaning if you become pregnant with twins.
Milk Supply while breastfeeding during pregnancy
Let's move into milk supply. I already did an episode on milk supply. in the past. So if you're interested in hearing more about milk supply through weaning and toddler breastfeeding, I highly recommend having a listen to that because it will give you a good foundation. And even, I'm not sure if I talk about pregnancy explicitly in that episode.
However, uh, I bust a lot of myths in there and give you a lot of great science information about what's happening in your body. So I'm not going to go too, too deep into that element of the structures of your breasts and all that kind of stuff. However, pregnancy absolutely can impact your milk supply.
So Let's just start out by saying that your milk is safe for your toddler to drink while you are pregnant. Your milk doesn't change in a way that is harmful. There's no extra hormones that can get into your toddler while they're breastfeeding. You [00:11:00] are okay. It's also important to remember that there's no special diet needed when you're breastfeeding.
There may be certain things you want to avoid due to pregnancy, however, you don't need to eat anything extra or special just because you are breastfeeding and pregnant. You might need more calories in a day, potentially, but what's really important is that you are nourishing yourself. So, eat. Eat well. Of course, more nutritionally dense food.
are better, right? However, getting food inside of your body is important. And if the choice becomes processed food or nothing, choose. Something, right? I'm speaking as someone who had a lot of morning sickness and sometimes I was grabbing for convenient snack foods because that's all I could tolerate at times and so don't know.
stress about that potential. Obviously you do you and you have your own values that are important to you and that's great. But what's most important here is that you are being [00:12:00] nourished, that you are getting food into your body. So prenatal vitamins of course are recommended, while pregnant and they're also safe while breastfeeding.
If you're having trouble taking them, if there's something that you're concerned about, talk to your care provider. They can often help you find a prenatal vitamin that's right for you. Sometimes there's chewable options or ones that separate the iron and the calcium, so you can take things that might be upsetting your stomach at different times.
You can also go the route of getting certain vitamins or minerals prescribed individually, um, to make sure that you're getting the most important ones. There's lots of options available, so check with your doctor. Also, don't force water intake. This is really, really important. I say this to breastfeeding moms all the time, but it's just as important when you're pregnant and when you're pregnant and breastfeeding.
Drink when you are thirsty. You should be peeing regularly and your urine should be pale yellow, but you don't need to drink X amount of gallons of water a day for your own well being. Sometimes [00:13:00] it's difficult to get all that water in that you need because you're thirsty, but you're having a hard time drinking it.
That's valid. But you don't need to be forcing extra water. Extra water does not mean an increase in supply. And in fact, too much water can be harmful for your health and it can have a negative impact on your milk supply. All right. Another thing to consider is that your milk composition changes during pregnancy.
Sometimes, Toddlers will notice a change in the taste of milk incredibly early, like around conception, and others it takes a month or two before that change is more evident. But in pregnancy, you have lower lactose and glucose in breast milk but you actually have higher levels of sodium and protein.
So this can affect the flavor. It can make it a little more salty, a little less sweet, and that can impact your child. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in the weaning section. Hilary Flowers references a few studies in Adventures in Tandem Nursing, and she references one that's like [00:14:00] stated that about 70 percent of women in pregnancy notice a decline in milk supply and about 18 percent dry up completely.
Now she references another time about 10 percent stay the same or have an increase in milk. So, there's really no way to predict what's going to happen to you. Again, if your baby is under 12 months, you need to take special considerations. But generally speaking, it's okay that your milk dips, or decreases, or even potentially dries up entirely.
What happens is that progesterone levels in pregnancy are high and this actually causes some of the structures inside of your breast that store milk to be less effective. They kind of leak out the milk. When the placenta detaches in the uterus after delivery, the progesterone levels plummet and that actually is the thing that triggers the transition from colostrum to mature milk.
So that, that begins that hormonal process of your milk maturation. That can be really helpful to remember, right? Because progesterone levels [00:15:00] are typically low during breastfeeding, and so even if you have prolactin levels that are still there, the milk making hormone, those progesterone levels are often keeping the milk production at bay.
They're lowering, decreasing things typically, not all the time. Uh, any supply decreases are often hormonal in nature, right? That progesterone, it doesn't really matter how much prolactin is there which means that there's not too much you can do to increase your supply during pregnancy. Now, if your child decreases the amount that they are taking, right, if the suckling goes down, then yeah, it's likely that your supply will further decrease.
And if they breastfeed a lot, it's possible that it'll be a little bit higher than it would have otherwise. But again, it's really hormonal in nature that these decreases and dips are, are coming. And, Like I said, sometimes changes can be noticeable as early as conception, but most of the time they're over [00:16:00] that first month or two and through that first trimester where those changes are really noticeable, but your body will start producing colostrum somewhere in the second trimester, generally speaking, and that happens whether you're breastfeeding or not.
That happened the first time you were pregnant. It's going to happen again, and often that milk supply of colostrum starts to increase throughout the, uh, You know, second, third trimester, and your toddler might start nursing again, or you just might notice that their breastfeeding patterns change during that time, if your child is breastfeeding more, you might have a slight increase in the supply versus what you would have otherwise, but again, it's relatively lower amounts compared to mature milk, you know, outside of pregnancy.
If you have a concern about your child, you would have otherwise. Drinking colostrum. Just want to remind you that colostrum, right, it's that liquid gold. It continues to provide immune support, nutrition for your toddler, all of that good stuff, hydration even. There's wonderful [00:17:00] benefits of your child drinking colostrum.
The only thing that can be a bit of a drawback is that it can have a laxative effect. Effect and so you might notice differences in your child's stool. It's not from them being sick, however, and it's typically harmless and a okay for them to continue on breastfeeding.
All right, so we've made it through safety and milk supply.
Pain and Aversion while breastfeeding through pregnancy
Let's talk a little bit about pain and aversion and discomfort. Breastfeeding. Or, yeah, breastfeeding while pregnant. So, nipple sensitivity is really common, right? It's often one of the first things you notice when you're pregnant. Your breasts will get bigger, you have more sensitivity on your breasts. Your bras don't fit. And if you're breastfeeding through that pregnancy, one of the very, very first things you might notice is that your nipples become more sensitive when your child latches.
This is due to hormonal changes. It's due to your breast structure changing and preparing for breastfeeding of your newborn. That's happening even if this isn't the first time. that you're breastfeeding, even if you're currently breastfeeding, [00:18:00] and that can, like I said, create nipple sensitivity, and it might be uncomfortable when your toddler latches.
Now, that's just like general discomfort, and nipple twiddling can often exacerbate that, but then there's a difference between like discomfort or sensitivity and aversion. And aversion or agitation while breastfeeding is often , Negative feelings that you get when your child's latching, not just during letdown, that's something different, Demur, um, Dysphoric Milk Adjection Reflex. But, aversion can often feel like this skin crawly feeling and this urge to push your child off while they're breastfeeding. , it can happen outside of pregnancy. It's common for it to happen during pregnancy. It's common for it to pop up after pregnancy as well when you're tandem nursing, and often it is only experienced when either both kids are latched or only when your oldest is latched, not your youngest.
So, I have ideas around what aversion is and what you can do to support yourself. There isn't a ton of research around aversion, [00:19:00] unfortunately., but it's, it's, Common. Many, many, many mothers experience this while breastfeeding, and I know mothers who are breastfeeding newborns who are experiencing aversion.
There's lots of different things that can put you at higher risk for aversion, like birth trauma. I don't have time to dig into everything today, but what I want to kind of bring to your attention is this concept of a body budget. So, I actually talk about this a lot in my workshops. And the term was coined by a neuroscientist, Dr.
Lisa Feldman Barrett, and she talks about this idea that your brain is keeping track of all of the internal resources that your body has, so everything, all of the minerals and water and anything inside of your body. Your brain is keeping track and it's balancing it like a budget. Your toddler has one of these too, by the way.
Every human does. And in the same way that you do with a budget, make predictions about how much you're going to need to spend based on circumstances, right? So you know that when [00:20:00] Christmas is coming up, for example, or holidays, if you don't celebrate Christmas, or birthdays, or whatever is going on in your life, vacations, that you're going to need to adjust and account for a different level of spending, right?
So your body budget is a is accounting for that. It's keeping track of and trying to make predictions all the time about what it's going to need to spend and whether or not it has enough resources to compensate for that, whether it's going to be in a deficit or a surplus, right? And I like to think that aversion, like the way that I talk about it and think about it is that aversion often happens when your body budget is in a deficit.
It also, I think, tends to happen when your body is predicting a deficit. So that, again, it's not just about the actual resources in your body, whether or not you have enough. But it's more about the fear that you won't have enough. [00:21:00] So again, I can get into this in depth and I will do future episodes deeper on aversion.
But often what happens is there's already all of these hormonal changes during pregnancy, right? And then when we have these We could call them triggers, things that our brain is unconsciously scanning for signs of safety and danger. And if there's signs of danger, then it's going to put the brakes on certain things to try and protect and like keep us safe, right?
So it's giving you signals to motivate you to make changes. Now your body is absolutely wise and it's doing these things for very good reason. 100%. Sometimes weaning is a great option during nursing aversion, and other times because of things , your brain unconsciously has learned about what is safe and what is dangerous and what you have capacity for and what you don't, it might be making these changes almost erroneously, so it's [00:22:00] assuming that something's more dangerous than it is and then making bigger Predictions and trying to motivate you to make changes that might not be necessary.
That is really important to understand when we're talking about nursing aversion, because when you are pregnant or tandem feeding or whatever and you are, I'm going to talk more about nursing aversion a bit next week when we're talking about tandem feeding, but especially during pregnancy when you've got all of these things on your plate and you're stressed out and you've got all these things on your mental load and you're not doing the same things you did the first time around.
Maybe you didn't get to do a lot of things the first pregnancy and you thought well the next one I'm going to be working out more, I'm going to be eating right, I'm going to be doing those things. And then the reality hits that you're not able to do those things. That can be really stressful. Those can be signs of danger, right?
This big change that's happening. Maybe your marriage or your relationship isn't what you thought it would be at this point. Or maybe your partner is reacting differently to the pregnancy than you hoped. Maybe [00:23:00] there's moves happening. Maybe there are factors happening like wars and pandemics and things that are incredibly stressful or extended family things that are coming up.
All of those things are signs of danger. And a lot of times we're doing a great job at just keeping ourselves together. And then when we sit down to breastfeed, we're looking in this sweet little vulnerable face of this. A little young child that we're trying to protect and we love so much and it becomes too much.
It's so, it's so intense in those moments. It makes sense that we have this reaction to move away from that intensity. That is one of the things that I really believe happens during aversion and I've seen happen in my own life. I've absolutely seen it happen with clients and I've supported clients to work through their own aversion by understanding that idea.
So I can't offer you too, too much by ways of managing that at the moment, aside from [00:24:00] understanding that there's a lot of external things. That can be there, and sometimes it's making peace that those external things are there and kind of calming all of that sense of threat and danger inside of you.
Sometimes it's making changes for some of those external things, having hard conversations. Sometimes it's putting boundaries up. With your breastfeeding child, but with other people in your lives or getting in more support, um, reaching out for more support. All of those things can be important, right?
Helping your body to move into a surplus and then in your body budget and then also supporting your body to not have so much intensity around the signs of like danger and threats. Obviously, there are times where threats and danger are very, very real and genuine, and I'm not trying to downplay those.
They're incredibly valid, and sometimes we also have, I don't want to say that it's a too big of a reaction, but our body and our brain unconsciously perceive it as being a bigger threat than it [00:25:00] might actually be to us. And there's lots of reasons for this. I go into this in depth inside of my program, On Your Breastfeeding Story.
It's really difficult to unpack all these concepts in a podcast. I'd normally like to do them in coaching settings, as you can understand from this conversation. But I'm just going to leave it at that for today. And Say that that's really important. Now, when we're talking about kind of balancing your body budget, a really easy way to do that is to take things slow, ask for help, nap with your child if you're able to.
If you're working, obviously that's not always the case, and if you have a lot of children that might not be an option for you, but if you have a young toddler who's still napping, or a toddler in general who's still napping, take that opportunity. pregnancy is a defined period of time, it's not going to be forever.
Do what you need to do to support yourself through that time. Another thing that can be helpful is making a really simple cheat sheet of activities and ways to meet your needs and your toddler's needs and just keeping that on your phone or printed out on the wall so you don't have to do the [00:26:00] thinking in the moment.
You can just refer quickly to that and say like, Oh yeah, we could do X, Y, Z, whatever. That is something, again, that I help. my clients with inside of like my group coaching programs and whatnot, it can be really, really fast and simple way that can have really profound impact when you're pregnant and breastfeeding a toddler.
Weaning and Making Changes
All right, so let's talk about weaning and making changes. I said before, in the milk supply section, a lot of times your supply decreases in that first trimester into the second trimester, then somewhat increases during the second trimester into the third trimester. Sometimes kids will wean completely on their own, sometimes very early on in the pregnancy.
Some kids have nursing strikes or they'll stop breastfeeding for a few days, a few weeks, even a few months, and then they come back later on during pregnancy. Some kids breastfeed right through whether or not there's milk coming or not. And some kids will stop during pregnancy [00:27:00] and then come back once the new baby's there. And there's no way to predict what's going to happen for your child. Sometimes they wean when you wish they wouldn't, and sometimes they keep going when you wish they wouldn't. It's important to remember that creating intentional changes is really the same as it is at any other time.
So, if you want to change things in your breastfeeding relationship, you can. I've been talking about how to create intentional changes. All the way through this podcast, right? Like, for the last 40 something episodes. So, it's important to keep in mind that toddler breastfeeding stress spiral that I talk about on previous episodes.
You can go and have a listen to nearly any episode. I'll reference it, but, right? Your internal experience matters. It can be turning up the dial on breastfeeding frequency and duration. Or turning down the dial, especially when we're talking about toddlers. So keeping one eye inward, on your internal experience is important.
Meeting yourself and meeting those emotional needs is important. It's also important to consider [00:28:00] your child's Needs that are driving breastfeeding, could be food, it might not be food, it could be movement, it could be connection, it could be lots of different things. Meeting those underlying needs preemptively can be really helpful to take the pressure off of breastfeeding to always be the thing that's meeting the needs.
And it can be helpful too in the moment if Maybe those needs have built up and there's a lot of breastfeeding happening and you're having a hard time tolerating that or you just don't want to. That's all okay. It's not just about distracting them away from breastfeeding. It's really about meeting those needs.
That's what's really important there. Generally speaking, I don't love prescriptive do this in this way recommendations around making changes. You will find so, so, so, so, so many people who, and sometimes people that I really am a huge fan of around, like, in the breastfeeding and parenting spaces, who when it comes to weaning or night weaning or making changes will say, do this on the first day, do this on the second day, do this on the third day.
[00:29:00] Um, you know, this many minutes and this action. And I don't think that any of those are really evidence based and I don't think that they have the outcome that you really want.
I always talk about like the three C's, right? In when I'm talking about making changes, I really talk about the three stages. So the first is that compassion turning inward. The second is the curiosity and creativity, right? Looking at what the needs are there, meeting them preemptively. And then lastly is connection and the challenge where you are making those changes and supporting through the emotion and whatever comes up.
As well as building skills and finding that bond and that connection in the changing process. You also don't need to make changes. Even if there's some things that are difficult, making changes in the breastfeeding might, like, as far as actually stopping or changing the way that your child is breastfeeding, might not be the way to do it.
There might be other things that you can change in your life that actually ease that pressure, like I talked about in the version section. So, breastfeeding through [00:30:00] pregnancy and after with a newborn is a really, really incredible tool. It can be in your parenting. It can help your toddler go to sleep really easy.
It can help with supporting emotions and nervous system regulation, waking up, calming down, all that kind of stuff. It can help you have a connection with your child when, you're struggling, you're exhausted, you're having a hard time. Be that thing that just bonds you and keeps you close. It can also be great for kind of pressing pause and finding calm moments to reconnect.
Apart from just the connection aspect, it can just feel good to have that calm. And in the postpartum period specifically, it can be really amazing for regulating your milk supply, uh, making sure that You can navigate through that engorgement really well, and it can help your child transition into this big sibling role,
even pregnancy can be scary and challenging for a little kid who's like, Whoa, mom's energy levels have changed a lot. The [00:31:00] rhythms, the things that we've done in our life, they obviously wouldn't have words like energy levels, probably, but they will notice a difference, right? Like the rhythms, routines have shifted and, you know, all of that kind of stuff can be kind of jarring and difficult.
And so having this This thread continuously through all of these changes, breastfeeding, can be really, really helpful. And it can also support a connection between the siblings, and we're going to talk more about that in the Tandem Nursing episode next week. But there's, there can be really beautiful benefits to continuing breastfeeding.
I don't recommend just pushing through the hard, though. I don't recommend just pushing through the discomfort. I think that getting to the root of those things for you is really important. Now, sometimes, like I said, with nipple sensitivity and that kind of stuff, there can be times where it's like, actually, I'm just not going to focus too much on that pain and that discomfort.
I'm going to put my attention elsewhere because it's simply just the sensation. It's a little uncomfortable. [00:32:00] I do think that nursing aversion is something different than that, and I really, really don't recommend. Pushing through aversion and agitation and those things that are coming up. I do think that they need dealt with kind of at the source.
So we'll talk about that a little bit more next week. Um, but hopefully I'll be able to talk about that more in future episodes. And I've definitely touched on those things more in the past. And if that is something that you're experiencing, you know, I do have some support for you. So send me an email or whatever, and we can, we can talk about that some more.
Generally speaking as well, when you're making changes, , saying no to the feed while still saying yes to the need is really important, and I have a guide, a free guide to help you do that in your breastfeeding journey, and you can grab that at ownyourparentingstory. com slash guide, and it's a, I don't know, 16 page PDF e book guide with a cheat sheet that walks you through How to say no to your toddler in a way that's not going to trigger that toddler breastfeeding stress spiral, in a way that's going to deepen your bond and [00:33:00] support you through that transition.
So it's a great place to start if you could use some more support around that. All right. Catch you next week for the Tandem Nursing episode. I'm really excited. If you have specific topics you'd love to have covered, questions you have, please reach out. I am absolutely considering your input when I'm creating this series.