Informed Consent in Pregnancy, Birth & Breastfeeding: Using the BRAIN Method with Doula Taylor Shaffer from Holistic Pregnancy Podcast | Breastfeeding with Confidence Podcast
- jaimiezaki
- 7 days ago
- 38 min read
How to Use the BRAIN Method for Informed Consent in Pregnancy, Birth, and Breastfeeding
Pregnancy and birth are full of decisions—some big, some small, and some that feel overwhelming when they’re coming at you fast. If you’ve ever felt pressured, rushed, or “talked into” something during prenatal visits or birth, you’re not alone. In fact, most modern maternity care settings unintentionally blur the line between true informed consent and simple “compliance.”
And this matters, because your autonomy—your right to understand your options and make confident decisions—is the cornerstone of a safe, empowered pregnancy, birth, and postpartum experience.
Taylor Shaffer from the Holistic Pregnancy Podcast & Nested and Nourished and I are taking a deep dive into how to tell whether you’re receiving real informed consent, how to spot coercion or manufactured urgency, and how to use the BRAIN method to advocate for yourself in pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding.
***This blog post is a summary of the podcast, for a deeper dive and to hear real life stories & examples of exercising informed consent during pregnancy and breastfeeding, lessons learned the hard way, and real-life tips from real-life scenarios, be sure to LISTEN to the Breastfeeding with Confidence podcast NOW.
What Informed Consent Really Means in Pregnancy and Birth
Most hospitals treat consent forms as legal documents meant to cover liability. But checking a box or signing a form does not mean you’ve been truly informed.
Real informed consent includes:
Understanding the benefits
Knowing the risks
Being offered alternatives
Having your intuition honored
Knowing what happens if you choose to do nothing
Being given time to decide
Having your refusal respected
If any of these are missing, it’s not fully informed consent. Many women assume they’ll “just know” when something is off—but the truth is, providers are often trained to sound calm, caring, and confident even when they’re recommending things that may not align with your goals. And while most providers mean well, very few are trained in true autonomy-centered care.
This is where the BRAIN method becomes your greatest tool.
How to Use the BRAIN Method During Appointments and Labor
Any time a test, procedure, induction, epidural, or intervention is presented, pause and ask:
B — Benefits“What are the benefits of this for me and my baby?”
R — Risks“What are the risks or possible complications?”
A — Alternatives“What other options do we have?”
I — Intuition“Does this align with what my gut and instincts are telling me?”
N — Nothing / Not Now“What happens if we wait, or do nothing at all?”
If your provider becomes defensive, dismissive, or pressures you to decide immediately (outside of a true medical emergency), that’s a red flag.
How to Tell if Something Is a Real Emergency
Here’s the truth no one tells pregnant women: true emergencies are rare. A real emergency requires immediate action within minutes—not “prep for a C-section,” “let’s get anesthesia in here,” or “baby hasn’t latched in 30 minutes, we need formula now.”
If you’re unsure whether something is urgent, ask:
“Do we have time to talk about this?”
If the answer is no, ask:
“Please explain what’s happening as you do it.”
You still deserve autonomy even during emergency interventions.
Informed Consent Doesn’t End at Birth: It Matters in Breastfeeding Too
The pressure doesn’t magically disappear once your baby is born. In fact, the immediate postpartum period is where many moms experience the most coercion—especially around:
Forced or rushed latch attempts
Arbitrary feeding timelines
Formula “top-offs”
Premature tongue-tie diagnoses
Unnecessary separations
Pressure to pump instead of latch
“Your baby isn’t getting enough” fear tactics
If you want breastfeeding to work, you must protect your autonomy here just as much as during labor.
You get to ask:
“Is there a medical reason to supplement?”
“What are the risks of giving formula this early?”
“Can you show me alternatives like hand expression or syringe feeding?”
“Can we give this more time?”
“Can all newborn exams be done on my chest?”
“Can you explain why you think my baby needs this intervention?”
A strong breastfeeding plan matters just as much as a strong birth plan—and most moms aren’t taught this until it’s too late.
Want to Get More Confident Before Baby Arrives?
You don’t have to wing this. You can learn the tools, the options, and the language you need to protect your autonomy and make confident decisions from pregnancy through postpartum.
✨ Download my FREE guide: 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Breastfeeding👉 littlebearlactation.com/mistakes
Whether you're preparing for birth or already navigating newborn life, you deserve informed, respectful care every step of the way.
Transcript:
When you have a conversation with a provider, they're not gonna just blatantly bully you, right?
Like, they're gonna come at it from an angle that seems like, “Hey, I have your best interest in mind.” And maybe they do, and maybe they're also just uneducated—not uneducated like they shouldn't be a doctor, but uneducated about what informed consent means, right? Mm-hmm. But sometimes they can tell us something, whether they mean it or not, in a way to sound like it is in our best interest, and it's really not.
So your question is, how do we actually know? Are we getting the full picture?
I am Jaimie Zaki, IBCLC and mama of five. And this is the Breastfeeding with Confidence Podcast, where pregnant and new mothers learn how to prepare for and overcome breastfeeding challenges without being controlled by stress, fear, and anxiety. Each week we'll answer your questions, share breastfeeding success stories, and inspire you to shut out the toxic whispers of the world and embrace your God-given intuition to make confident breastfeeding decisions.
Let's dive in.
I am so glad that you're here with me today. I know this episode is coming out on Black Friday. You are so busy. I hope you had a beautiful Thanksgiving yesterday if you are in the United States, and if you are starting to prepare your holiday shopping chaos, I know how crazy that can all be, and I am so grateful that you are still here with me today.
Today we are going to be talking to my friend Taylor about informed consent, and I know we talk about that a lot on this podcast. But it is really, really important that we talk about it right now again, because this window between Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's is when the most inductions happen, the most pressure happens, and when the support systems are not as readily available as they should be and need to be.
And so because of that, I wanna make sure that as you welcome your baby, you are reminded of how important informed consent is. We are having a very real, very real conversation about informed consent today. So I hope you are ready to be inspired.
Before we get started, I wanted to remind you that I have a free “Five Mistakes to Avoid When Breastfeeding” guide that you can download right now at littlebearlactation.com/mistakes. That’s /M-I-S-T-A-K-E-S. It's linked in the show notes. I want you to go ahead and grab that for free because it lays out the top five most common breastfeeding mistakes that I've seen new moms falling for. And the thing is, they're pretty much preventable as long as you have a good base understanding of breastfeeding, of how to navigate early challenges. You can avoid these challenges and make breastfeeding just a little bit easier. So go ahead and grab that guide. The link is in the show notes, and then listen in because today's episode is a great one.
We are back with Taylor Shaffer from The Holistic Pregnancy Podcast. Taylor, can you introduce yourself and tell everybody who you are and what you do and why you do it?
Yeah, absolutely. Like she said, my name is Taylor. I am a mom, first and foremost. I have two little girls and I’m a wife to my awesome, supportive husband. But I am currently residing in upstate South Carolina and I own a doula agency here where we have a handful of people on our team—our Greenville home birth doulas.
And we specifically serve moms who are looking for physiologic birth outside the hospital. But I'm also the founder of Nested and Nourished, which is an online community and a home basically for women who wanna approach pregnancy and birth and postpartum with confidence and autonomy and deep nourishment.
So we really focus a lot on that nourishment piece as well as informed consent, autonomy, all the things that we're gonna be talking about today. So I have online courses. I also have a podcast, like Jaimie mentioned, called Holistic Pregnancy. I've got a great online Facebook community. We've just got a little bit of everything.
So, yeah, it's just been really fun and I'm super passionate about autonomy, so this is gonna be a great conversation.
I love that. And I love, um, you were just talking about like the nourishment and I was actually just talking to a company who focuses on postpartum nutrition and I was like, we were talking about that nourishment and how important that is.
And you just saying that made me think of how informed consent, what we're talking about today, is like nourishment for the soul. Totally. And then you need nourishment for the body, so it all goes together really well.
So we're talking about informed consent today, and I always tell people—it's kind of funny ‘cause when I was in nursing school, you know that you're preached “informed consent, informed consent, informed consent.” You need to get the consent signed form—or signed, like the consent form signed. Wow, I just said that all jumbled.
But it was like everything was “informed consent.” And then I remember they were talking about vaccines actually. And I was like, but what about informed consent? And they were like, this is informed consent. You're giving information and they're consenting. And I'm like, that's not the point of informed consent. It's benefits and risks and letting them decide.
And so I kind of carried that conversation with me all through motherhood and my experience supporting women during birth, because it’s unfortunate but true that the informed consent that the hospital speaks of is not true informed consent.
So could you tell us what informed consent is?
Yeah, so this is a big one. I like to refer to those forms—those informed consent forms that they give you—as like “cover your ass” contracts basically. They're all about liability. Consent forms in a hospital, especially around pregnancy and birth, are for liability reasons. So they are going to maybe say something about risks, maybe say something about benefits. They're gonna be hidden in there in the fine print because legally they have to do that.
But the difference is that those consent forms are about liability. Informed consent is about autonomy, and that is the missing piece, right? So signing that piece of paper doesn't mean that you are actually informed about the thing that you're about to undergo, or whether you're declining or accepting doesn’t mean that you actually got the picture. It just means that you agreed to do it or you declined to do it.
So true informed consent means understanding why something is being recommended, not just “this is what it is.” So that means what the risks and the benefits are, what the alternatives are, what happens if you decline it. Like, what does this mean truly for your health at the end of the day? And not being fear-mongered or coerced into it. And honestly, the biggest piece that is usually missing here is, like you said, Jaimie, being given time to decide.
To be given free choice and not be told, “Hey, this is what you should be doing, so sign this form if you're cool with that.” Actually it should be, “Hey, here is what we recommend. Here is why. Here are all of the risks, all of the benefits. Here's what you could do instead. Here's what happens if you do nothing. Take some time to think about this and decide what you feel is best.”
I've never heard a doctor say that in a traditional hospital setting. I have witnessed my midwife say that and a couple of other providers that I love and trust. But it's very rare, unfortunately, especially when it comes to pregnancy and birth. We're treated like patients and not like human beings who are undergoing a normal physiologic process, right?
So, yeah, they typically just jump straight to compliance and not consent. That's really the bottom line.
Yeah, no. As you were speaking, I was just thinking, like a couple different things. I always tell people that the other side of informed consent is respected refusal. Like, it cannot be informed consent if somebody does not respect your decision to refuse. Like, simple as could be.
But the other thing—just you talking about the consent forms being a legal document and that's all—reminded me of a conversation that I had with one of my husband's friends, like shortly after my son was born. And I remember we were talking about some birth stuff and some consent forms—like I think it was VBAC forms or something. And he was an attorney and he dealt with contracts on a regular basis and he was like, “You would not believe this, but those consent forms are the easiest things to get thrown out in the court of law.”
Really?
Yeah. And I just remember that conversation and thinking like, so why? They keep saying it's for liability, but—and it's like, obviously nobody's gonna have the money to go against this hospital, right?
Right.
No, there's not. Like, it's all about legality and it's not even that serious. Like they can get that thrown out easily. It just made me think, it's almost like showboating to show power.
Yep. Like it's also on their conscience probably, like, “Well, we did our due diligence. They signed a form. They agreed to this.” So like, “We didn't…” You know? I feel like they probably—I'm making assumptions here—but if I were in the position of being a provider, showing up to this person I never met, and I'm about to do something potentially life-altering to them, it would make me feel better if they signed a form saying it was cool with them, you know?
Yeah.
So if I'm like, “That's the only thing I know how to do because I'm a surgeon, not a person who assists people in birth. I went to school for surgery. That's what I'm best at, and I am recommending that this person have surgery. Yeah, I'm gonna want them to sign a form that says they're okay with me operating on them.”
You know, it's not like I'm going in and being this person's friend and their confidant and holding their hand and saying, “Well sure, I went to school for surgery, but also let me be your support person right now.” That's not what they're there to do. They're like, “My job is to do this, so sign this paper saying you're okay with it, and then we can all move on with our lives.”
Mm-hmm. Yeah. If you all could see her face right now, like it's—it's true. It's true. And that's—I do wanna caveat, that's not to say that there aren't good doctors out there who do make an effort, but they're far and few between.
Right. Yeah. Like I said, I'm making maybe some generalizations here, but unfortunately I've just, I've seen a lot. And I thought that the further I got into birth work, the more faith I would have in doctors. And actually it really is the opposite.
Yeah.
Unfortunately.
Also, in the area you are, it's not—they're not gonna be the first people to learn what to do, I guess I should say.
No.
You talked about informed consent being the opportunity to take the time to make a decision and to not be coerced. So how can a mom know that she's actually being given the full picture and that, you know, she's striving to exercise her right to informed consent?
She's trying to ask the right questions, but she's also maybe a little afraid or concerned, or her partner is a little skeptical and they don't know how to be sure that they are not being coerced, you know? ‘Cause I think so often doctors and nurses can seem so compassionate in the advice that they give. So you think they must be giving you the full truth, and that's not always accurate. So what is it that they can do to figure out, like, are we being fooled here? How do we ask the right questions? How do we decide?
Totally. I think it's, uh—I mean, in most situations, when you have a conversation with a provider, they're not gonna just blatantly bully you, right? Like, they're gonna come at it from an angle that seems like, “Hey, I have your best interest in mind.” And maybe they do, and maybe they're also just uneducated—not uneducated like they shouldn't be a doctor, but uneducated about what informed consent means, right? Mm-hmm. But sometimes they can tell us something, whether they mean it or not, in a way to sound like it is in our best interest, and it's really not.
So your question is, how do we actually know? Are we getting the full picture?
So the first thing you need to do is ask questions—like, real questions. Not like, “Can I do that?” or “Can I decline that?” First of all, I don't like to ask for permission, but maybe that's just me, okay? And I totally understand if you're like, “I feel really intimidated by an authority figure or someone who has literally gone to school for 10 years to do this and I haven't. So what do I know?”
First off, I wanna encourage you that you know. You know, because you are the mother and you have the ability to follow your maternal instincts, also called your intuition, right? But you can ask questions. So you probably, if you're listening to this episode and you are pregnant or you've been in this world at all, you've probably heard of the BRAIN method, which is Benefits, Risks, Alternatives, Intuition, and Nothing.
So what that means is anytime you're presented with a potential test or procedure or intervention, you can ask the questions: What are the benefits of this? What are the risks of this? What are the alternative options if I still wanna do this thing but I wanna do it differently? What does my intuition say, like what is that gut feeling? And then what happens if I do nothing—if I sit back and wait?
So that's the first thing you can do: assess those things and get really specific and direct with your questions to your provider. And then once you ask a question, pause and let them fully answer. And if they get defensive, that is a red flag, okay? If they're trying to dismiss you, if they're trying to shake it off like it's not a big deal—maybe you're asking a really important question that is going to completely shape the way that your birth experience goes—and they're like, “Oh, well, you know, it'll probably be fine,” or “It's no big deal,” or “Well, most people do this this way and it turns out fine.”
First of all, that's subjective. And second of all, that's them dismissing your question. That's not answering the things that you were asking them.
So the goal here is not to be a difficult patient, right? We all wanna be civil. We all wanna be on the same page with our provider. We wanna all be on the same team, because at the end of the day, if you're putting your birth experience, potentially your life and your baby's life, in their hands, you probably wanna have a good relationship with them, I would imagine, right?
So the goal really is not to piss people off in this situation. But it is to be a well-informed participant in your care. You are not being told what to do. You guys are working together to create a plan. Yes, they are the doctor, but also, yes, it is your body and your baby. You hired them for their expertise. That means you can choose to listen to their expertise or you can choose to ignore what they tell you.
So you have every right to ask all of those questions and then to say, “I would like some time to decide. Let's revisit this at my next appointment,” if it's a prenatal test or whatever. You can go home. You can ask for other people's opinions—like maybe you have a doula or you have another friend who is in the birth world or whatever—and you wanna ask someone else's opinion. Get a second opinion. Maybe you wanna go home and read a book, listen to a podcast, research on your own. You have every right to do that.
And if they make it seem like, “No, you have to decide right now,” aside from a rare true emergency situation, if it is not emergent and they're making it feel like, “Okay, you need to answer me because I just said this thing to you,” that's a red flag. They're getting defensive, dismissive, won’t answer your questions—that's a red flag.
So if in any of those cases, I would, one, take some time. Go home, think about it, sleep on it. Don't feel pressure to make a decision right there. And two, if this continues to happen, I would really evaluate: Is this the person that I want to be in the room when I have my baby? Is this the person I want to be in charge of my care?
Because if the answer to that is no, or if you're afraid or intimidated or you just flat out don't like this person, it is never too late to switch providers. Ever.
Yeah, no, I would agree with that. I switched providers with my second—uh, or my first, my first, sorry—at 34 weeks.
Okay. Yeah, I've seen it. I've seen people switch at 42 weeks because their provider risked them out of care and they were like, “Well, I'll just go find another midwife who will take me on.” And you know what? They had a great home birth.
Yeah. Yeah. No, I always tell people the same thing: it's never too late. Even if they say it's too late, it's not.
Next question. You kind of talked about emergencies and, like you said, except for the rare emergency—how do you know if it's an emergency? Like, if everybody's acting like it's an emergency, how can you gauge: is this an emergency, or do we have time?
Well, it's pretty rarely an emergency. I'll start with that. If you are in labor and they're like, “Okay, your baby—their heart rate has dropped and it's not coming back up. We have to get them out if they want to live,” that would be an emergency, right? If it's like five minutes or less to save a life, we have to rush you back, put you under general anesthesia, we don't even have time to get an epidural—that would be an emergency.
If they are saying, “We'd like to prep you for C-section, and let's get you an epidural. Let's get you nice and shaved. Let's do all of these things”—that is not emergent. If it's an emergency, they gotta get a baby out to help a baby live. Or maybe they have to put you under anesthesia or do something—maybe it's something with you. Maybe it's not even the baby. Maybe your blood pressure has severely dropped and they're giving you a shot of adrenaline or something like that to bring your blood pressure back up. They're not gonna do that if you're sitting there having a conversation with them, right?
So it's kind of a hard question to answer, Jaimie, because you don't know until you get there, right? And it's pretty rare that those things happen. But anytime you allow interventions in the birth space, the risks of those things rise. So my first question would be: Have you really researched what birth is like and what the process looks like and what can happen when you introduce those interventions?
Because there's always a ripple effect, right? And so if you're thinking, “I might consent to an epidural. I might consent to have this OB that I really don't like and that is really, you know, aggressive be at my birth”—if you're considering those things already, you need to know what the possible outcomes will be.
So while you're pregnant, if you're thinking, “I may have an epidural,” you need to know what happens—the potential side effects—when you get the epidural before you get to the hospital and the anesthesiologist is like, “This could cause low blood pressure. This could cause paralysis. This could cause headaches…” You know, that should not be the first time you're hearing those things.
I don't think I've ever even heard them say any of those risks. They just hand a piece of paper and have ‘em sign it.
Yeah. So I would really be aware before you even get to your birth of what are the potential emergencies that could happen. Not to send you down like an anxiety hole and fear spiral, but to know: What's my plan A, B, and C? And my partner or my doula or whoever is with me should know, “Hey, in the event that an emergency intervention is warranted, here's how I would like that process to go,” right?
Mm-hmm.
Like, I had zero intention of transferring to the hospital. I had two home births and I had zero intention of transferring to the hospital. And thankfully I did not have to. But you better believe I had like five backup plans because I was like, “Well, if I were to transfer for this reason, here's X, Y, and Z that I would like. Here are my wishes for these situations.” And if I were to have to transfer in postpartum for, you know, a hemorrhage or whatever, like, “Here’s X, Y, and Z preferences in that scenario.”
But even if I didn't have to transfer—even though I was just at home—say I am in labor and my baby gets stuck, I have a shoulder dystocia. My midwife knows: here’s the order of events that I feel comfortable with and the levels of intervention before we majorly call this an emergency, right?
Mm-hmm.
So I educated myself on physiologic birth to know: Where are the potential areas where an emergency could arise? What are those emergent situations and what would I want to be done in that situation?
At the end of the day, is your goal to have a vaginal birth, or is your goal to feel like you made the choices? You know, for some people it's like, “Vaginal birth or bust. I am not having a cesarean for any reason unless I'm about to die.” Right? Whereas other people are like, “If it comes down to it and I'm really struggling, or baby is struggling, let's just call it and let's go have a C-section.” That's not an emergency necessarily, even if they might paint the picture that way.
But at the end of the day, you knew that before you went into labor, right? You knew what was gonna constitute an emergency, and it doesn't have to be an emergency for you to consent to it, right? You can change your mind anytime.
But I guess really, to answer your question of how do I know if it's an emergency, you ask, “Can we have a minute to think about this?” And if they say, “Actually no, you can't,” you say, “Okay, why?” And if they're like, you know—hopefully they would explain in the moment—“I would love to explain this to you, but actually I really don't have time to explain it.” Like, if they're saying that to you, I mean, most likely, yeah, for sure it's an emergency.
And that doesn't mean, “Just let them do whatever it is.” Okay, “Please proceed with whatever needs to be done, but please explain it to me as it's happening.” That is a really important piece.
And if you're unable—say maybe you're unconscious or you're unable to ask for those things—make sure your husband or your partner or your doula is aware and can say those things for you.
So, if they are resuscitating a baby, for example, after a baby is born—this is a really common situation where they will act like it's an emergency. Or immediately after birth, if baby's not nursing well—which we'll get to that—but they'll act like it's really emergent. And there are different levels, right? Sometimes babies need help coming around if they're born. That doesn't mean that they're lifeless and need CPR, right? It might just mean that they're having trouble because of mucus in their mouth, right? So there's different levels to quote-unquote emergencies.
At any point you can say, “Do not cut that umbilical cord. Resuscitate the baby between my legs.”
Right. Even if it's an emergency.
Yes. And I just wanna say that we—I had my friend Colette, she's a labor and delivery nurse, and she was on the podcast and we talked about that, like how they act like that's not an option here in the States.
They do. But it's—yeah. Everything is an option because you hired them. You are not a slave to the hospital.
Mm-hmm.
They don't own you. They can't make decisions for you. Right? So even in an emergency, or if you're not sure if it's an emergency, you still have rights. Just because something emergent happens doesn't mean you suddenly give up all of your rights and autonomy. You can still have a say in how the emergency is handled.
Right.
Like, even if you're transferring from a home birth to a hospital, you have the right to say, “No, I'm not getting in that ambulance. I'll get in my car and my husband will drive me.” At the end of the day.
I would say, really to answer your question—this is a very roundabout way to get there—but educate yourself prenatally. Seriously. Like really, really educate yourself. Do not go with the flow if you wanna have a good experience. It's not a thing. You cannot wing it in birth, okay? Or you're gonna get walked all over and then you're gonna look back and be like, “Huh, that didn't go how I expected.”
And not to say that we can plan birth, right? But we can know what's coming and what the potentials are, and how we want those to be handled. The tide can just carry you away. But if you have a boat and a life raft—
Right, right. And somebody else in the room who knows your wishes too.
Yeah. So, educate yourself. And then if you get in a moment—in a situation that you were not prepared for—and you're like, “I don't know if this is emergent or not,” ask questions if you can. If you're physically able, ask questions. And then just remember that even if it is an emergency, you can still call the shots in most cases.
So. That was a really long answer, but—
No, it was good. It was good. I think it's a whole bunch of things that everybody needs to think about, and it really does translate to breastfeeding too. I know a lot of people listening have already had their babies. Some are pregnant and preparing to have their babies. That's why this conversation is so important to have because pregnancy is when you start practicing the informed consent. Birth is the first test. It's not the exam. It's not the final exam. It is the first test in exercising informed consent. And then as a mother, you are going to be continuously put in positions where you have to utilize these skills to advocate for yourself and for your baby.
Like, birth is not the final exam. That is the beginning. And I don't think people realize that.
Yep.
So, what—I mean, I know from my perspective—but as somebody who works with new moms who maybe did a really good job of advocating for themselves during birth and they had an amazing birth, and then I see that breastfeeding all of a sudden seems to take that amazing experience, pick it up, crumple it up, and throw it in the trash can. And all of a sudden they're like, “Well, I had this great birth, but breastfeeding's not working. I thought if I had a good birth, breastfeeding would work.”
But they never prepared for informed consent with breastfeeding after their baby has been born. So can you kind of talk about what that looks like in the hospital in those immediate moments after birth when the nurse is trying to help them breastfeed and kind of how informed consent quickly slides out the window again and you gotta pull it back?
Yeah. This part, honestly, Jaimie, is what pisses me off the most, because I have attended so many of these births where moms will really fight tooth and nail to get the experience they want. And maybe it doesn't go exactly how they thought, but they're like, “I felt really good about that.” And then suddenly it's like the baby is out and the lights come on and it's like, the show's over. We're done now. We're done respecting your autonomy. We're done talking in quiet voices. Baby's out, the hard part's done.
And it's almost as if the reverence goes right out the window, right? Like, I always talk about the difference in a hospital birth and a home birth. A lot of times—not always, but a lot of times—it’s the provider's respect for birth. And there's a reverence, right? Of like, this is a really hard thing, but it's also sacred. It's a rite of passage. This is a mom getting to exercise her rights and to experience something that is gonna transform her for the rest of her life. And there is a sacredness to birth.
And then when the baby's out and it's not so hard anymore, we're able to snap back to reality. Suddenly everyone thinks like, “Oh, we no longer have to be quiet and respectful. She's back.” You know? Like, “We don't—there's nothing to distract her from now.”
And with that, everything becomes very casual. Everything becomes like, “Oh hey, bestie, let me just help you do this and this and this.” And you're like, “Wait. But I just went through the hardest moments of my life. I need a minute. I need some space. I don't want you to be shoving my boob into my baby's mouth. Leave me alone.”
And they certainly—like a mom certainly doesn't want you telling them, as a provider or as a nurse, “All right, now you're on the clock. If your baby doesn't eat in the next 30 minutes, then we're gonna have to give 'em formula.” And you're like, “Wait, wait, wait, what? I'm just still coming back to my body. I'm holding my baby. I don't even know who they are yet. I'm just looking at their face and I just wanna hold them, and I have no desire to force them to nurse right now.”
And that is biological. That is not like you forgot how to be a mom all of a sudden. That is a biological thing. A baby is going to look for your breast. It's gonna happen. Right? If you give them the option to be skin-to-skin with you and to have space and time after birth, they're gonna start rooting. They're gonna start looking for your nipple. That is instinct, right? We don't have to force that.
Now, does that mean that they're always gonna successfully find it and latch right away? No, not necessarily. But babies have time. And you know, Jaimie, the baby doesn't need very much the day they're born, right? They come out full. That's what I like to tell moms: they're not hungry. They're not coming out screaming for milk. They're coming out just wanting to be held by you.
Yeah.
Right? This is a new environment. It's cold, it's bright, people are loud, and all they wanna do is smell mom and lay on mom's chest and feel her heartbeat and feel safe. There's no need to rush this process.
So if someone is trying to take your baby away, slap their hand. That's what I say. Don't let them touch your baby unless they're doing it on your chest. Right? Even a newborn exam does not have—they do not have to take your baby away and swaddle them to do a newborn exam and footprints. That pisses me off. I'm like, you can do it right here on the bed. Even if you don't have to be holding your baby, they can do it right next to you. They don't have to take your baby away. And they can wait a few hours. They don't have to do it 20 minutes after the baby's born.
There's a reason—there’s a thing called the golden hour, and that is that first hour after birth. We should be left alone. No one should be forcing your baby to nurse. If they latch on their own, that's amazing. You should not be forcing it. You should not be doing tests or procedures or exams in that first hour. There is no physiologic need for that baby to be messed with during that time.
It makes me crazy when the nurses are like, “Okay, it's time to feed the baby,” and they sit the bed straight up and they're like, “All right, sit up now. Hold the baby like this,” and smash. And it's like, why? No. No. I would just say, “No, thank you.” Like, it's not gonna work. And then all that does is create a really bad latch. And then now you've associated pain with the first latch and with breastfeeding.
Yep.
And you've undermined confidence. And you're just sitting there trusting that these nurses have your best interest at heart—and they don't. They don't even know what they're doing half the time. And most of them will tell you that if you really ask them.
Yeah.
Like, I cannot tell you how many times as a doula—so, my sweatshirt said “doula / IBCLC” on it—and I cannot tell you how many times the nurse looked at me and she was like, “Oh, you're an IBCLC too. Great. I don't have to do anything here.” And literally just backed off, ‘cause they're like, “I help moms breastfeed all the time, but I don't know what I'm doing.”
Yeah.
Like, they'll admit it. They'll admit it, right? They've been told, “Here's a couple steps,” but it's not a routine that works for everybody. Every baby's different.
So I would say, to be able to avoid that and being told what to do and whatnot after your baby is born, again, it goes back to educating yourself before you even get there. What does my baby actually need in the first 24 hours? When does it become a problem if they're not nursing well? What do I do if their latch isn't great? How do I identify a shallow latch?
You can learn all these things as a mother. You don't have to be a lactation consultant to identify a shallow latch.
Mm-hmm.
You can learn what that looks like. You can learn, like, “Okay, I know of three different positions I could try if my baby doesn't wanna latch, if they seem fussy, if I'm holding them in cross-cradle like most people portray on TV and whatever.” And that's actually how I do nurse my babies, but for a lot of people it doesn't work that way. You could try laying back and holding them. Knowing ahead of time that the standard way to do everything is not the way you have to do it.
Yeah.
You have options, but you've gotta know what those options are. Otherwise, when you have just had this extremely exhausting labor and you're like, “Oh, okay, I don't really care what happens anymore because I'm tired and I'm just glad my baby's here,” it's really easy to let people just tell you what to do.
So a couple of things would be: learn ahead of time and then write them down. Put them in your birth plan. Make sure your husband knows, your partner knows, your doula knows. Make sure you have these things on paper and they can remind you, like, “Hey, you said that you wanted to try this.” And you could be like, “Oh yeah, I did say that, but I forgot because I'm freaking exhausted right now,” right?
And knowing what happens when you introduce formula that early and “topping off” and all of those stupid things that they tell you are fine—and they're not fine—learn about those ahead of time. Take a breastfeeding class prenatally. I wish every mother would take some sort of breastfeeding class prenatally. I wish I had done it with my first. You can get one.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm sure Jaimie has a great one you could probably go get right now. But like, even—I’ll give an example. So with my first baby, I learned everything there is to know about birth. Pregnancy, birth, and even postpartum. As a mother, I did not learn about babies and breastfeeding. I was like, “I've nannied. I know how to take care of a baby.” I didn't think about when a baby's three hours old, what I should be doing.
No, for sure. And I think, you know, even a lot of moms will be like, “Oh, I took a breastfeeding class and it still didn't work out.” And I'm like, “Where'd you take your breastfeeding class?” “Well, the hospital.” I'm like, okay, so maybe they told you the bare basics of how breastfeeding works, but that's the starting point. And you should have probably known that before you ever got pregnant.
Right.
And we're not taught; that's not your fault. But those bare basics we need to know sooner. It's the: What do you do if your baby doesn't latch in that first hour? What do you do if your baby isn't latching at all and they're starting to say, “Okay, well now he really needs formula ‘cause he’s not latching”? What other options do you have?
And the thing is, with breastfeeding there are so many options. And that is—like, you brought up the birth plan. And I love that because I actually just did a workshop, and it was on a breastfeeding plan. Because everybody has a birth plan and nobody has a breastfeeding plan. They put “breastfeeding: check; skin-to-skin: check,” and they have no plan for what happens in those first three days when the nurses are saying, “Oh, your baby's lost weight and he's not latching well. You need to get formula now.”
Mm-hmm.
Yep. Even in my home birth, I had a midwife who was an IBCLC and she helped me with the initial latch ‘cause I couldn't figure it out on my own. She did the newborn exam and said, “Oh, your baby's tongue-tied. You need to get those revised.” I was like, “Okay, what does that mean?” And then she gave me a number of a pediatric dentist to call. They said, “We can get you in three weeks.” And that was it.
And I was like, “Okay, so my baby's not latching. Whatever this issue you're supposedly telling me is wrong, I can't get fixed for three weeks.” And she made it seem like, “You fix this, it's all better.” And I was like, “Okay.” I knew nothing. I had not done any research. She helps me latch the first time, she leaves, I can never get baby to latch again. And I'm like, “Well, what do I do?” You know, I'm thinking, I don't need to do all of this research and work because my midwife is an IBCLC. Surely I will have her help.
And I didn't.
Yeah.
And like, just me as a very Type A, very prepared person—I'm like, “I read a whole book on breastfeeding.” I had never used my body and my senses to figure out, like, how do I position my nipple? How do I—? I didn't realize you had to put the baby's nose to your nipple.
I was like—
I actually don't recommend that one.
Okay. Well, that's good ‘cause I've never actually done that either because it doesn't work. But that is what everybody says and that’s—that’s what you say is the exact point: that everybody will give you these bite-sized talking points about breastfeeding and you're like, “What does that mean?”
Yeah.
There's no context.
There's no context. It frustrates me, hearing that too about—like, I love midwives who care about breastfeeding. And I know some really great IBCLC midwives, I will say. But I also see that story and hear that story a lot where somebody thinks because their midwife is an IBCLC, they're going to be able to just handle the full picture. And they just—it’s not even that they don't know what they're doing, they don't have the capacity to.
No. It's exhausting.
They don't have the capacity to. And it's not a slight against them, it's just like, at some point you kind of gotta pick a lane and stick in it. And as much as the two are connected, breastfeeding care really requires so much time and attention when there are challenges.
Mm-hmm.
Like, it requires a lot. And, you know, a lot of people will be like, “Oh, it's not just a 20-minute visit where you go get your latch fixed and everything's—” It's very hard. It's very hard, especially if you have never done it before and your baby doesn't just latch automatically.
And it's like, just the tongue-tie thing—that's a whole other conversation of informed consent. Because what do people tell you? They tell you you've gotta go get it released and it's all gonna get better. And that's not the full picture.
Yeah. Do I believe in releases? Absolutely. But I believe there's a proper structure to how we do a release, when we do a release, and what we do in the meantime. Because there's going to be a wait period. I hate to tell you, it's not gonna be like, “Oh, go get this clipped and it's all better.” Even if you could get it clipped right away, it doesn't always work that way.
Yeah.
But let's say—like, it's just—there's going to be a waiting period, whether it's two days or two weeks. You need to know how to feed your baby in the meantime.
Yep. And spoiler alert: we got that revised three weeks later and nothing changed.
Yeah. Well, and that's because there was no process, right?
Right. It was an unnecessary release, in my opinion. There should have been bodywork that should have happened.
There's always gotta be bodywork first. That's what I tell everybody. Like, I'm not gonna go into a whole thing on this because I've got a guide on it and I talk about this constantly, but at a bare minimum, do not get a release without bodywork. But do not—like, I even struggle to say, “Don't get a release without seeing an IBCLC,” because you saw an IBCLC and she told you to go get a release. And it's like, um, from like a three-second exam, I'm like, you're not checking oral function.
Exactly. Informed consent means you need to understand the function of the tongue and which part of that function is not working properly and why a release is the answer.
Yep. I knew none of that. And just like, “Whoa, my saving grace.” And then it didn't work and I was like, “Well, shit. What do I do now?”
Yeah. No, I see it all the time. And I work with so many moms who have gotten a release and then they're like, “Nothing's getting better. In fact, sometimes it gets worse,” and they're like, “I don't know what else to do.” And I'm like, “Okay, well first we need to take all these steps, because these should have been taken first. We've gotta get you to a somewhat functional standpoint.” And then sometimes we even need to do a re-release ‘cause the first release wasn’t done properly.
Like, yeah. It's like there's so much just within that conversation that it's a lot to digest when you're in the thick of it. I'm very fortunate that I am very stubborn. And so I was like, “I'm not giving my baby formula. What are my other options?” So you know what I did? I spent all night for the first several weeks postpartum pumping and feeding my baby with a syringe. And I didn't sleep. I had postpartum mood disorders. I was very anxious and very lonely and very frustrated all the time because I couldn't feed my baby like other moms could feed their baby.
And if someone had just maybe helped me to have the baby latch better, this would've never been an issue. And it's just very frustrating because I was told, “This is how it is and this is what you gotta do.” It was not, “Here is the situation and here are all of the ways you could approach this.”
Mm-hmm.
And my second experience was very different. I had a different midwife. I had much more of a plan going into it. And even still, right after she was born, she did latch. But in the second day postpartum, I was like, “Why is her latch so painful? What am I doing wrong? I'm a seasoned mom. I should know how to do this. I nursed my other kid for two years. What is going on?”
And I had to continually advocate and say, “Something is not right. How do I fix this specific thing?” Not just taking, “Oh, well just syringe-feed her,” as an answer. I was like, “No, I can breastfeed my baby. I just need a little bit of help.” And I continued to ask. And thankfully, I had a midwife who would just show up at my doorstep if I needed her.
But just because you've done it before doesn't mean your next baby's gonna be easy because you have experience. Every baby's different. And you have to be prepared for all scenarios. So again, educate yourself and have resources available.
Yeah. No, I completely agree. And I know I've had people be like, “Oh, you're just trying to promote your class.” And it's like, yeah, I am. Because you need it. Because you freaking need to take it. You need it. You need it. And I'm not saying that from a “I want you to take my class” standpoint. Like, I want you to have resources before your baby gets here. Because when you are awake for four days in a row and your baby's not eating and you're trying to figure it out and you have absolutely no capacity to learn anything new, that is not the time to learn how to ask questions about tongue-tie and what your options are. It's just not. You have to learn these things beforehand.
I feel the same way. When people ask me questions about—they ask me questions about birth interventions. They ask me questions about, “Should I get this test in pregnancy or not?” And “Should I do this?” and “Should I do this?” and “What about postpartum and what should I be eating? Is it safe to do this?” And I'm like, I made these—I made courses. I have five holistic courses for a reason. And I'm like, “Take the course. I'll literally give it to you for half off. I don't care. I just want you to take the initiative. Learn. I have created this for you with all of your answers. I'm not just trying to sell you something—some junk. Go educate yourself. You have to educate yourself one way or another. But since you're coming to me, let me give you an avenue to do that.”
Yeah, for sure. No, because—and the internet is such a confusing place and it's hard to navigate—
‘Cause everything is just marketing.
No, exactly. I hate marketing. I hate it.
I know. And I understand. I understand why people are skeptical because you are faced with so many influencers trying to sell you everything that they've never even cared about, right? Like, I don't know. I just had a whole conversation with a company about influencer marketing and why I try not to do it. Like, if I'm promoting something, it's something I believe in because I think influencer marketing has eroded trust.
Agreed.
And I think—and that's not to say I don't believe in marketing. It's necessary to a degree, but it has to be ethical. Right?
And I'm getting off topic here, but it kind of all actually comes back, because I was—you were talking earlier about the doctors pushing interventions, and I feel like it's all a marketing gig for them. Like, what can I market? How can I market this medicine? How can I market this intervention? I mean, they very much get compensated, so they do. Like, you let your doctors sell you on everything. You let your midwives sell you on everything. And again, it's not to shit on midwives. It's like—but why is it that when it comes to doulas and lactation consultants, suddenly moms are like, “Oh no, they're trying to be paid for the service they're providing.”
Uh, yeah. I don't know. Man. Side note, and I'm sorry to the listeners who are not thinking in that mindset, but if you are one of them, also ask yourself: if you care about women and you care about women having equal pay and women's rights and all of this stuff, you can't get mad when doulas and lactation consultants are selling you resources that contradict what your doctors said. Because there's a reason. There is a reason that we're contradicting the hospital.
Yes. I, as a doula—it's an unregulated profession. I am not held to anything. I am not indoctrinated into anything. I am not told I have to do anything, and I do not benefit from disagreeing with a medical professional. There is nothing that is going to—like, I'm not expected to tell you anything. I'm not being incentivized to tell you anything ever. So anything I tell you is what I truly, truly believe from anecdotal and evidence-based research that I have gathered from multiple different points of view, multiple different experiences. And it's just—yeah, I think you're right. It's really hard to cut through the noise when we're being sold everything all the time, and it's all greenwashed, it's all marketing, and it's all—yeah. It's really hard to know what to believe.
No, it is. It is. And I feel so bad for moms right now because it's like—sometimes they get mad because I'm like, they have so much information at their fingertips. They're putting on their ear muffs and not looking at it and listening to it, but also when there are so many voices and it's coming from all angles, that sometimes is a protective mechanism.
And so if you are listening to that, I want you to think about where you are in your journey, what you want your journey to look like, and figure out what is the most direct, supportive path to that. And it is getting informed. It is getting informed without pressure and agendas.
Yes. I will tell people: I'm biased. I am 100% biased. It's impossible to not be biased.
It's impossible not to be. Your doctor is biased because they're giving you their recommendations based off the emergency surgery they just did that could have been prevented if they had done something different that they missed, and now they're trying to be overprotective. And so that's a bias. Biases exist. I am 100% biased, but I am not promoting an agenda unless my agenda is that you as a mother have intuition that should be listened to. And—
Sure.
Like, yes.
Totally.
So, all right. So you said you have some resources for pregnant moms. I've got resources for breastfeeding moms. What are your resources for pregnant moms? Where can they find them and how can they connect with you if they want to learn more about how they can be as stubborn as you are?
Yeah, sure. So if this conversation really hit home for you and you're like, “I need to get informed. I really want to know all of my options,” I have a collection of courses. So again, my brand is called Nested and Nourished, and there is the Nested and Nourished course collection, which includes five separate courses. You can actually buy these individually; you don't have to get the whole thing. But you can also buy them all together as a bundle for cheaper.
We've got Real Food Prenatal, which is all about nourishment during pregnancy—how to really, truly nourish your body through food, herbs, movement, all of those things. We've got Remedies and Relief, which is my favorite one actually, and it's the cheapest one, but it's basically like a holistic toolkit for your whole family. So everything from pregnancy to the flu to your kids getting hand, foot, and mouth—like, what are all of the things you can do naturally to combat those things?
Yeah, I'm like, every mom needs this for real.
It's like a handbook in your back pocket or on your bookmark tab on Safari, right? And then I have the big birth course, which is called Unshakeable Birth. That's where you're really gonna find all of the informed consent stuff, your autonomy stuff, but you're also gonna learn about birth, physiologic birth, and what all of those options look like. All of those Plan A, B, C, and D, as well as how to write a birth plan. It is chock-full of information.
And then there's Blood, Bone and Broth, and that is all about postpartum—sacred postpartum rest, healing, nourishment, all of the above. And then we have Rooted and Responsive, which is all about breastfeeding and newborn care from a perspective of secure attachment. So we're not talking about sleep training; we're not talking about bottle-feeding. We are talking about physiologic breastfeeding and infant sleep, co-sleeping, all of those things.
So that was a real big mouthful. Those are obviously my paid options—those are courses. I also have lots of free resources. So if you go to my website, nestedandnourished.com—and I'm sure you'll link that in the show notes—you can find all of those courses, but you can also find some freebies. I've got a holistic nutrition guide. I've got a morning sickness guide, a first-trimester checklist—all of those things you can grab anytime.
Or you can catch me over on The Holistic Pregnancy Podcast. And then lastly, I'm always available on Instagram at @nestedandnourished. You can literally send me a DM any time of day, and I'm probably gonna respond to you immediately because that's my favorite thing to do—talk with people in real life.
So, please, please come chat with me or join our email newsletter. I send out recipes once a week. There's so much to do.
I love it. That's great. Thank you so much, Taylor, for just a really great conversation on the importance of informed consent, why learning it as soon as possible is important, and how it really follows you through motherhood, and what it looks like in postpartum as well.
I love that. Thanks for coming, and we will share everything in the show notes.
Awesome. Thank you so much, Jaimie.
Alright, mama bear. That is a wrap for today. If this episode helps you feel a little more confident or a little more prepared for breastfeeding, can I ask you a quick favor? Go ahead and leave me a review. It helps other moms find this podcast and join us in this amazing community of fierce and confident mama bears.
And hey, if you know a friend who could use some encouragement or real talk about pregnancy, breastfeeding, and all things motherhood, share this episode with her. You've got this, mama bear. Trust your instincts, stay fierce, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
Jaimie Zaki is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) and mom of 5! Jaimie has volunteered as a La Leche League Leader, worked as a nurse, doula, and birth photographer, and is the host of the Breastfeeding With Confidence Podcast and founder of the Confident MamaBear Society. Jaimie provides holistic breastfeeding advice for pregnant & new moms, helping them overcome unexpected latching trouble and milk supply issues. She empowers mothers to make informed decisions from a place of confidence and intuition.
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