Episode 193 with Tracy Gillett
Modern Day Parents are Peer Pressured Into Denying Their Baby’s Needs
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Listen in as Tracy touches on topics such as breastfeeding to sleep, the role of melatonin in nighttime breastmilk, and the importance of aligning with nature in our parenting journey. Dive into the world of extended breastfeeding and explore the idea that infancy extends beyond the first year of life.
As Tracy delves into the challenges mothers face, she highlights the need for community support and discusses the importance of nursing in public. Uncover the courage it takes to embrace natural parenting practices and how it can make life more intriguing.
Join Tracy Gillett as she encourages us to accept the present moment and make a real difference in the world of parenting. Tune in to this inspiring conversation that challenges conventional wisdom and celebrates the beauty of embracing our natural instincts as parents.
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT:
193 TRACY GILLET
Ginny Yurich Okay, here we go. Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside, and I am so honored to be talking with someone I've been following along, I think, possibly for a decade. Tracy Gillett from Raised. Good. Welcome.
Tracy Gillett Thank you so much, Ginny. That's such a kind welcome.
Ginny Yurich It's always an interesting kind of bizarre thing when you follow something for a very long time and then you actually get to meet the person because at the start you think I would never get to meet this person. So it's such an honor and such a treat and what you share, bringing so much hope to parents, I think in a lot of ways it helps us to trust our instincts and to question maybe some of the practices that seem like they're right on the surface. But on the inside, we're not feeling quite so confident about them. And so you come and you open up the door to a conversation and you share such great information. So you started raised good as an answer for your own questions, and then you started to share with others, with millions of readers and parents worldwide that are now reading and joining in with your community. So can you just tell us where it all started?
Tracy Gillett Yeah, sure. And thank you so much. And I just want to throw that right back at you because I've been following thousand hours outside for so long as well. And I have. So you love this podcast and so I'm thrilled to be on it. And I love everything that you share. And we both have a passion of the outdoors and getting outside. So I love everything that you do as well. And yeah, we're raised good started. It really started from a fire in my belly where I just wanted to share everything that had made me so happy as a new mom. I've shared before that I had fertility struggles trying to get pregnant with my son and took us three years to get pregnant. And I always thought that I would start a fertility blog just from what I learned through that experience. But as soon as I became pregnant and my focus kind of shifted pretty quickly and then had a baby and I was just so happy as a new mom. And I'm not like a happy, shiny, bright light all the time. I like I'm not sort of that way inclined, but I was just so filled up by the connection and being vulnerable to what motherhood was kind of teaching me. And I had a midwife. I share this story on my blog who said to me when I was pregnant, I had the crib and everything set up in the baby's room and she said, Oh, no, he'll be he'll be sleeping in your bed with you. And I said, What do you mean? He'll be sleeping in his crib? And she said, No, he won't. I can tell. I can tell. He'll be in your bed. And I was like, Oh my gosh. And I thought she was mad. And I left the consult. But then, you know, my curiosity, like, we're similar, aren't we? Generally, like as soon as our curiosity gets peeks, we're like, we've got to learn more. And so I really started to dive into co-sleeping and bed sharing. And then it led down all these other paths, like easy and unschooling and all of this other stuff. So I really wanted to share what I'd learned with other mums, like you say, just to open the conversation and just to give other mums a voice. I remember meeting mums at playgroups and they would be hesitant to say that they were co-sleeping and I'd say, Oh, I've been doing it for years and they'd suddenly like a white was lifted from their show. Oh yeah, well and then they could talk about it, you know. So it was, Yeah, yeah. Just really wanting to open that conversation and not to say that everyone should be parenting this way, but just to say that those that do want to do it should be able to do it proudly and speak about it. And yeah, really sort of welcome that joy into motherhood that I think can be sucked out when we follow other people's prescriptions.
Ginny Yurich What a gift. I love that your story came full circle. It's like someone else planted the seed for you, your midwife In my life. That's very similar. My midwife planted a lot of seeds that I thought were very strange at the time. And so then here's what you are doing. You're doing the same thing. You're planting seeds for other people. Hey, this could look different. And I think it's such a tragedy when we learn about things too late. It's so sad that we learn it too late. And you know, there's always redemption and there's always things that we can do to redeem relationships and try and fix things. But sometimes we just miss these really special opportunities. And so I love that you have taken that concept and woven that in for millions of families around the world to say, Hey, there's some other ways out there that you may not know of and let's talk about them. So let's start since you brought it up, let's start with the bed. CHEERING I love the He'll sleep with you story. It's such a great story you say and this really big statement modern day parents are pure pressured into denying their baby's needs. So the sleep is a really huge one. Now we're out of that stage and I know you're out of that stage, too, but in that stage you are desperate. You are desperate for your personhood. You are desperate. For rest. Tell us what bed sharing might do for a mom and baby.
Tracy Gillett Well, yeah, I definitely second that. You know, we're all desperate for sleep and desperate for rest in those early days and months and years of New Parenthood. And so I think that desperation can make us very susceptible and vulnerable to external opinion. And when we're being told that the answer is just a sleep train, and the answer is just to put the baby in another room. And the problem is that the baby isn't sleeping properly, then it's very easy to sort of go down that path. And I think it's rare to not take that path because the other voices of bed sharing and co-sleeping and biologically normal sleep are relatively quiet compared to this sort of loud sleep training culture that we live in. So I like to take it back to just thinking, how would I parent if I was just dropped on a deserted island and there was no baby stores and there was no parenting experts telling me how to parent. And I am a mammal, a social mammal. And I would hold my baby close. I wouldn't put them in a separate cave and expect them to sleep and hope that they're there in the morning. We would hold them close. Yeah. And that's what other mammals do. If we look to other other animals and that's how humans are designed to sleep, we're designed to keep our babies close. And Dr. James McKenna is just like, I just love him. He is. He has poured so much research and work into over his entire career, diving into what co-sleeping looks like and how it benefits moms and how it benefits babies and how to do it safely. Because that's one of the big things, is that obviously we all want to keep our babies safe. Universally, there's no parent that doesn't want to keep their baby safe. So recognizing how to keep our babies safe and then if parents want to co-sleep or explore bed sharing, then there are just so many benefits to it. Breastfeeding mums get more sleep when they're bed sharing than when they're sleeping separately. There is study after study showing that the connection that you get through the night with your baby babies cry less. Mothers tend to wake less. They come out of sleep, but they still stay in sort of later stages of sleep, nurse their babies and then go back to sleep. So they're much more rested. So I think it can just offer us so much more rest. And I remember when I was in New Mum thinking, yeah, I wanted to breastfeed and thinking, my goodness, if I had to get up every time my baby wanted to breastfeed in the night, walk down the corridor, get him out of the crib, breastfeed him and try to stay awake while I was doing that, and then get him back to sleep in the crib and then go back and fall asleep again, only to repeat it two or 3 hours later. I would have just been a zombie. Like I would have just been so sleep deprived.
Ginny Yurich It's awful. We did it. We. We did it, actually. Oh, it's so hard. You wish you could go back in time. So we had our room in the upstairs in a bungalow when our oldest son was born, and he was in the downstairs. So we had a monitor. And sometimes, you know, I would give him to my husband, Josh, to take back. What a mess. And one time he fell down the stairs. So, you know, because you're in the middle of the night and everyone was fine. But when you're thinking about safety, I think it's I think to picture the cave is such a great analogy, Tracy. They having to walk over to the next cave to see my baby and come back?
Tracy Gillett Yeah. Hope that a sabertooth tiger doesn't come and get it in the middle of the night, you know? Sure. And that's how babies are born. Expecting to be held close. Like our babies don't know that they were born in 2023 or whatever it is. They don't know that the windows lock and that there's, you know, that they are physically safe. What they need to feel safe is proximity. Proximity to mum and dad. They need to feel that connection through their senses, whether that's touch or smell or sight or whatever it is. And good. Neufeld talks about how attachment unfolds in the first six years of life, and that very first stage is proximity. It's through physical connection. And so that's what our babies are expecting. So if we can give our babies what they're expecting, then we're kind of moving with the flow and it's making parenthood so much easier. Yeah. And it's also what our bodies are expecting. So it's kind of like parenting in the way that our bodies and our instincts are expecting instead of how our brains are telling us that culture is expecting us to parent. And when we look cross-culturally at other non-Western cultures, most of the world is co-sleeping. And I talk about some studies, I have some sleep guides and I talk about some studies from some mums in Guatemala and. They tell these moms about how parents in the US, you know, and not just the US, but other Western countries are parenting through the night. And these moms are shocked. They're like, Oh, but who's with the baby? Like hers? And they can't understand why they would be separate. And I think it can just bring so much like, yeah, it bring when I think about if I didn't have those co-sleeping moments, the moments that I would have missed out on. Yeah. Yeah, that makes me sad because I'm like, it's amazing when we can kind of surrender into how we're designed to parent.
Ginny Yurich Wow. It's really interesting, too, to look at from the perspective of other parents, the way people have been parenting in other cultures. And that helps us feel better about our decisions because it helps us to feel like this isn't weird. This is actually normal. I love this part in that article. People can find so much information on your website raised good dotcom, but from this article about sleep training, there was a quote from someone who said she. It says she said if she had one wish in this life. Goodness, this is a huge statement. It would be to go back and find the courage to decline unsolicited advice while bringing her baby into her bed, holding him close, making him feel safe, and never leaving him alone to cry it out. And then you talk about cry it out. This is three words that are connected that we've all heard, cry it out. And then you go on to say, Well, what's it? What's it?
Tracy Gillett Yeah. And that's I wrote a post specifically about that, like saying, cry it out. What are we saying there? Crying it out. And in that post I talk about that. That crying for us, that crying for us to come to them. Like go to Neufeld says, you know, the only way they can attach to us in that first year is through proximity. It's through connection to us. They're crying for us, and eventually they stop crying, not because they've magically learned how to sleep. We don't need to teach babies how to sleep no more than we need to teach them how to walk or breathe. It's a developmental skill that we can't rush. And babies sleep very differently to grown ups. But yeah, that it is us. And if we can just go to them, then it makes all the difference. And these babies that when babies do eventually stop crying and it's not because they've magically learned how to sleep, it's because they've learned that nobody's coming. And so they stop crying and they go to sleep.
Ginny Yurich It's like, what if instead of saying, Cry it out, we said, Cry us out. Oh, that's really what's happening. So this is encouraging for parents to read. And one of those things that you just you want to know, you want to know, you want to have a lot of perspectives on it so that you can make a choice that you don't regret later on. You wrote in that article None of us self-soothe. So they're crying for us to come, for us not to leave, for us to pick them up, for us to sue them and to hold them close. They're crying for us. So very important. We had our youngest. She didn't you know, we're talking about just normalizing things, right? So our youngest, she didn't sleep through the night until she was four and a half, which felt very long. She also nursed for a very long time. She nursed until an age I'm not even comfortable sharing with now, but I will be able to share with maybe like ten years. So she nursed for a really long time. She seemed to have a little bit of attachment. She was scared to be alone. I'm not quite sure where all that came from, but anyway, just some different things with her. And she didn't sleep through the night until she was four and a half. And when she was two, three, you know, you're you're starting to really feel frayed by that. And I had a friend, though, who told me her child didn't sleep through the night until he was four and a half. And I remember when she told me that it didn't change the fact that we're up at night or there's some disrupted sleep. It just made me feel like we're not abnormal. And this is okay. Yeah, and I think it's an important message.
Tracy Gillett Yeah. And that's all it can take. Jenny is just one or two other people to say that they're experiencing the same thing. And then you suddenly go, Oh, okay, look, I'm not alone and I'm okay. And then are these you might have come across them. They were these amazing experiments. I think they started back in the fifties and sixties by a guy called Solomon Asch, and he would show different size lines to like groups of people just like lines on a page. And there would be actors in the room who would intentionally. So he would say, Here is Line A, which is at the same sizes, and he would have actors in the room who would intentionally choose the wrong size line. And so people would choose the correct size, but then they would say other people choosing the wrong size and they would change their answer to go with the crowd because it's built into us to want to try to fit in. But then if we put other people in who would choose the correct answer, even if they just had a. Couple of people, then they feel confident to change their answer back. It's similar to that, what we're going through. And I say to parents, if we were all back in hunter gatherer days, all this natural parenting, it wouldn't be called natural parenting, or it would just be called parenting. Like, it's just we would already be with the crowd because we'd all just be doing the same thing. So it's really just that we're like, connected to and trying to honor our instincts. But one of the other things I'd like to say, because you've raised this a couple of times, is that we can only do the best that we can with the information and the knowledge and resources we have at the time. And so when we learn something later, like we can't feed ourselves up for that, it's like we did what we did with the information we had right then. And there are many things in my parenting, and I know that there'll be things to come that I'm like, Darn, I wish I'd known that like a couple of years ago, I could've done something different, but I didn't know. So I can't change it. And so it's like just learning and moving on. But yes, I think to never beat yourself up for something that you learned a little bit later.
Ginny Yurich Sure. Sure. Well, so let's talk about breastfeeding, because that's another thing that you talk about while breastfeeding as it relates to sleep. So we can start there. There is this thing of like not letting your child breastfeed to sleep that feels so natural. It's like the most natural thing ever. Like, well, you're going to create a bad sleep association. So what's going on with that.
Tracy Gillett Just is, again, it's just another cultural thing. You hear this all like, you know, put them down drowsy, but awake. Like, don't let them. Yeah. Breastfeeding to sleep is a bad sleep association. Like they're using you as a human pacifier, which is just the most ironic thing because it's like, I'm pretty sure that breast came before pacifiers and that pacifiers are designed after breasts like pacifiers are out of control. Nursing to sleep is just the most natural thing in the world. And it's easy because it's meant to be like Mother Nature isn't trying to like, play tricks on us and make life hard. She's trying to help us make things easier. So breastfeeding to sleep is just a normal, natural thing to do. But our society tells us that, no, that's not the right thing to do. And so it really sets mothers up to think that they're doing something wrong. So I share on my site, I have articles specifically about this and talking about I think sometimes it's really helpful to share some of the science that goes along with this. So one example that just really proves that Mother Nature has got it right is that young babies are born without circadian rhythms. So our cycle in rhythm is telling us when it's daytime or when it's nighttime, or when it's time to be awake and when it's time to be asleep. And one of the hormones that comes into play with that is melatonin. So the sun goes down and we start to produce melatonin. We start to feel sleepy. There's more to it than that, but that's part of it. We feel sleepy and we go to sleep. Babies are born without circadian rhythms and they can't produce melatonin.
Ginny Yurich I didn't know that.
Tracy Gillett Yeah. So what has melatonin in it? Nighttime breast milk. Wow. So daytime breast milk doesn't have melatonin in it, but nighttime breast milk has high levels of melatonin in it. And so it helps babies sleep. And so this is one of the messages that I also give to moms who pump is that if you're pumping breast milk, make sure to label it daytime and nighttime and give the nighttime stuff at night time to make them sleep.
Ginny Yurich I would have never thought of that. Yeah. So while our kids never took a bottle, we tried.
Tracy Gillett Yeah. Yeah.
Ginny Yurich Oh, that's so interesting.
Tracy Gillett Yeah. We shouldn't need the science to, like, prove all this stuff back to us, but we got off track at some point, and we lost that, like, maternal lineage that just would, like, let us know how to do these things. And we didn't really need to know specifically why. We just accepted that it was normal to breastfeed to sleep. But now that we've got off track, I think science can really help us prove to us that, no, it is normal to do that in spite of all these other voices telling you otherwise. Yeah, it's completely normal and you're just setting yourself up to make motherhood harder if you try to go against nature, I think. Yeah, and melatonin is just one example. Like there's lots of others. And in the article I share some others, you know, the sucking reflex and there's lots of other hormones and things that help to make babies feel sleepy through breastfeeding and it also helps mums. So just the acts of breastfeeding mums feel sleepy and fall asleep and we can sometimes misunderstand that to think, Oh God, motherhood is just so tiring. But it's like, no, this is actually trying to help you get the rest that you need.
Ginny Yurich And.
Tracy Gillett Maybe you should be falling asleep with baby instead of getting up and staying awake until midnight because you really need to bank that sleep now.
Ginny Yurich Wow, that's fast. And. Because I do remember, especially when we had little babies, I could fall asleep, no problem in the middle of the day. If they're nursing and they fall asleep and I fall asleep and you get that little bit of extra rest. Yeah. How interesting. What? People can find out all this information on your website at RES. Good. Rt.com. I think the science does help. It's like we need it. We need it to come full circle and to give us a little bit of a confidence boost. I talked about this a bit a bit ago, but what about breastfeeding beyond babyhood? So you right. Our Western culture considers breastfeeding beyond babyhood to be abnormal and in many ways, consciously or not, sabotaged the practice. And so you talk about how we should expect that our children could breastfeed for 3 to 7 years. Yeah, we've definitely fallen into that category of 3 to 7 years. Yeah, later. So what can we be telling parents and and why? I mean, you have so much great at great information about the second year postpartum breast milk and everything that's in there. What's going on with the extended breastfeeding?
Tracy Gillett Yeah, well, I think, um, and I mean just to say upfront, like I, you know, I come from a family, I'm the oldest of four, and I still remember the formula and the smell of formula on the on the bench at home. I was, you know, formula fed baby in the early eighties. So I fully expected I wasn't really expecting to breastfeed know when I was in my twenties and stuff. I was like, Oh, no, just I would just do formula. And then I, you know, became pregnant, became a mum, and I was like, Yeah, I really want to breastfeed. And I remember being at my naturopath when my son was a few months old and she said, How long do you think you're breastfed for? I said, I don't know. Like maybe until a year, like til he's 12 months. And she was like, I'd really love you to try to at least go to two years. Like, it's so good for their immune system, it's so good for them. And and I said to her, But you won't be a baby anymore. And she looked at me and she just said, He will always be your baby. And I was just like, Oh, okay.
Ginny Yurich What an experience. Tracey For someone that's so out of the normal experience, most of it is shunned or hush hush. And for someone to say, Hey, I'd really actually like for you to go longer.
Tracy Gillett Well, I'd like to consider that. So, yeah, I mean, I never made a decision like, I will breastfeed until such and such an age. It's like, probably like Eugenie. It was like, I'm breastfeeding today and I'll probably be breastfeeding tomorrow. And then it becomes the next day and the next day. And it's just one day at a time. You don't decide I'm going to do it for this many years. You just follow your babies lead. Yeah. So, I mean, we really promote breastfeeding, We really encourage it. We have slogans like Breast is Best, which I don't agree with. I think saying that anything is best is judgmental and leaves mothers feeling less of than when they can't breastfeed or they choose not to. And then this Fed is best. And I don't agree with that either. Like Fed is like the minimum. I think informed is best supported is best. The freedom to choose what you want to do. We really encourage breastfeeding, but there seems to be some random age. I don't know if it's six months, 12 months where we don't really support it anymore, certainly not in public and we don't really talk about it. And so as soon as I went over 12 months and went over two years and went over three years and, you know, I was like, I really wanted to learn more about this. And I'm sure that you would agree, particularly when you mothering a toddler. Oh my God, breastmilk breastfeeding is like magic. Like, I don't know how I would have got through tantrums without it.
Ginny Yurich Oh, my goodness. No kidding. Every tantrum done. And then a lot of times they would fall asleep. And I think that so often we associate this misbehavior with, oh, they're acting out, they're tired, and so they're really upset about something or they're having a tantrum. I mean, I can I cannot tell you how many times that happened where you think, oh, I've got this terror of a kid, you know, And then they would nurse and they fall right asleep. They were tired. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, yes, it was the magic solution for just about everything for the twos and threes.
Tracy Gillett Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it so yeah, there's this idea that, you know, a breast milk just tends to water after a certain age for some random, you know, just it's just a random idea that we have in our society not to water, but you know that it loses its magic. It certainly doesn't and it keeps changing over time to meet the needs of the baby. And from a neurological perspective, our kids are babies until they're at least three years of age. From a brain development perspective, we need to really think of infancy as being from 0 to 3. So anyway, I wrote a blog post on my website which people can go and have a look at about breastfeeding beyond infancy and again, sort of look. The anthropological evidence for if we went back in time, if we were cave people, when would we be breastfeeding our babies? So. And there's all this different evidence that suggests that a biologically normal waning age is anywhere between three years to seven years. And they're called baby teeth for a reason. You know, losing those milk teeth that we call them. There's research on there for like looking at other primates and things that, you know, breastfeeding is it can be 4 to 6 times the length of gestation. I think breastfeeding can be until a certain however much weight they've gained, I think until it's like they've quadrupled their their birth weight, all these different things that go to suggest that a biologically normal weaning age is anywhere between three and seven. And I think the worldwide average weaning ages four. Wow. So if the average waiting ages for and if a lot of mums in Western culture aren't even breastfeeding or stopping at three months, then we can only guess that in other cultures it's probably like seven. Yeah, and I think there's this misconception that it's mothers that are somehow forcing breastfeeding on their children. And I think for any breastfeeding mother, you would know that that's just not the case that you're following the child. And for us, that's what we did. I didn't have I didn't have a second baby. So we just went when he was ready to stop. And one day he just said, I'm big boy now I'm ready to stop. And yeah, and it kind of went for a couple more months after that. And then I don't know when the last time was. And that's this. That was the sad thing. I was like, I can't remember when because it just was like this natural. Yeah, it just sort of. Yeah. Type it off.
Ginny Yurich Well, isn't that one of the things that you read? Like, you never know when the last time is you're going to carry them on a hike or the last time you're going to read that particular story. And I appreciate you putting out this information because for one of our kids nurse to longer than the other ones and there were some tears, you know, like a birthday would be coming up and she might say, well, I'm going to have to stop nursing and be very upset about it. You know, I'm going to be this age and I'm going to have to stop nursing. And I would say, I cannot tell you how many times I said you're the averages for nursing. It's 3 to.
Tracy Gillett 7.
Ginny Yurich I get you know, I kept going back to that, you know, to say it's okay and there's no one pushing you to do any certain way or any sort of thing. So I think that parents are listening. You may come back to that. That statement. Before I became a mom, Tracey, I was under the impression that if a child could ask to nurse, they were too old. That's the decision that was made.
Tracy Gillett Yeah, I've heard that too. Yeah, I was listening.
Ginny Yurich Yeah. And this is a thing to be able to come back and say the average age is 3 to 7 years. That's a big range and it's all considered normal. So, you know, I know there's also things about breastfeeding in public. So this is a thing, especially if we're trying to get outside. So we are in public a lot. And I tell you what, I nursed in a lot of beautiful places on top of the mountains and.
Tracy Gillett To.
Ginny Yurich Waterfalls. So actually it's a really fantastic. But how can we support mothers and nursing in public?
Tracy Gillett Well, it's it's a hard one, isn't it? I think I think it depends on on how come you know, it's so personal, I think. Yeah. And it's it's how comfortable you are. I mean I, I wasn't comfortable at the start and then I it's amazing what people don't see, you know, like you think that they're going to notice here. But it's amazing how often people just go about their daily lives and don't notice what's going on around them. So I think that's probably one of the first messages I give, is that you are going to be so much more aware of it than anybody else's. I never used a nursing cover. My son was pretty sensitive. Like he he just wouldn't have likes that around his head. And that almost made me feel more self-conscious then just going for it.
Ginny Yurich And I think that's important for people. And I don't know who's listening. There may not be anybody in this around that that's listening, but I think that some people are really judgmental, like, Well, why aren't they using a nursing cover? Why can't they just use a nursing cover? And by the time they can move their hands, they're rip it off anyway. Yeah, totally. And it really makes things a juggle and it's like a little circus act there. I mean, they're smart. They're four months, they're five months, they're hot under there. And so I think we can't assume that just because someone's not using a nursing cover, that they're like inconsiderate or something like that.
Tracy Gillett No. And I think I mean, you know, this is where it comes back to society, is that I mean, if I see a breastfeeding mum in public, like I'm giving her a thumbs up. Yeah. I'm like, you know, awesome. Because this idea. The mum's like we've waited our whole lives to have a baby, to, like, get our boobs out and stop flushing. Society is just ridiculous. Just ridiculous. You know, we've sexualized women's bodies so much, we're okay to have women on billboards and in magazines and sexualizing women's bodies. But we're not okay with feeding an infant in the way that Mother Nature designed. Like, that's where we've really got a problem with society. There's nothing wrong with what that mum is doing. She's just feeding her baby. Yeah. So it really comes back to bigger societal questions, I think, and trying to undo that. And you know, for the mums who can feel confident to do it, knowing that we're the change makers and that's where I had to really sort of rouse my courage from is like I'm making it easier for the next generation of mums by doing this now I'm making it easier for my kid when he has a baby and you know, and his partner is breastfeeding, making it easier for them. And it's not always easy to be the change maker, but sometimes to step into that and have the courage to do that. And then I think just from a practical perspective, like, you know, talking about breastfeeding covers and things. There are so many amazing breastfeeding like clothes and stuff like that with all different kind of openings and, and things that can make it easy for breastfeeding in public. So yeah, I think just finding whatever makes it easiest and yeah, and a supportive partner and having supportive people around you.
Ginny Yurich And I love the idea of a thumbs up. Yeah. How can we support moms in public? A thumbs up? That's a great way to support lots of fantastic information. One other big topic is that we've lost our community and that makes parenting very hard because we're having to do it all on our own. And I have so many experiences of just feeling such a relief to be with another person and to be with another family, to be with another mom and her kids. I had this time in life where we lived in a townhome and there was a mom, three or four townhomes down and she had two kids that were same age as our two kids want. The two of them even have the exact same birthday and wow, did we support each other during the infancy? And one day this person would make a little bit of extra food and bring dinner, and then you'd swap and you'd help and you just would be together. We spent a lot of times in that what people call the witching hour right together. So, you know, after nap, but before dinner we would spend a lot of that before maybe a spouse is coming home from work. We would spend a lot of that time together. So this is one of the things that you talk about. What are some of your suggestions on how to create that community? Some people use the word village. How do we create that when we don't have it?
Tracy Gillett Yeah, I think it's such a great point that you raise and that recognition as well that we're not meant to be doing it alone, and that sometimes when it feels extra hard, when we're doing it alone, that's the reason, because we're really meant to be doing it in community. And that doesn't necessarily change it, but can make us feel a little bit better. That acknowledgment that we're not doing anything wrong with this feeling hard because a mom and a baby at home alone all day long in an apartment, that it's not normal for a mom to have that kind of pressure on her to be like the only carer for that baby. So, yeah, I think this acknowledgment that we we have lost this village and community around us. I think, you know, I was parenting as a new mum and like a brand new city. I didn't have family and stuff around. So for me it was just trying to connect with as many other mums with like similar interests. And one of them that you'll appreciate, Jenny was just like I was a baby wearing group, a hiking group, and we all just get together and then be like 12 of us with babies on our friends and, and getting some exercise and talking together and the babies napping in the carriers and off we'd go for a hike, even just a little touch point throughout the week to have something to rely on I think can make a huge difference for us. We actually ended up moving to a smaller community and like that's quite a big step, but we were really craving more connection than what we could find in the city. So we actually ended up moving to a smaller community. But yeah, I think just finding those mums that you can like you did obviously a couple of townhouses down supporting one another and there's so many different ways that you can connect with whether it's hiking groups or baby and yoga groups or different things like that. And then just reaching out to the mums that you're in that group with and saying, you wanna go for coffee after, like let's connect. And yeah, because it can be hard to make friends as an adult contact like very hard, so easy when you're a kid or you have to have in common is that you're both there and you're both like kicking a ball around or whatever the thing is like and your friends. But making friends as an adult can be harder.
Ginny Yurich It is hard and there's some flex that happens sometimes. Some don't work and you got to try different ones and try different people and see where you connect. That's a little bit of a process, but so important. Yeah, it makes such a difference. I just finished reading Hunt Gather Parent by Michaeleen DOUCLEFF, and she talks about how in other cultures, like they basically say you should never be alone with a crying baby.
Tracy Gillett Yeah, definitely.
Ginny Yurich What a statement. Yeah. You should never think about how often. I mean, I think about how many hours I spent with a crying baby and crying toddlers. And it's a big thing to at least be aware once again, coming back to the awareness piece. And, you know, if there are small things you can do to connect that will really help you.
Tracy Gillett Yeah, definitely. I was reminded of you as well. I think when we were messaging, we went on a camping trip about three weeks ago with a girl. There must be about ten families and we were all connected for three days camping with our kids. Like the kids were just off, like, doing their own stuff, and they just had an absolute blast. And that was a real like moment of community. It was like, Oh, I was known as the one that had remembered to bring maple sirup. So people were coming over to my camp, so someone else had remember this, and then my car battery died, so someone else had jump blades and it was just like this community, you know, of like there's instant connection and community and thinking like, how much easier would it be if we were more connected, like motherhood and parenthood would feel so much easier. Like you said, you just know that the stress that it can put on your system for being alone with a crying baby. One message that I would love to give to parents just about that crying baby thing is that it's not your job to stop the crying. I think so many parents feel so much pressure that it's their job to stop the crying and that they've failed. If they haven't stopped the crying that their babies stressed out of the crying and they can't stop it. But to remember that your job is not to stop the crying, it's to be there just to support your baby. And again, there's research that comes back to this that it's very different for a baby to be crying alone. Their cortisol levels spike when they're crying in the arms of a loving caregiver who's supporting them. They're still crying, but they cortisol levels aren't spiking. So just your presence makes all the difference. And if that can help, just realize that you don't have to stop the crying to be making a difference.
Ginny Yurich Oh, that's so powerful. So we've talked about these topics that can be hard to talk about for mothers and you talked about the breast is best fed as best co-sleeping. Things that we learn down the road that we wish we would have learned. Earlier. And so one of the things that you also talk about is shame, maybe some guilt that we feel. Well, you talked about a little bit earlier, you know, dealing with infertility and that you have endometriosis. So I think sometimes we maybe out of an effort to make ourselves feel better, we can make things feel pretty crummy for other people. So you talk about how empowered women empower women. How do you handle these different situations when they come up? What advice do you have?
Tracy Gillett Yeah, I think, you know, it's a big question and it's yeah, it's hard because we live in this world, you know, particularly with social media, this just constant comparison and thinking. Thinking that we understand another person's life when really we know about 1%. And whenever I'm sharing about difficult topics that I know will be controversial and I know it will be triggering for some others. And I know that I will get comments saying that I'm shaming other mothers is coming back to saying not like we're allowed to question society, but I would never judge another mother because I don't know the situation and that's not my place to do that. So trying to separate ourselves from like we do with our kids, when instead of, you know, I'm bad, it's like, oh, that wasn't the best choice, was like I made a mistake making it safe and making that separation between guilt and shame that Brant O'Brien talks about so much separating behavior from the person loving our kids unconditionally for who they are instead of what they do. And I think through really sinking into that as a parent and trying to do that for my child, I've needed to do that for myself as well. So, yeah, I mean, you know, I'm from a family with my mom had six kids. She had four. I always just naturally thought I would have to be like, what's the average? Like 2.5 kids is like the standard family or whatever. And then, you know, you have these preconceived ideals of what you think your life is going to look like. You have a plan for, like how it's going to go, right? And then life has other ideas and it turns out differently. And one of the biggest lessons that I've learned in motherhood is to step into that, know that you're stepping into that unknown into that dark space where you don't know what you're going to find to be vulnerable and open enough and willing to step into it instead of shutting it off and trying to try to control your life and trying to control your kid and trying to be like co-sleeping and breastfeeding till you don't know when is a real act of surrender. And I think that takes a lot of courage. And I think it also makes life interesting because if we know how it's going to end, if you know exactly what's going to happen in a movie before you watch it, it's not so exciting to watch. And life is like that, too. And we just get this one short life and I am just so grateful to have like one happy, healthy, just amazing son. And there are so many misconceptions around what an only child is like. And like most things that we've talked about on this podcast already, they're all wrong. Like this idea. The idea is that we have a grandma and then the kids are like, They're all wrong. And having one child then opens up so many other doors to other things that I wouldn't experience in life had I had two or three or four kids, and if I'd had two or three or four kids, then that would have also been amazing. So I think just this acceptance that as is, she finally talks about accepting the as is of the present moment, So much of our suffering comes from resistance. It comes from resisting how life actually is wanting it to be, how we thought it was wanting it to be, how we think we want it to be. But if we can just accept how it actually is, then we can step into the joy that that can bring us in that present moment. So I think acceptance is just a big thing. And that's not a white flag. That's not giving up that song living in reality instead of fantasy, and that we're always striving to like, you know, to achieve and to and to reach for the things that we really want, but not in a way that some. Yeah, that it brings shame or limitations. Yeah. Does that kind of help?
Ginny Yurich It's so beautiful. I think people will find so much encouragement from that. I'm so glad that we've connected. Sure. What a gift.
Tracy Gillett Meter.
Ginny Yurich And so on your on your website raised good e-com and you have all these different articles that people can find things to talk about, things to think about this ways to look at things that maybe they hadn't before, so that there you also have a shop and you have books and guides and courses to help people on a natural parenting journey. And you have a bunch of different education and course resources. So the attached child nurtured nights and you have an e-book called Discover the Lost Art of Natural Parenting. And also coming up, or possibly even this week, depending on exactly the day that this lands, you do a summit, parenting summit. So can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Tracy Gillett Yeah, absolutely. Well, you're a guest this year, which is also yours. Basically talks all about getting outside with kids. Yeah. It's an annual summit that I run in September. So this year it'll be September 21st to 25th. There's 25 speakers on topics related to natural parenting. So we talk about things like, like sleep, like we've talked about emotional development. We're talking about stuttering this year in kids. We're talking about getting outside. There's just so many amazing speakers. We talk about natural health. You know, a lot of the things like we talked about like co regulation and yeah, so we have some amazing speakers. We have Dr. Laura Mark, Dr. Schiff, Ali Zardari, We have Gabor Matai. We have just an incredible lineup. I'm just too grateful for everybody that's on it. Your Honor, Linda McGurk is on it. I know she's been on this podcast a number of times. Yeah, I always feel sad when I have to stop interviewing people because I get to 25 and I'm like, Oh, there's more amazing people that I want to talk. So, so grateful for that. And yeah, it's it's just a fun week. So there's five speakers a day and people can tune in and yes, something for everybody to listen to.
Ginny Yurich That's fantastic. So that starts in September and you run registration a little bit beforehand and it goes for the week.
Tracy Gillett Yeah. Goes to five days.
Ginny Yurich Mhm. Yeah. That's fantastic. How many have you done. How many summits.
Tracy Gillett This is the fourth one.
Ginny Yurich Wow. Yeah. That's a big commitment.
Tracy Gillett Let's see whether it may get to a fifth.
Ginny Yurich So it's a big commitment every year. What are some of the most listened to topics.
Tracy Gillett Oh, well, I know you've had Kim Jong Pane on here. I've spoken to him a couple of times in the past. He's amazing. I just yeah, I love chatting with him. He's a fellow Australian, so he's he's it's easy for me to talk to as well about simplifying childhood. That's one of my favorite things to talk about too, is just welcoming simplicity into our lives. Dr. Neufeld has been a guest a couple of times talking all about attachment and attachment science. And yeah, he's been he's incredible. So, yeah, I'm just so grateful, like you said at the start, like these amazing people that you're like, seriously, I get to talk to that person like, Wow, that's awesome. Yeah.
Ginny Yurich Yeah. It's it truly is unbelievable. You can hardly believe it. Yeah. Sometimes I go to the bookstore now and I'll be like, I have talked to so many of these authors. Yeah. Beforehand I never had never thought I would get the chance to do so. That summit's going to be fantastic. So many people that can come and encourage parents to give information. This hunter gatherer parent book that I've talked about that they just read, she said. And they're like, We don't really know what we're doing. We don't. We think we do. And I think that there's this impression, there's this thought out there that we've got all the intuition we need, but we don't really know what we're doing and we need some help and we need some guidance. So that's going to be that fantastic so people can find information that raise good dot.com. I also want to mention that your social media is very encouraging, so people want to have that at the top of their list, too. You know, it's like we don't spend a ton of time on social media, but you want to have the people coming through your stream that are encouraging you and you are constantly doing that both visually and through your words. So you just posts these gorgeous photos, photos that are relatable to families. And then the encouraging word that maybe we're not getting anywhere else. And so people can follow along on the social media as well. It's very helpful. The information is what parents need and what parents need right now, and it's consistency. You just have done such a beautiful job. Like I said, I've been following that for like a decade now. I don't know, maybe more. So it's been really helpful in my own parenting journey too, so people can find you in those places and hopefully they'll come hang out at the summit. And then we always end our podcast, Tracy, with the same question What's a favorite outdoor memory from your childhood?
Tracy Gillett I think I was thinking about this before I got on as well. We used to spend a lot of time on my grandparents place. They lived in a country town in Victoria, in Australia. My grandpa had a farm and I can't really separate the experiences that I had up there, but going out with my grandpa early in the morning, out to his farm and moving cows and fixing fences and doing all that kind of stuff. And then there was an amazing lake in the town that they lived in, and we spent a lot of time at the lake just swimming and planning and having fun and playing with the dog and throwing sticks and the summers that that I spent up there would be my my favorite experiences as a kid.
Ginny Yurich I love that answer. I had just read this quote in this book. Called Made for People by Justin Wittman early. And he had a quote in there from Emerson that says, I cannot remember the books I read any more than the meals I have eaten. Even so, they have made me less powerful. So that's a really cool answer, and it kind of goes along with that. We're talking about like, you're not going to ever remember this distinct moment when you were breastfeeding or maybe this distinct moment where you went and got your baby or this distinct summer moment at the lake. Spending time with your family. But those things make you over time.
Tracy Gillett Yeah, they do, don't they? And that's yeah, that's one of the things I try to. Yeah, I love that quote. Try to sink into it sometimes, you know, like, as, as amazing as it is that we can just photograph everything all the time. And I, and I do that all the time too. But sometimes I'm like, I'm just. No, I'm putting the camera. I just want to be here in this moment. Yeah, Yeah. Because it's that feeling that you remember more than. More than exactly what it look like. Yeah.
Ginny Yurich Yeah. Well, thank you, Tracy. This has been so awesome. Can't wait for the summit. And I know everyone's thankful that you took the time to be here.
Tracy Gillett Me, too. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks, Ginny.
