A  Midwife Helped Me Out By Sommer Souther It’s true.  Emily Joubert to be precise. I had hoped it would be Emily.  I had prayed for it to be Emily. She may not know me from Adam, but the kind words she spoke to me almost three years ago, when I was in the middle of breastfeeding hell with Eliot, changed my life and sealed the deal on where and who I wanted to deliver my next baby. I was sitting in on yet another lactation consult at WBWC, meeting with Rebecca Costello for the first time, when I passed her a sheet of paper. “I’m not good at speaking up for what I’m feeling or advocating for myself, so I wrote down how this past week has been for me.” She read it quietly to herself and looked up at me with sincere compassion.  The paper I had handed her had detailed all the times that week I had felt worthless, helpless, used up, lonely, afraid, and broken.  The numerous times I had questioned whether I had made a mistake in trying to be a mother, because I surely was not one.  All the times in the past 4 months that I had tried to look forward with optimism to anything in my life and was greeted instead with the abyss. Rebecca reassured me, promised I was not alone, both in the community of other PPD/PPA sufferers as well as support people and groups who could help me through this.  Then she went to get Emily, to see if there was anything else we could do, any last missing piece of the puzzle we could find on why breastfeeding was not working out for me. Emily came in and talked through my issues with me, and asked me if we had family support for my breastfeeding. “It can make a big difference on if you’re able to continue or not” she told me. “No.  They all think I should’ve given up a long time ago and switched to formula.” “And what do you want to do?” “I want to give him the most that I can.  There have been a lot of dark moments in the past few months, but when there’s a good moment it’s good enough to make me want to keep trying.” “Well if you were my daughter I would be proud of you.  What you’ve … Read More