Despite her medical background and experience in obstetrics, Eliza found herself unprepared for her first birth. After a long induction and 24 hours of contracting, she underwent an emergency cesarean. While the birth wasn’t what she had envisioned, she experienced a surprisingly smooth breastfeeding journey with her first baby, something she later realized was unusually fortunate: “I didn’t appreciate at the time how unusual that journey was. And I’m really grateful for it because I guess it’s already so hard figuring out how to be a new parent.”

It was during this first postpartum period that Eliza encountered the Possum’s approach to infant sleep through reading The Discontented Little Baby Book by Dr. Pamela Douglas. This discovery would later influence both her parenting and professional practice: “It was just this moment of relief and it just resonated with me as a parent and felt so much more right and in line with sort of my instinct, but also as a doctor, the fact that it’s evidence-based.”

Her second birth brought different challenges. After hoping for a VBAC and going 10 days past her due date, Eliza had a planned cesarean. The real struggle came with breastfeeding, leading to an intense period of triple feeding and eventually exclusive pumping: “I spent hours of my life trying to get him to breastfeed, pumping, spent thousands of dollars on lactation support and various devices, cried so much.” This experience led to postnatal depression and highlighted gaps in medical training around breastfeeding support.

Eliza’s husband proved to be an invaluable support during this challenging time: “He just somehow knew what I needed to hear and what I didn’t need to hear… he just knew me well enough to know that I didn’t want him to say like maybe it’s time to stop. And instead he just kind of was like, right, like, what do we need to do to make this work?”

For her third pregnancy, Eliza approached things differently, particularly around postpartum planning. She worked with a postpartum doula for preparation, arranged meal trains (despite feeling uncomfortable about it), and set up support for her older children. When feeding challenges emerged again, she was better prepared: “I knew that we needed to feed her. I knew I needed to keep my supply going and I needed to keep feeding calm and non-pressured and that it was just an opportunity to practice for it to feel positive.”

This final breastfeeding journey, while initially challenging, eventually led to success around three months postpartum: “Something did really click in terms of her suck coordination… just to reiterate that sometimes it is more like three months. And I know not everyone has the capacity to do triple feeding for that long… but if you’ve got support networks and capacity to keep going, sometimes it just takes that little bit longer for everything to fall into place.”

These experiences have profoundly shaped Eliza’s professional practice and approach to supporting other families: “I genuinely think the empathy that I have for women who are similarly really struggling emotionally with breastfeeding difficulties is like a superpower… I still get teary when other mums are crying and struggling because I really know and again, I know it’s not everyone’s experience, but I know that I’m certainly not the only person who it’s really caused a significant grief and trauma.”

Her story emphasizes the need for better systemic support for new parents: “We need funding for IBCLCs. We need everyone to be able to access that. We need better funding for universal mental health access… there needs to be so much more than that.” Through her clinic and advocacy work, Eliza continues to work toward improving support for families in the postpartum period, bringing both professional expertise and profound personal understanding to her practice.

Resources Mentioned:
– Nurtured Medical Eliza’s Clinic
– Possum’s Approach to Infant Sleep
– The Discontented Little Baby Book by Dr. Pamela Douglas
– Why Breastfeeding Grief and Trauma Matter by Professor Amy Brown
– Boobie Moon (children’s book about weaning)
– Postpartumn Care Options with Dr Eliza Hannam Ep 403