AAB 027 Breastfeeding: Badass breastfeeder Abby Theuring

Abby felt that she had a fairly typical upbringing and remembers her childhood fondly.  Her family moved to Amsterdam when she was 15 years old and lived there until she was an adult.   This  move made her family a little more relaxed as Europe as a whole seems to be much more relaxed.  The atmosphere in  Amsterdam is family centered and very small townish.   She moved back to the United States and when she became pregnant, she assumed she was going to go back to work once her maternity leave was over.   She was a self-proclaimed  workaholic working with teenagers in a  high stress program with kids who struggled with mental illness and violent behavior. This was her identity and she figured her husband was probably going to stay home.  She was going to run her house like a residential community just like at work... but  she said: "they handed me Jack and I am like -   what am I suppose to do with this?  I am totally prepared to deal with a violent teenager and now they have handed me this newborn and I was not sure what to do with him.  I crumbled."  Staying at home, separated from her work, she began to realize just  how stressful her job had been.  She realized that this is something she did not want to bring home to her children.  Once home from the hospital, she began struggling with  breastfeeding issues.  Abby says that she does not know exactly why she wanted to Breastfeed so badly  and I doesn't know  why she tried so hard, but she did.  She talks about how she fought so hard for it and just doesn't know where this intensity came from. Abby said that she felt like she  was awake for like 3 months doing research and trying to figure it out.  She soon got into this great Breastfeeding place and then thought:  " I am so not into going back to work and said I needed to stay home."