Why Breastfeeding Is So Hard for So Many Moms: The Nervous System Root Cause
Episode: Experience Miracles Podcast | Host: Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP, Pediatric Chiropractor & Founder of PX Docs | Guest: Dr. Melanie, DC, IBCLC, Pediatric & Perinatal Chiropractor and Board-Certified Lactation Consultant, Founder of Begin Well (Michigan)
Key Takeaways
- Breastfeeding difficulty is usually a baby problem, not a mom problem. Everything in breastfeeding runs on supply and demand, if birth trauma leaves a baby with too much tension to latch and feed efficiently, the baby can’t put demand on the supply, and the milk supply drops.
- Breastfeeding success comes down to three questions, and each one is neurological: Can the baby latch? Does it hurt mom? Is the baby transferring enough milk (weigh, feed, weigh again)? All three are addressable through Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care.
- The common breakdown follows a predictable chain: trauma → tension → tired → popping off → falling supply → formula. Babies tire within minutes at the breast because tension prevents the muscles from contracting properly, especially in the super hyoid complex, which isn’t fully developed until about 12 weeks.
- Surveys show roughly 80% of moms intend to breastfeed before birth, but fewer than 20–23% are still breastfeeding at six weeks, and the top reasons moms quit (“I don’t have enough milk,” pain, poor latch) are the exact issues that trace back to the baby’s nervous system.
- A pump cannot replicate breastfeeding. Milk is a living organism made for the specific baby, higher cortisol in the morning, more melatonin at night, and direct latching drives the oxytocin, co-regulation, and bonding that protect against postpartum anxiety and depression. A pump delivers none of that.
Why Is Breastfeeding So Hard for So Many Moms?
Breastfeeding is hard for most moms because it is a neurological process, not simply a matter of milk supply, pump technique, or maternal effort, and the part almost no one examines is the baby’s nervous system. According to Dr. Melanie, DC, IBCLC, breastfeeding runs entirely on supply and demand: if a baby can’t put enough demand on the supply, the supply falls. When birth trauma, from a C-section, interventions, or even an uncomplicated vaginal birth, leaves a newborn with subluxation and tension through the upper neck, jaw, and palate, the baby cannot latch deeply, feed efficiently, or transfer enough milk.
This is why the blame placed on mom is almost always pointed in the wrong direction. The three reasons moms most often stop breastfeeding, not enough milk, pain with latching, and poor milk transfer, are each rooted in the baby’s neurology. Can the baby latch? Does it hurt mom? Is the baby transferring the right amount of milk? Dr. Melanie reports a 100% clinical success rate by addressing those three things at the root through chiropractic care rather than managing symptoms or teaching workarounds.
The stakes go far beyond nourishment. Direct breastfeeding produces oxytocin, drives co-regulation between mother and baby, and heals both nervous systems through skin-to-skin contact. It is, as Dr. Tony Ebel frames it, the first milestone, and getting it right sets the trajectory for everything that follows.
Why Breastfeeding Is a Neurological Issue, Not a Milk Issue [10:32 – 14:00]
Dr. Melanie: Even lactation is a neurological thing. So much of the conversation right now is about pumps, or milk, or mom, and it’s none of those. It’s the baby. Everything with breastfeeding is supply and demand. If the baby can’t put the demand on the supply, the supply is going to go down.
From my own clinical results, I personally have a 100% success rate, because it comes down to three things. Can the baby latch? That’s chiropractic. Does it hurt mom? That’s chiropractic. And as a doctor, you should be able to put a baby on a scale, feed the baby, put the baby back on the scale, and confirm they transferred the appropriate amount of milk. Those three things are the top three reasons moms stop breastfeeding, they say “I don’t have enough.”
“Everything with breastfeeding is supply and demand. If the baby can’t put the demand on the supply, the supply is going to go down.”
The blame is always put on mom, and it’s the wrong direction, the wrong connection. It’s birth trauma. With the INSiGHT scans, we can even ask: can this baby breastfeed yet? Is their nervous system even turned on enough to be able to?
Dr. Tony Ebel: It shocks us how often, when we run those exams and scans on brand-new babies, we find tension, not just in intervention births, but sometimes in the unintervened vaginal births too. We know what to look for, and we still go, “Oh, man.” Mom and baby are really going through it neurologically. That start to life is tough.
How Birth Trauma Creates Tension and Tired Babies [14:00 – 16:00]
Dr. Melanie: Your mom gut is screaming that something’s wrong. When people talk about lactation, they think, “How hard can it be? You put the baby on and they feed.” No, they don’t. You might fight more of an uphill battle in that world than we do in ours.
Breastfeeding is a full-body experience. All babies are born with a recessed jaw, we’re all folded up the way we were in mom’s pelvis, and nothing above the super hyoid complex is fully developed until about 12 weeks. So if the bones aren’t in place, the muscles can’t contract, and neurologically the baby gets tired fast. They’re on the breast for a couple of minutes and then fall asleep, or get mad and irritated, and pop off.
“Breastfeeding is a full body experience. If all the bones aren’t in place, the muscles can’t contract, and then neurologically you get tired really fast.”
Dr. Tony Ebel: So the chain is: trauma leads to tension, tension leads to tired. What comes after tired?
Dr. Melanie: They pop off. They can’t put the demand on the supply. So baby’s crying, mom’s crying, and what conveniently shows up? Formula.
The Formula and Pump Industry’s Role [15:45 – 17:10]
Dr. Melanie: Most moms don’t know that in the hospital, they’re handed a sample of the most expensive, premium-tier formula on purpose. It’s like dog food, once your baby tolerates it, you don’t want to switch. So mom thinks, “My baby tolerated this,” and goes out and buys that brand. The ROI for the formula companies on that single hospital sample is enormous, and a bigger sample shows up again at week one and week three, right during the growth spurts when mom is exhausted and hasn’t been educated.
There’s also real, supportive intervention that the system skips. In the hospital we’re told 15 minutes on each side to bring the milk in. But C-section moms especially won’t have milk come in until after they leave, because the breasts are full of IV fluid, the milk has nowhere to go. Mom feels full and is told the baby isn’t getting anything. Instead, we should educate her: get diuretic foods in, vegetables, watermelon, flush the IV fluid out so the milk can truly come in.
“It’s not the mom. It’s the baby. So why aren’t we focusing on the baby hitting these milestones and getting it right from the tap?”
Why a Pump Can’t Replace Breastfeeding [29:54 – 33:00]
Dr. Melanie: You don’t co-regulate with a pump. When you latch your baby, the oxytocin you get is immediate, and that’s what protects against the postpartum depression, anxiety, and psychosis. When you hook up to a pump, you don’t get that. You feel like a cow, sitting there with your baby across the room, getting none of that neurological feedback.
And your milk is a living organism made exactly for your baby. In the morning it has cortisol to wake them up; at night it has more melatonin. So if you’re worried about your baby not sleeping through the night, consider that pumped morning milk given at night is sending the wrong signal. Your milk is made for your baby, it’s the most amazing thing God gave us.
You absolutely can pump, and you can be very successful at it, exclusive pumpers are rockstars, because it’s harder. But it’s not the mom, it’s the baby, and direct feeding is where the neurology lives.
Dr. Tony Ebel: It’s not just milk, it’s a relationship. Each time you feed, it gets more efficient, the bond gets stronger, co-regulation deepens, mom’s nervous system is healing, and baby’s nervous system is healing. The nourishment almost becomes the bonus. We think breastfeeding is just about nourishment, and we forget the neurological part, which is where you start, stay, and finish.
“Milk is a living organism. It is made just for your baby, cortisol in the morning, melatonin at night.”
Mapping the Entrance Ramp: Every Birth Is Different [17:10 – 22:00]
Dr. Melanie: I tell every mom we’re all getting on the same breastfeeding journey, my job as a clinician is to figure out where your entrance ramp is. A C-section mom has a different start than a home-birth mom. First baby versus second baby matters too, because with every subsequent pregnancy you make more milk, so it comes in faster.
I almost have a Candyland board in my head: first baby, C-section, milk probably won’t come in until day four or five. Second baby, C-section, milk may come in while you’re still in the hospital. Then I run a kind of baby boot camp through the first 12 weeks, doing pattern analysis on the jaw, the palate, and the whole super hyoid complex. We know roughly 99% of babies have a subluxation of the palate or sphenoid, call it misalignment, subluxation, or somatic dysfunction, it’s all the same thing: tension.
“My job as a clinician is to figure out where your entrance ramp is.”
Even an optimal birth still requires healing. My daughter was a beautiful 9-pound home birth with no interventions, and she still needed to be adjusted, because humans are coming out of humans. You don’t need a traumatic birth story to be in the Perfect Storm. Both mom and baby physically have to heal.
Care Plans: Why Every Baby Is Subluxated [22:00 – 25:00]
Dr. Melanie: I always start at least twice a week. If it’s really bad it could be daily, but mom needs to heal too, so it’s a fine line. Because growth spurts happen every other week, we tell families to think of us like an urgent care: call us, text us, especially with clogs and mastitis, and we’ll get you in.
Honestly, I don’t even think of it as a range from mild to severe, it’s that every single baby is subluxated. That’s why we have the INSiGHT scans, so we have a baseline to see what’s actually going on neurologically. These babies are little sharks with 300 bones; adults have around 206. They are not little adults, their anatomy and neurology are completely different, and you can’t be cracking necks on them.
The difference between a chiropractor and a lactation consultant matters here. As a lactation consultant, I know all the tips and tricks, a football hold to work around a torticollis, for example. But as the chiropractor, I’d rather correct the torticollis at the root. Without a chiropractor on the team, lactation consultants are stuck doing endless workarounds and compensatory maneuvers.
The Missing Data: What Happened to Birth Outcomes [25:00 – 27:00]
Dr. Melanie: The more you look into the actual research, there’s almost nothing there. We used to get CDC report cards every couple of years, but we haven’t had a real one since 2018. The “2023” report card is based on 2018 data, so we don’t actually know current birth or breastfeeding outcomes. Before 2020, Metro Detroit was around a 50% C-section rate. We don’t even know the number now.
All researchers can do is survey. They’ll survey 60 moms before birth, 80% want to breastfeed, and at the six-week check-in, fewer than 20% still are, somewhere around 23% depending on the survey. Those are small surveys. Meanwhile, PX Docs offices are seeing those exact moms every week. That’s half the babies I see. Those are the real sample sizes.
“Eighty percent of moms want to breastfeed. By six weeks, fewer than 20% still are.”
Becoming an “Angry Mom” and a Lactation Consultant [27:00 – 30:00]
Dr. Melanie: Everything I do is through the lens of pediatric chiropractic, but as basically an angry mom at what isn’t available for us. I was a pediatric, neurologically-focused chiropractor first. My first birth was a planned home birth that transferred to the hospital and ended in what I call an “unnecessarean,” because I was already crowning. My son would latch fine until his first growth spurt between day seven and day ten, and then the tension caught up with him.
What pushed me into board certification was watching the gaps. I’d see moms all through pregnancy, then they’d disappear, and nine months later I’d hear they were getting tubes in their baby’s ears. One mom told me her child was having surgery the next day, and I was so slammed I didn’t have ten minutes to give her the table talk that might have changed it. I felt like I failed as their chiropractor. So I built my workshops to prenatally educate families, especially dads, who are protectors and fixers and don’t know what to do when mom and baby are both crying. The answer isn’t a pump.
The Dairy Farmer’s Wisdom: Supply, Demand, and Separation [34:14 – 37:40]
Dr. Melanie: My maiden name is from a family of dairy farmers, and when I kept getting mastitis with my daughter, my dad talked to me like I was Bessie the cow: “Mel, you can’t leave that in there, you have to empty.” I’d been told not to pump before six weeks, and it was the opposite of what my body needed. I had so much milk that my daughter was only taking two ounces while I could pump eight to ten on one side.
Here’s the wild part. Dairy farmers used to take calves away and pump the cows twice a day, and they wondered why supply dropped. My brother now leaves the calf with the mother and just takes what the family needs, and the cows make more milk, because they have the oxytocin, they’re with their babies, they’re not separated and stressed. The same biology that the dairy industry took generations to figure out is exactly what we’re telling human moms.
Perfect Storm Kids Are Now Having Perfect Storm Kids [38:00 – 43:00]
Dr. Melanie: With everything we’ve studied, we realize we were obviously Perfect Storm kids ourselves. Perfect Storm kids are now having Perfect Storm kids. I look back and connect the dots, the psoriasis up my scalp after my kindergarten boosters that the doctor blamed on shampoo, the episodes where my brain worked fine but I couldn’t communicate, the full dorsal shutdown I’ve dealt with my whole life into my 40s. These get labeled panic attacks, but it’s nervous system dysregulation.
Dr. Tony Ebel: That’s why those of us who give out lots of Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care can’t forget to receive it at the volume we need. I get adjusted three times a week religiously, more if I’m busier, just to keep my HRV nudged into the green.
Our mothers remember our births; our grandmothers often don’t. When birth moved into the hospital in the 1950s and ’60s, they were given scopolamine, it didn’t take away the pain, it took away the memory. Dads weren’t even allowed in delivery rooms. We have a long way to heal together: us, our babies, and our grandparents.
Washington, MAHA, and the Fight for Coverage [43:45 – 52:30]
Dr. Tony Ebel: We spent a day in Washington on vaccine injuries and the nervous system tension, dysregulation, and subluxation issues that precede adverse reactions. When the chiropractic profession came together in that room, veterans’ care, the back-pain and opioid crisis, the suicide crisis, everyone elevated when we started talking about babies and the Perfect Storm, because that’s where it all starts. The takeaway: if we line up action, we should start upstream, not downstream, cut chronic illness by preventing it as far upstream as possible.
Dr. Melanie: The most urgent piece right now is coverage. As of May 1st, Blue Cross Blue Shield removed all lactation benefits, effectively making board-certified lactation consultants null and void and decimating businesses, including mine. The deeper point is that breastfeeding is the first milestone, so the first covered service should be a pediatric chiropractor. Some third-party payers are now quoting a $200 co-pay for mom and another $200 for baby, and moms can’t afford that, so they decide “breastfeeding isn’t for me” and switch to formula.
“If breastfeeding is the first milestone, the first covered service should be a pediatric chiropractor.”
That’s why we need both legislation and education, writing the policy that doesn’t yet exist, and educating families before the baby is even here so they can start their breastfeeding journey strong.
Storming, Forming, Norming: Why the Hard Part Comes First [52:30 – 1:00:00]
Dr. Melanie: Last year was the hardest of my life, I lost income and had to let go of people I’d spent three years training. But this week I saw why it all happened, and that it’s going to be okay. There’s a sequence to change: storming, then forming, then norming. The medical world wants chronic sickness to be normal. The chiropractic and MAHA world wants healthy, vibrant, and resilient to be normal, and to get there, a lot of people have to go through the storming and forming stages first.
When you’re well informed, empowered, and educated, that leads you to be well adjusted and connected, which builds certainty, clarity, and confidence. Well-adjusted families are well-regulated, resilient, and thriving, and that’s attractive. People ask, “What did you do to get there?” That’s actually how I became a lactation consultant in the first place.
Dr. Tony Ebel: None of you listening have to go through it alone. You have this podcast, this platform, and this community. You get adjusted to clear the tension, you get empowered to build the confidence, and we all make our way out of the storm together, then we turn around and tell the families still stuck in it, “Come with me over here.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is breastfeeding so hard even when I’m doing everything right?
Because breastfeeding is a neurological process driven by the baby, not just by mom’s milk supply or technique. Birth trauma can leave a newborn with subluxation and tension through the neck, jaw, and palate, so the baby can’t latch deeply or transfer milk efficiently. When the baby can’t put demand on the supply, the supply drops, and mom gets blamed for something rooted in the baby’s nervous system.
Can chiropractic care help with breastfeeding and latch problems?
Yes. Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care targets the root cause of latch and feeding struggles, tension in the upper neck, jaw, and super hyoid complex from birth trauma. By clearing that tension, the baby can latch deeper, feed without tiring out, and transfer enough milk, while reducing the pain many moms feel during latching.
Is a breast pump just as good as breastfeeding?
No. A pump can be useful, but it can’t replicate the oxytocin, co-regulation, and bonding of direct feeding, which protect against postpartum anxiety and depression. Breast milk is also a living organism made for your baby, higher cortisol in the morning, more melatonin at night, and a pump can’t reproduce that real-time nervous-system exchange.
Why do so many moms stop breastfeeding by six weeks?
Surveys show about 80% of moms intend to breastfeed, but fewer than 20–23% are still doing so at six weeks. The top reasons, not enough milk, pain, poor transfer, all trace back to the baby’s nervous system. When birth trauma causes tension, the baby tires quickly, pops off, and supply falls, and formula gets offered as the easy fix.
Does a C-section affect breastfeeding?
Yes, in two ways. C-section babies often carry more tension and need nervous-system care to latch and feed well. And C-section moms are typically full of IV fluid, so milk may not come in until after leaving the hospital, flushing that fluid with diuretic foods like vegetables and watermelon helps the milk come in.
How do I find a pediatric chiropractor who understands breastfeeding?
Look for a Neurologically-Focused pediatric chiropractor trained to assess a newborn’s nervous system with INSiGHT scans and address tension affecting latch and feeding. You can find a trained provider through the PX Docs Directory.
Resources & Related Content
- Birth Trauma: How birth interventions create nervous-system tension in newborns
- The “Perfect Storm,” Dr. Tony Ebel’s framework for the root cause of chronic childhood conditions
- Colic: A common downstream effect of unresolved infant tension
- Find a PX Docs Office Near You: PX Docs Directory