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Natalie Eckdahl

” My body is providing everything that my baby needs to grow and thrive and it just is really mind boggling to me and it just amazes me and i feel like it just continues that experience of giving birth.”

Natalie Eckdahl

Episode #55        Natalie Eckdahl, is a busy wife and Mom of three breastfed children.   Natalie has built a successful personal brand and platform from the ground up. She  is the host of the fabulous podcast The Biz Chix and says that  her superpower is facilitating groups and creating community and connectedness.

Her story

Natalie Eckdahl, MBA hosts the BizChix Podcast where she interviews female entrepreneurs from around the world and provides training to business owners. She is a former management consultant and serial entrepreneur who leverages her corporate experience and graduate business education to help entrepreneurs confidently launch, build and grow their businesses.  Natalie takes a holistic view of her clients lives and helps them build a business that  matches their personal and professional goals.

Natalie built a successful personal brand and platform  from the ground up via her podcast which was recognized by iTunes as a #1 New Business Podcast in March 2014. She has been featured in Inc Magazine, Huffington Post and the Orange County Business Journal. Natalie also speaks nationally on the topics of team building and masterminding.

Natalie tells us that she had a really great childhood with supportive parents who have been married for many years. Her brother is 18 months younger than she is. Both kids were very involved in sports and much of her growing up years were spent being active in sports.  Her whole family continues to do a lot outside the home remaining very active.    Her mom is a teacher and wonderful homemaker and really great at creating memories and celebrating holidays. Natalie tells us that her mom is really great with her kids and they were just together coloring eggs for Easter. While Natalie acknowledges that she enjoys doing crafts and could be coloring eggs with her kids, she loves the fact that her mom enjoys doing it so much too.  We had a great discussion about how both our moms enjoyed having homes that were very clean and very organized.  Neither of our moms could sit still on the couch and watch TV with us as they always had to be doing something.

Natalie tells us that when she was a little girl she frequently dreamed about being a mom.  Much of her childhood play was centered around pretending to be a mom.  She played a lot with these beautiful dolls that her grandmother made for her.  She laughed as she tells us that at some point as a teenager, she began to add another part to that dream of being a mother.  She dreamt about having enough money to hire someone to help keep up her home.  I felt this was quite practical of her.  She also laughs a bit when she says that she certainly never dreamed about becoming a podcaster!

Natalie talks about how helpful her nanny Julie is and how important  that she has the help of her nanny. She feels strongly about hiring outside help and outsourcing some of the things that you don’t like doing.  It is smart to have help for things that take away from the enjoyment of her family or take away from her ability to run her business.   She describes it as a trade off.  Hmmmm,  should I sleep or should I work?  Should I clean or should I play with my kids?  Her children do help out around the house, and of course, Natalie does a fair amount of housework,  but she does have her trusted Nanny to help her with all these tasks.

She describes her nanny as her partner in her family and her home.  Julie is a very important part of her family and her life, having worked with her for 3 1/2 years.  She sees her children more than anyone else other than her and her husband. I would say that Julie is quite lucky to be working in Natalie’s home.

Natalie has asked her mom if she breastfed her and she did.  Her mom was part of LLL and attended meetings.  She breastfed Natalie for 3 months and her brother for about 4 months.

Natalie has 3 children. Her daughter Aurora is 14 years old, her son Tahoe is 4 and her last baby boy is Jett and he is 19 months old.  She always knew she wanted to breastfeed.  She was very glad that her mom did breastfeed as she could be a really good support person for her.  She has observed other friends who did not have moms who breastfeed and she was able to see that there was a major concern about their babies getting enough.  These fears probably came from the fact that their moms did not breastfeed.  They were use to being able to measure their intake and were uncomfortable not giving a bottle and being able to see how much they were drinking. Natalie saw the negative impact that had on her friends, which really made her grateful that her mom did breastfeed.

Natalie tells us she enjoys reading and is a big researcher so she read a lot of books on newborn parenting and breastfeeding while she was pregnant with Aurora. She had a doula for her first 2 births.  Her first birth was in the hospital, her second was at home and her third was at the local birth center.  With her first birth, her doula talked to her a lot about breastfeeding.  She had help with breastfeeding during her hospital stay and her doula checked in with her once home.   She had all unmedicated births and is appreciative that she was able to do so.

Since there was a nice size gap in between Aurora and her next baby, she did some additional reading on breastfeeding.  Natalie feels strongly that if you are committed to breastfeeding, you should have your resources handy ahead of time.  In modern times, we just don’t often get to see other moms breastfeed.  Natalie likes the service that I provide with All About Breastfeeding and offering SKYPE consults to moms.  If that was available to her at the time, she would have liked that.

Her Aunt Kathy, who is her mom’s younger sister, breastfed her baby.  She was very committed to breastfeeding and very comfortable with breastfeeding with others in the room.  She has some good memories during her high school year, seeing her Aunt Kathy breastfeed her nephew and recognizes that this had a positive impact on her view about breastfeeding.

These are the other topics we talked about:

    1. There is a huge gap in growing up and seeing other female members of our family breastfeed.  For some moms, seeing other women breastfeed is quite foreign. This is another reason, books and videos and classes on breastfeeding are important.
    2.  Natalie is glad that her kids have seen her breastfeed as a normal part of life.
    3. She has been surprised at how different each nursing relationship has been.  Aurora was the kind of baby who would breastfeed, rather quickly, in a lot less time than her other friend’s kids would.  She had a lot of milk and Aurora was the beneficiary of an abundant supply and a fast flow.
    4. Tahoe lingered at the breast.  He took his time and she thought she was going to go crazy.  She decided to binge watch favorite TV shows.
    5.  With Jett, she got off to a more difficult start.  He was a biter.  She did scream when he bit her, and yet he was pretty tenacious about breastfeeding and never went through a nursing strike.  He got teeth at 4 months and, of course, this had an impact on their nursing relationship which made breastfeeding very hard.
    6. The best thing for Natalie about breastfeeding was: :cuddling, bonding, and she enjoyed the convenience of breastfeeding and has been very committed to working through any challenges.
    7. It is an extension of the magicalness of giving birth to a child.  We grow something from nothing in our bodies and it comes out of us and it is a human and I provided the only nourishment my children got until they started having solid food.  My body is providing everything that my baby needs to grow and thrive and it just is really mind boggling to me and it just amazes me and i feel like it just continues that experience of giving birth.
    8. Natalie is grateful that while her breastfeeding experiences have been different, she has been fortunate to have experienced very little breastfeeding difficulties between all 3 kids.  She went on to nurse Aurora for 10 months, Tahoe for 20 months and Jett for 17 months.
    9. She enjoyed the convenience and joy of breastfeeding babies and the difference between nursing our babies, particularly the ones after the first.  Our other babies are more or less along for the ride and we nurse them at dance recitals and at the gym, etc.
    10. Natalie talks about her business.  She has an international business where she coaches other female entrepreneurs and helps them grow their business.  She hosts small Masterminds and has clients all over the world.
    11. Natalie talks about the importance of having her nanny help out with the other kids and household during the  newborn stage.  She feels strongly that you really need to take  a maternity leave. It is important to take care of yourself  and take time to take care of your new baby.

Words of Wisdom to a new mother: We need time off after giving birth.  We never know what to expect.  Is our baby going to be a sleeper or hardly sleep?  Is breastfeeding go to be easy or challenging?  You just don’t know how things are going to go.  She feels all new mothers, even entrepreneurs  do need to give themselves the gift of maternity leave.

Contact Info: bizchix.com

nat@bizchix.com

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