Hilary Duff: Breast-Feeding Struggles Are Giving Me 'Tons of Anxiety'
Hilary Duff is not new to nursing, and the Younger star spoke candidly on Thursday, April 15, about her breast-feeding troubles over the years.
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“I’m just not a huge milk producer, so it’s emotional for me,” the actress, 33, who welcomed 2-week-old daughter, Mae, in March, said on Dr. Berlin’s “Informed Pregnancy Podcast” episode. “In fact, this is the first baby that I haven’t supplemented with yet, so I’ve just exclusively been breast-feeding her. I’m going to keep trying that for a couple of weeks.”
Hilary Duff
The Texas native, who is also the mother of son Luca, 9, and daughter Banks, 2, explained that she isn’t sure whether she’s “producing enough” milk for her baby girl.
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“Since I haven’t in the past, I have tons of anxiety that I’m not, and that she’s not getting enough, and then I’m in my head, and then I don’t feel like enough, and then the spiral continues from there,” the Lizzie McGuire alum added, noting that all of her little ones have “latched great” at least. “I’m not even at week three yet, so I need to just sit back and chill and trust that my body is doing the right thing. And she’s gaining weight.”
In addition to nursing Mae being “painful,” the “So Yesterday” singer is finding breast-feeding “even harder” this time around because she’s not around as much for her eldest two children.
Duff explained, “This takes up such a huge portion of the day. It seems like every 20 minutes I’m feeding the baby, and I have to be sitting in one place, and Banks is still not quite old enough to understand, even though she has been amazing with the baby. It’s just hard.”
The former Disney Channel star has been documenting her nursing journey via Instagram since welcoming her little one last month, from photographing her “late afternoon cluster feed” to snapping a selfie in the midst of “a lot” of breast-feeding.
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In May 2019, Duff opened up about her emotional decision to stop nursing Banks. “I want to say I enjoyed (almost) every moment of feeding my daughter,” she captioned a sweet Instagram shot. “Felt so lucky to be so close to her and give her that start. … But I needed a break. I was going to break. With the stress of a dropping milk supply and a baby that was getting bored or not caring about nursing when I was available to. I was sad and frustrated and feeling like a failure all of the time. When really, I’m a bad ass rock star.”
