Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.

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with virginia soul smith who is the author of the book The Eating Instinct,

Food Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America, which is her first book. She is a co-host

of The Comfort Food Podcast and is a contributing editor at Parents Magazine. Her work has

been published in the New York Times Magazine, Self, Real Simple, Newsweek, Harbors, and Elle. She currently lives with her husband and two daughters in the Hudson Valley. So welcome, Virginia. Thanks for coming on moms. Don't have time to read books. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here. Of course. We've been chatting before recording, and I kept being like, save that for the podcast. So now we can finally talk because she had such good stuff to say.

I hope I remember it all now. So the first sentence of your book is September 17, 2013.

It is the day before my daughter Violet's one month birthday. It is also the first day that she will

almost die. You go on from there to narrate this horrifying traumatic experience that

you went through with your daughter, Violet, the beginning of her life, the after effects.

Can you briefly tell listeners what happened to her?

Sure. So, you know, during my pregnancy with Violet, I, you know, like every first time mom

thought I was doing everything perfectly. It was trying really hard to eat all the right things, do all the prenatal yoga, you know, like every first time mom thought I was doing everything perfectly.

It was trying really hard to eat all the right things, do all the prenatal yoga, you know, the acupuncture.

Like I really felt like building a perfect baby was like all on me and my choices.

And then when she was born, you know, the delivery was normal and she seemed really healthy at birth. And so they sent us home saying, you know, go to it. Like, here's your newborn. And in the first few weeks of her life, I was breastfeeding. And it was really hard and exhausting. But again, I was thinking, you know, this is what it is. Like this, you know, like I am feeding her with my body. We are doing the thing.

And then the breastfeeding sessions started to get shorter and shorter. So we went from like those 45 minute per side kind of sessions to 20 minutes to 12 minutes to six minutes. And to be

honest with you, I just thought like, oh, thank God, it's getting easier. Okay, I can take a shower.

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