Mexican and Chilean actor Karla Souza — best known for her roles in “How to Get Away With Murder,” “Day Shift,” “Dive,” and ABC’s “Home Economics” — is crystal clear about her priorities these days. While her acting career remains a major focus, nothing tops being a mom to the three children she shares with husband Marshall Trenkmann: 5-year-old Gianna, 3-year-old Luka, and 1-year-old Giula. One parenting decision she’s recently felt called to speak about more openly is switching her youngest from breast milk to formula — a choice she believes far too many mothers are still unfairly judged for.
“It has been a journey. This whole breastfeeding-mother image was very romanticized in my head. It was idyllic. It was going to be easy. It was just going to happen because it’s natural and that’s how it’s supposed to be,” Souza tells Popsugar. She remembers that the false expectations began with her first child, whom she had no idea she was overfeeding. She had no problems producing milk at the time, but she also had no idea how much or how often she was supposed to feed her baby. No one had prepared her for it.
“I had this false sense of, ‘Well, you’re a woman and you should know and it’s going to come naturally,’ and this just sort of came from my Latin culture,” she shares. “I wish I would have gotten some support because now, after the third one, I finally got a doula and she was like, ‘Oh no, you just have to breastfeed four minutes on one side and four on the other, and I was like, I was overfeeding Gianna. I was doing 20 minutes and 20 minutes. No wonder she was just crying and crying.”
By the time Souza had her third child, she realized she had to find a solution that worked for both her and her baby. During and after her first and second pregnancies, she had been working steadily; she shot “Dive” just six months after giving birth to her second child, and had to look like an Olympic athlete in a matter of months. The weight loss affected her ability to produce milk, she says, and she experienced the same after her third pregnancy. The pressure to get back in shape for a role, along with the stress of the LA fires earlier this year, all impacted her milk production.
“I almost lost all my milk because of the stress and anxiety of all that,” she says. “And then for Luca, I had gone through this sort of nerding on infant formula and [figuring out] which ones are the best ones.”
All of this led Souza to discover Nara Organics, the first and only USDA-certified organic whole milk formula made without skim milk, and a brand she recently partnered with.
“There are so many lies that are still out there, and [I’m] sort of demystifying this idolized version of a mother and realizing you know what? Well, my mother did the best she could with what she had. But I [also] have so much more information now, and I can make healthier choices for myself and my children,” she says of debunking myths surrounding formula. “It is a really hard thing for the first time to say, ‘I hear that that’s the way you did it, but for us, for my family, this is actually the better way.'”
Aside from generally loving and trusting the brand, Souza wanted to use this opportunity to highlight some of the cultural issues a lot of moms — Latina moms in particular — face when it comes to mom guilt regarding formula feeding versus breastfeeding. In particular, she wants to address the social shaming that mothers still often experience.
According to a Marias Gamesa survey published in 2014, 83 percent of Latina moms report feeling judged for their parenting decisions, with meal choices being one of the things they feel the most judged and scrutinized for.
“Latina moms are specifically more prone to these sorts of pressures and false ideals of what being a mother is,” she says. In fact, according to research, 77 percent of Latina moms start off breastfeeding, with the number dropping to 21 percent around six months after giving birth. Numerous factors can lead to this, and formula milk is often the most convenient option for moms.
“Latina moms are specifically more prone to these sorts of pressures and false ideals of what being a mother is.”
In addition to being USDA-certified and free from ingredients like corn syrup, Nara Organics uses whole milk instead of skim — which Souza loved, given that it’s a choice believed to provide healthy fats that support brain development in babies.
“Not all formulas are created equal, and I will say in my experience, I would never touch certain ones, and I never did. There are some ingredients that they use that I just definitely would not use,” she adds.
The actor also wants to start normalizing dialogues around postpartum depression. Souza admits to having experienced her own form of postpartum depression, though she wasn’t clinically diagnosed.
“You’re very raw, and it’s hard to be there for your husband, for your kids, for yourself, and for your job,” she says. “I mean, it was very difficult for me. I was working three months after I had to move my entire family to Montreal to do a job for a show, and it’s so much mental energy to move three children, a nanny, and a husband. . . . It’s a lot.”
Part of that stress, Souza says, came from having to get back into shape for a role following her third pregnancy. It was extremely challenging, and it’s a pressure placed on all women, even outside of work or acting roles, she adds.
“The bounce was more because of my job, but I’ve also had the social pressure of the bounce back,” she says. “Kids still come up to me and they’re like, ‘Are you pregnant?’ I’m like, no, I finished having kids [and] now I have the mommy bump. And seeing all this stuff of the mommy makeovers and ‘Look at this mom three months later’ and before-and-after photos — it can send you down a very dark path.”
Souza believes that modern moms still aren’t being given a grace period just to heal and focus on their overall health as well as their kids. The pressure to have their bodies return to what they looked like before kids is still there, and as an actor living in the public eye, she wants to offer a more refreshing perspective on it.
“We’re not being exposed to these images of natural, beautiful mom bodies because there’s this thing of the bounce back or the mommy makeover, and surgically everything looks like we didn’t have kids,” Souza says. “All these things are happening, and it just adds to what women are carrying after having been moms.”
At the heart of it all, Souza wants to remind women to give themselves the grace that society still so often withholds when it comes to motherhood. She wants moms to know they have options — and that they shouldn’t feel guilted or pressured into breastfeeding or “bouncing back” if it’s not right for them. In a world that isn’t always set up for mothers to thrive, she believes the most important thing we can do is simply our best.
Johanna Ferreira is the content director for PS Juntos. With more than 10 years of experience, Johanna focuses on how intersectional identities are a central part of Latine culture. Previously, she spent close to three years as the deputy editor at HipLatina, and she has freelanced for numerous outlets including Refinery29, Oprah magazine, Allure, InStyle, and Well+Good. She has also moderated and spoken on numerous panels on Latine identity.
