Lots of friends and colleagues are sharing photos of their early breastfeeding days to commemorate World Breastfeeding Week (which is this week). I don’t have any pictures to share. After an uneventful pregnancy, a bout of norovirus tore through 2/3 of my family of origin on the day after Thanksgiving. I went to the Army…
As emerging research sheds light on possible reasons for lactation trouble even when mothers receive competent support, insulin resistance, or IR, is rising to the forefront of the discussion of possible causes. The following is an adapted-for-the-blogosphere excerpt of my upcoming book, Finding Sufficiency: Breastfeeding with Insufficient Glandular Tissue, which will be available this summer from…
It was a simple enough text message from my husband, who is holding down the fort at home in New York while I’m working in a public health fellowship in Washington, DC. “Forgot to tell you, a nurse from Keller called. Said you are due for mammogram. Said you can call radiology directly to schedule.”…
One of our biggest frustrations in the lactation/breastfeeding support arena is that we have so little information to offer mothers who have a physiological barrier to breastfeeding — their bodies just don’t produce milk, even after other problems have been solved. I described this condition in this post at KellyMom.com. Penny Liberatos, PhD (New York…
If you’ve visited my blog before, you know that I believe in human milk for human babies, and I have a deep understanding and empathy for those mothers who can’t or choose not to breastfeed their babies, for whatever reason. This week, World Milksharing Week, offers a perfect opportunity to highlight a beautiful story of…
I am often asked, through networks of professionals, to connect a reporter or media representative to breastfeeding mothers in a particular situation. There are some requests that I scramble to satisfy, without reservation, because either the journalist is one whose work I am familiar with (and is truly supportive of breastfeeding), or because the population…
Well, no, it’s not really like that. I wasn’t sick, and the “changing” part was that the guy refused to operate on me. At the time, I was kind of mad about it. I was 26, and in the best shape of my life having just run my first marathon. I loved running and spent a…
Oversupply, forceful let-down, foremilk/hindmilk imbalance … all of these strike fear in the heart of new mothers because they translate to an inconsolable, visibly uncomfortable, crying baby. He may want to nurse all the time, because the sucking behavior soothes him when his tummy hurts, but the more he nurses, the more miserable he becomes. …
I didn’t think I was going to jump into this conversation, because I sometimes feel like my 17-year military career has been atypical enough that I shouldn’t bother telling people I’ve served. I used to be in the Army. I spent my entire career as a clarinet player (among other things, but that was my…
I haven’t met a single person who enjoys “the mommy wars.” I’d go so far to say I even despise the WORDS describing this us vs. them concept that has permeated our culture. Let me cut to the chase: mothers who parent differently from me are not my problem. The culture that makes the biological…
This is Anna and Simon. They’re my first and second babies, and they’re 7-1/2 and 9-1/2. They’ve been weaned for a few years now, but since their mamma is an IBCLC, breastfeeding is part of their lives. There have been a lot of questions over the last few weeks about how children who breastfed long…
This is Gabriella. She’s my youngest daughter, and she turned 4 in December. Two weeks after her 4th birthday, Gabriella underwent a 3-hour craniofacial surgery to resolve a rare birth defect. Two pediatric neurosurgeons and a pediatric plastic surgeon cut open my little girl’s head in an incision that wrapped from ear to ear. They…
This post is taken directly from an assignment for a class toward fulfillment of my Master of Public Health, Environmental Influences on Human Health. I seek to educate about dioxins, which are found in very high concentrations in human breastmilk. Dioxin exposure (perhaps in utero) has been shown to have a profound effect on mammary…
Let me begin this post by saying that many of my colleagues are hesitant to suggest that a mother consider eliminating one or more foods from her diet; they are worried that “one more thing” will make a mother not want to breastfeed her baby. My perspective is a little different, because when my babies…
As an IBCLC in private practice, I am sometimes asked for solutions when a breastfed baby refuses to take a bottle after his mother has begun regularly separating for a return to work or school. This dilemma rouses an emotional response in me, because I experienced it to varying degrees with each of my three…
normal, like breathing 