KBIC Breastfeeding Support

12/23/2025

Happy Holidays! 🎄

Sorry Santa 🤣🤷‍♀️

12/23/2025

Breastfeeding is a team effort 🤍

Partners play a powerful role in feeding success—from protecting rest and handling logistics to offering encouragement and advocating for support. If you’re pregnant or newly postpartum, tag your partner so they know how much their support matters.

Support doesn’t have to be perfect—it just has to be present.

12/23/2025

Breastfeeding Isn’t Just Feeding. It’s Communication.

Babies don’t have words.
They communicate through cues, cries, and closeness.

The breast becomes a language.
“I’m tired.”
“I need reassurance.”
“I need you.”

Responding doesn’t spoil them.
It teaches them they are heard.

12/15/2025

Have breastmilk that’s past its feeding window? Don’t toss it just yet 🤍

Breastmilk has natural soothing and antimicrobial properties, which means it can still be useful beyond feeding. Many families choose to use older milk for things like diaper rash, baby acne, cracked ni***es, milk baths, cradle cap, or eczema support.

12/10/2025

Breast milk and “cold season” go hand in hand. 🤒 When the germs start flying, your milk becomes the most protective thing in the house. The second you or your baby are exposed to something, your body starts making targeted antibodies that show up in your breast milk almost immediately. That means every feed is delivering immune support, comfort, hydration, and protection all at once.

So yes, keep nursing through the sniffles, the coughs, the “why is everyone sick again” moments. Your milk literally adjusts to what your baby needs. It’s not just food… it’s active immune protection in real time. ❄️🤱🏼

12/06/2025

Sometimes I swear I am nothing more than a walking milk machine and I do not even know how that makes me feel.
One minute I love that my body comforts my baby in ways no one else can, and the next minute I am touched out and wondering if anyone sees me as anything other than the person who provides the b***s.

It is this strange mix of pride and exhaustion, love and frustration.

You pour everything into your baby and sometimes it feels like the only part of you that matters is the part that feeds them.

And you love them so much it hurts, but you also miss feeling like a whole person who exists for more than just their next feeding. Motherhood is beautiful, but it is real too, and this part deserves to be talked about just as much as the sweet moments.

12/02/2025

When your baby gets sick your body responds in a way that is honestly incredible. Within hours the composition of your milk shifts to match what your baby is fighting. Antibodies begin to rise, especially IgA, which coats the baby’s gut and helps block the exact germs causing their symptoms. White blood cells multiply and flood your milk, creating a concentrated immune response designed to attack viruses and bacteria directly.

Human milk oligosaccharides also change. These special sugars support healthy gut bacteria and make it harder for harmful microbes to attach and spread. Your milk increases anti inflammatory factors too, which help soothe your baby’s tissues and reduce irritation while they recover.

This is why sick day milk often looks thicker or more yellow. The immune content is higher. The protection is stronger. The milk becomes more like colostrum again, rich and purposeful, made specifically for the illness in front of your baby that day.

Your body is not guessing. It is responding with accuracy and intention. Sick milk is real and it is powerful. 💛🤱🏼

11/16/2025

🤱🏼💕

11/15/2025

🌿 Watch Anytime, Anywhere: “Skin to Skin is Not Universal: Teaching Equity” presented by Raeanne Madison, MPH🌿

As frontline workers and educators serving birthing families, we often emphasize the importance of “skin to skin” contact, especially in the first hour after birth. But standard teaching approaches may not meet the needs of all families or reflect the diverse contexts in which care happens.

This webinar explores how skin to skin is not universally applicable, and offers strategies to teach and support early parenting and lactation in ways that are equitable, culturally aware, and context-sensitive.

✨ In this session, you’ll:
-Recognize three benefits of skin to skin contact 🤱🏾
-Understand how diverse community and cultural contexts shape perceptions of skin to skin 🌎
-Learn three equity-based teaching strategies to support all families 💛

💻 Approved for: 1 L-CERP | 1 Nurse Contact Hour | 1 Social Work CE | 1 CHW CEU | 1 CHEC | 1 CME (valid until 12/24/25)

🔗 Register and access here: mibreastfeeding.org/webinars

11/05/2025

Thank you for showing up, for the late nights, the cracked ni***es, the tears, and the quiet victories no one else saw.

Thank you for choosing to do something ancient, powerful, and sacred in a world that often tells you it’s unnecessary, inconvenient, or outdated.

Thank you for trusting your body when society made you doubt it. For saying no to pressure and yes to biology, even when the world around you questioned it. You’ve heard the comments: “It doesnt matter either way” “You’re still breastfeeding?” “All kids eat nuggies off the floor anyway.” And still, you kept going.

You fed your baby with your body, in parking lots, bathrooms, supply closets, hospital chairs, and sleepless nights. You pumped between shifts, packed milk in coolers, and whispered “just one more ounce” through exhaustion and grace.

You weren’t doing “what’s best”, you were doing what’s right. What nature intended. What every mammal before you has done to sustain life.
And you did it in a culture that praises everything artificial and questions everything biological.

You breastfed through mastitis, clogged ducts, tongue ties, postpartum anxiety, and the endless noise of people who don’t understand.

You breastfed when you were told your milk wasn’t enough, but it was. You breastfed when your letdown burned, your baby cried, and your patience thinned, but love remained steady.

You didn’t just make milk, you made antibodies, comfort, and connection. You regulated your baby’s heartbeat, temperature, hormones, and emotions, with nothing more than your presence.

And even if no one ever said it, thank you.

Thank you for showing other women that breastfeeding isn’t weakness, it’s resistance. Thank you for proving that nurture and nature still belong in the same sentence. Thank you for being the quiet revolution, for every mother who was told she couldn’t, shouldn’t, or didn’t need to.

You are the proof that the system is what’s broken, not your body. Your milk is medicine. Your effort is advocacy. And your baby is thriving because you did what you were designed to do.

Breastfeeding isn’t easy, but you made it possible.
And for that, you deserve to be thanked, celebrated, and protected. 🩷🤱🏼

11/05/2025

🤩

☀️🤱🏼💕

11/05/2025

🧠 New Research: Breastfeeding and Long-Term Brain Growth

Ottino-González et al. (2025) found that longer breastfeeding duration was associated with greater cortical thickness and improved cognitive function.

Researchers looked at over 5,000 children between the ages of 9–12 years. They analyzed brain scans, thinking skills, and breastfeeding history.

What they found was powerful: the longer a child had been breastfed, the stronger and healthier their brain structure appeared…. even years later.

💡 Here’s what they found:

Children who were breastfed longer had:
✨ Thicker brain cortex — this is the outer layer of the brain responsible for memory, attention, perception, and awareness.
✨ Larger brain surface area — which is connected to intelligence, emotional regulation, and learning.
✨ More myelin in key areas — myelin is like “insulation” that helps brain cells send messages quickly and efficiently.

Even more fascinating? Those brain differences were directly linked to better cognitive function, meaning stronger memory, focus, and problem-solving skills.
And this was still true almost a decade after they’d been weaned.

We often talk about breastfeeding benefits in terms of early life… immune support, fewer infections, lower risks of allergies, and reduced hospitalizations. But this study reminds us that human milk is brain food in every sense of the word. It’s not just about calories. It’s living tissue, filled with fatty acids like DHA, hormones, stem cells, antibodies, and over a thousand bioactive molecules that support brain development.

Think of it as communication milk: every feed delivers microscopic messages that tell your baby’s brain how to grow, connect, and adapt.

Of course, this doesn’t mean breastfeeding is the only factor, genes, environment, and education all play roles. But it shows that the effects of breast milk don’t just fade after the newborn stage… they keep echoing into childhood and beyond.

Every drop, every feed, every ounce matters.
Whether you breastfed for a week, a month, or several years, you gave your baby something their brain will remember. This isn’t about perfection. It’s about protection. Breastfeeding is one of the most profound ways the body nourishes both body and mind, a biological design that’s stood the test of time.

You don’t have to compare your journey to anyone else’s. Just know this: when you nurse your child, comfort them at your breast, or pump milk for them you are helping build their brain in ways that science is still discovering.