Well Rounded Birth Prep

02/15/2026

Cosleeping is co-regulation.

Research tells us that babies who co-sleep in infancy, especially in those early years can receive around 13,000 extra hours of touch.

Thirteen thousand.

Because when you keep your baby close, day and night, they’re getting 10 to 12 extra hours a day of your skin, your warmth, your presence.

That’s not spoiling.
That’s wiring.

Touch is brain food.
It releases oxytocin and serotonin.
It lowers cortisol.

It teaches your baby’s body how to feel safe.
How to come back to calm.

We actually have studies showing that
co-sleeping babies have lower stress reactivity meaning their little bodies bounce back from stress faster.

More hours of touch by age three.

That’s not dependence.
That’s co-regulation.
That’s safety being built from the inside out.
That’s wiring.

So the next time you’re contact napping, bed sharing, or doing whatever gets you both some rest and someone tells you you’re creating bad habits remember this,

You’re not creating a clingy baby.
You’re creating a resilient one 🖤

02/11/2026

Confirming moms’ instincts - support breastfeeding preemies!

Let’s put to rest for good the false assumptions that bottle-feeding is “easier” for preemies than breastfeeding. Acording to this 2026 RCT, at their first feeding by mouth, preemies breastfed had measurably better oxygen levels and heart rates compared with those whose first oral feed was by bottle. The breastfed preemies even took more milk! Please share these findings far and wide! https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41318959/

01/27/2026

FINALLY!!! We’ve had this data for at least the 2 decades that I’ve been reading about it. Cry-it-out does damage to babies & the American Academy of Pediatrics at last admits this.

My favorite resource for safe infant sleep & attachment is Notre Dame U Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Lab. I’ll put the 🔗 in the 👇

The American Academy of Pediatrics now warns that sleep training before 12 months can disrupt attachment and nervous system regulation. The concern is not parenting style but biology. Babies’ brains are still wiring safety signals through proximity.
In the first year, infants cannot self-regulate. Their nervous system relies on co-regulation with caregivers. When stress rises, closeness to a parent helps settle the amygdala, lower cortisol, and signal safety. Room-sharing is a natural way to provide this support.
Sleep training too early teaches babies to manage stress alone before their brains are ready. Calm is not learned by isolation under stress. Instead, infants need repeated, responsive soothing so regulation becomes internalized over time.
Parents who previously sleep trained are not failing their children. They acted on the information available in a culture that often prioritizes independence over developmental readiness. Understanding the science changes how we view early sleep strategies.
This research emphasizes that proximity wires safety. Babies learn calm through closeness, not isolation. Early care that meets stress with support builds secure attachment, emotional regulation, and lifelong resilience.

01/23/2026

How to prepare freezer stash of breastmilk for potential power outages. Stay safe, everyone! ❄️

With a major winter storm potentially affecting dozens of states, we recognize the concerns many have about stored milk.

Updated to add: A stand alone freezer will maintain temperature for 48 hours in a power outage if unopened. A freezer compartment within a fridge will maintain temperature for 24 hours if unopened.

[Image Description] Photo of a wintery scene. Text on top reads, "Power outage? Worried about your frozen milk? Try to keep the freezer door completely shut while power is out. Once power is restored, check to see if there are any ice crystals that remain in the bags. If there are any frozen ice crystals at all, it may be refrozen." The La Leche League USA logo is below the text.

11/11/2025

What a ridiculous double standard, tbh

11/06/2025

Holy 💩 you guys, this is a must-read article! I’m out of the loop on AI tech used by hospitals for continuous fetal monitoring. Yall, these remote monitoring locations like the one in the picture can be up to 60 miles away from the laboring woman.

The people who make the money selling these monitoring tools claim they improve outcomes, but they don’t. We’ve known for DECADES that routine continuous fetal monitoring is causing more harm than good.

This is adding insult to injury - especially when the US has had the worst maternal & infant birth outcomes in any industrialized country, for decades. At least 20 years that I’ve been aware of, probably much longer than that.

We HAVE to do better!

An excellent article today from . Note the lack of evidence supporting the use of continuous fetal monitoring, the clear influence of business and economics, and the money grab from AI companies who claim studies support their product - when in fact they don’t - resulting in remote monitoring hubs.

I especially love that placenta accreta is described early in the article so the public can see that cesareans carry risk. As a result, we need to ensure that they occur only when needed or wanted.

Note that the photo for this article is of a remote monitoring hub. One such hub is up to 60 miles away from the hospital in which the woman is laboring.

“Nearly every woman who gives birth in an American hospital is strapped with a belt of sensors to track the baby’s heartbeat. If the pattern is deemed abnormal — too slow, for example — doctors often call for an emergency C-section.

But this round-the-clock monitoring, the most common obstetric procedure in the country, rarely helps baby or mother. Decades of research have shown that the tool does not reliably predict fetal distress. In fact, experts say, it leads to many unnecessary surgeries as doctors overreact to its ever-changing readouts.

The obstetrics field has long ignored these problems. Now, it’s putting more trust than ever on the flawed technology, often prioritizing business and legal concerns ahead of what’s best for patients, The New York Times found.

This fall, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists updated its guidelines on continuous monitoring, sanctioning it even as some other wealthy countries have cautioned against its routine use…

All three remote hubs, along with 400 other hospitals around the country, use A.I. software to help analyze the heart data. The software’s maker, PeriGen, has claimed on its website that 50 studies backed up its products.

But none of the studies found that the technology improved birth outcomes. PeriGen removed the list of studies after an inquiry from The Times. The company’s chief executive, Matthew Sappern, acknowledged that no clinical trials had shown benefits.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/health/electronic-fetal-monitoring-c-sections.html?unlocked_article_code=1.zE8.145f.FPhFANzFoVZp&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

10/27/2025

Why is the assembly line like this????

10/20/2025

The story is in the caption.

When a formula company partners with a celebrity, it isn’t about “supporting moms”, it’s about selling product. And when that celebrity has massive influence in communities already targeted by aggressive formula marketing, it becomes even more problematic.

Black mothers in the U.S. face some of the lowest breastfeeding rates, not from lack of desire, but because of systemic barriers. They’re given less workplace flexibility, fewer pumping accommodations, shorter leave, and are exposed to more formula marketing than almost any other group.

So when a brand like Bobbie uses a celebrity mom with huge influence in those same communities to “normalize” formula use, it doesn’t empower mothers, it profits off inequity.

This isn’t about one mom’s choice. It’s about corporate manipulation disguised as relatability. It’s about billion-dollar brands pretending to be on your side while quietly shaping the narrative around “choice” to keep you buying.

And let’s be honest…Bobbie has been doing this since day one. Their entire brand is built on being the “cool,” “nonjudgmental,” “mom-run” formula company. They talk like us, post like us, and use the language of empowerment, but it’s all marketing psychology.

They want to be seen as the formula for moms who care. But behind the branding, they’re just like every other formula company…corporate, profit-driven, and invested in keeping mothers dependent on their product.

Their formula? No different than others.
Their tactics? Just more aesthetic.
And their mission? The same as every other brand, to sell as much as possible, even if that means blurring the line between genuine support and strategic manipulation.

They don’t want to change the system that makes breastfeeding hard, they want to benefit from it.
Because when the system fails mothers, formula companies win.

We should be fighting for paid leave, lactation support, and access to evidence-based information, not cheering on billion-dollar campaigns built on mothers’ exhaustion.

Don’t let a polished brand and pastel marketing fool you. Bobbie isn’t the voice of mothers. They’re the voice of profit, dressed up in “mom-friendly” packaging.

09/28/2025

Another celebrity normalizing full term breastfeeding 💕

09/24/2025

Great visualization of different nursing positions!

Part of the struggle of mothering in modern society, is that we’ve lost the ability to see this throughout our lives. If we see babies, they have pacifiers or bottles - very few are seen breastfeeding, let alone breastfeeding without a cover (using a cover is a very modern concept).

We need to see breastfeeding in order to process how it works, how to hold our babies.

We learn by watching. Or, at least, we did for millennia.

08/29/2025

08/24/2025

My midwife friend shares truth!