Best Baby Beginnings

02/04/2026

"This is my minister, Rev. Eric Severson of Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Midland, speaking at yesterday’s rally in response to what’s happening in Minneapolis.

He had just returned from the front lines, answering a call for religious leaders to be present.

The story that has stayed with me most was about an organizer who arrived late because they were delayed from delivering breastmilk to a family with a newborn. The baby was hungry. The mother had been abducted by ICE.

I can’t stop thinking about that moment: a volunteer walking through the cold with a bottle of milk. A woman who expressed her own milk for a child that wasn’t hers. A family receiving it with gratitude. A baby finally fed.

And I can’t stop thinking about the baby’s mother, somewhere in a cell, miles and miles away, her body still painfully producing the food meant for her child that she was taken from.

We are told this is about the 'worst of the worst.' We are told that it is about public safety. And yet, there is a new mother who can’t hold and feed her baby. A baby who had to be fed by a stranger’s kindness.

My heart keeps breaking." -- Sarah Schulz

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--> With the Senate voting this week on DHS funding, it's critical to keep the pressure on: Here's how to take action.

For Senators: Demand no DHS funding until ICE and Border Patrol are reined in and an independent investigation is launched into their widespread abuses. You can call (202) 224-3121 or use the action alert at https://5calls.org/issue/dhs-budget-ice-defund/

For Representatives: Call (202) 224-3121 and demand real oversight of these lawless agencies -- and the launch of an independent investigation into the activities of ICE and the killings of American citizens by DHS agents.

--> To help immigrants who have been arrested or detained, you can support the critical work of the National Immigrant Justice Center at https://immigrantjustice.org/ways-to-help/

--> If you're looking for ways to take action and counter ICE overreach, supporting civil rights organizations like the ACLU that challenge their tactics in the courts has emerged as one of the most successful means of constraining ICE's rapidly expanding enforcement powers -- learn more at https://www.aclu.org/issues/immigrants-rights/immigrants-rights-and-detention

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For children's books that encourage empathy and understanding of Mighty Girl immigrants of the past and present, visit our blog post, "A New Land, A New Life: 25 Mighty Girl Books About the Immigrant Experience" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=12855

For books for children and teens about the importance of standing up for truth, decency, and justice, even in dark times, visit our blog post, "Dissent Is Patriotic: 50 Books About Women Who Fought for Change," at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=14364

For books for tweens and teens about girls living under real-life authoritarian regimes throughout history that will help them appreciate how precious democracy truly is, visit our blog post "The Fragility of Freedom: Mighty Girl Books About Life Under Authoritarianism" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=32426

To stay connected with A Mighty Girl, you can sign-up for A Mighty Girl's free email newsletter at https://www.amightygirl.com/forms/newsletter

01/29/2026

Sharing her experience not as advice, or to invalidate anyone else’s. Thanks for that intention!

"I told the pediatrician “no” and it’s all thanks to the Breastfeeding Mama Talk community!

So my son was induced at exactly 37 weeks for risk of preeclampsia, he was born just a few days ago on 1/24/18, he latched on right away, no problem at all.
The next day they checked his sugar because they said he looked jittery, it was low. So the on call Ped came in and said I need to give him formula to balance his sugar levels. I refused! The look on her face was priceless! She looked pi**ed 😡, like no one had ever told her no before. She said fine i’ll send in a lactation consultant and leaves. Than my nurse comes in and says that the Ped wants 3 sugar reading throughout the day and if he passes than he can go home. I said ok, fair enough. So the lactation consultant comes in checks his latch, perfect, so she has me pump for 15 minutes to see how much baby is getting. I pumped 15 ml. !!! I was even amazed as was the consultant! 3 sugar test later and we came home!! NO FORMULA!! My nurse applauded me and let me know she was so proud that I told the doctor no and raises his levels all by myself!!

***It’s true what they say, Your breast milk knows what baby needs!!***

Thank you ladies for giving me the courage to stand up for breast milk!

the picture is of him right after his first latch."

Disclaimer- This is my experience, not a one size fits all rule. Some babies absolutely need formula or medical intervention. Sharing my story does not invalidate anyone else’s.

01/24/2026

Leadership is not exclusive

She walked into power carrying a baby.

And without raising her voice, she exposed a lie the world had accepted for centuries.

Her name is Licia Ronzulli.

It was September 2010 in Strasbourg. Inside the European Parliament, everything looked as it always had. Formal suits. Procedural language. Votes scheduled with mathematical precision. Laws waiting to be shaped by people expected to arrive unencumbered by visible humanity.

Then Licia Ronzulli walked in.

She was a newly elected Member of the European Parliament. She was also the mother of a 44-day-old baby named Vittoria. She was breastfeeding. The vote could not be delayed. Motherhood could not be paused.

So she did what working mothers have always done when the system offers no flexibility.

She solved the problem herself.

She brought her baby to work.

No announcement.
No demand for accommodation.
No performance of defiance.

Just a woman doing her job with her child resting against her chest.

As Ronzulli reviewed documents, Vittoria slept in a carrier. As votes were cast, the baby remained calm, breathing softly against her mother’s heartbeat. Centuries of legislative ritual unfolded beside one of the oldest human responsibilities on Earth.

And suddenly, the room looked different.

When photographs emerged, they ricocheted across the world. Ronzulli standing in the chamber, composed and focused. Papers in one hand. Baby in the other. Leadership and caregiving occupying the same frame.

People everywhere asked the same question.

Why does this feel shocking?

Why does this look radical?

Ronzulli later said she never intended to make a statement.

“This is simply what mothers do,” she explained. “We don’t stop being professionals because we become parents. We shouldn’t have to choose.”

That sentence landed harder than any speech.

Because for generations, women had been told the same quiet lie. That seriousness required separation. That leadership demanded leaving parts of yourself at the door. That professionalism meant pretending care work didn’t exist.

Ronzulli didn’t argue with that belief.

She walked straight through it.

She continued bringing Vittoria into parliamentary sessions in the months and years that followed. What initially caused murmurs slowly became normal. The presence of a baby stopped being a disruption and started being a mirror.

It reflected how outdated the institution had been.

Across Europe and beyond, lawmakers noticed. Parliaments revisited parental leave rules. Legislatures began discussing childcare access. Breastfeeding in professional spaces shifted from taboo to topic.

The question changed.

Not should parents be allowed to show up as parents?

But why weren’t they supported before?

The impact reached far beyond politics. Those images began circulating in classrooms, boardrooms, policy papers, and conversations about workplace equity. They endured because they captured something institutions resisted admitting.

The old binary was false.

Career or children.
Leadership or motherhood.
Ambition or care.

Ronzulli shattered it without saying a word.

She proved that competence is not measured by how much humanity you suppress. That adaptability is a leadership skill. That strength includes care, not the absence of it.

And perhaps most importantly, she wasn’t insulated by celebrity or extraordinary privilege. She was a working mother navigating an inflexible system the same way millions of women do every day.

By showing up anyway.

Today, Vittoria is a teenager. Licia Ronzulli continues her political career. And those photographs still circulate, not because they were staged, but because they told the truth.

The world doesn’t stop when you become a parent.

And workplaces should not demand that you pretend it does.

No slogans.
No protests.
No speeches.

Just a mother, a baby, and the quiet courage to exist fully in a place that was never designed for both.

Sometimes the most powerful change doesn’t arrive loudly.

It arrives calmly.

And refuses to disappear.

If you value this work and would like to support the time, research, and care it takes to preserve and share women’s history, you can Buy Me a Coffee. Every contribution helps keep these stories alive and accessible, told with respect and truth.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you for remembering.
And thank you for honoring the women who came before us—and the legacy they continue to build.

https://buymeacoffee.com/ancientpathfb

01/24/2026

🧠 Breastfeeding regulates a baby’s nervous system

When a baby nurses, it is not just about hunger.
It is a full body neurological event.

During breastfeeding, research shows babies experience:

• Lower cortisol levels
Cortisol is the body’s primary stress hormone. Nursing actively reduces it, helping babies move out of fight or flight and into safety and calm.

• More stable heart rates
The rhythm of nursing combined with close contact helps synchronize a baby’s heartbeat with the caregiver’s, creating physiological stability.

• Improved oxygen saturation
Babies breathe more steadily while nursing, which increases oxygen delivery to the brain and body.

This is called biological co regulation.

Babies are born with immature nervous systems.
They cannot self soothe because the neural pathways required for regulation are not fully developed yet.

Instead, they borrow regulation from a caregiver.

Your warmth
Your heartbeat
Your smell
Your breathing
Your hormones

All of it sends the same message to their nervous system:

You are safe.

Over time, repeated moments of co regulation during breastfeeding help wire the baby’s brain for future self regulation.
This is how resilience is built.
This is how emotional regulation begins.

Comfort nursing is not creating dependency.
It is creating capacity.

A baby who is regulated first becomes a child who can regulate later.

This is not opinion.
This is neurobiology.

01/20/2026

Sacred then & Sacred now.

There was a time when breastfeeding was painted as sacred.

So sacred that artists placed halos around a nursing mother and child.

This image shows Mary breastfeeding Jesus. Not hidden. Not sexualized. Not censored.

Honored.

Her body feeding her baby was seen as holy. As divine provision. As love made visible.

Somewhere along the way we forgot that.

Now mothers are told to cover up. Move to another room. Stop when it makes others uncomfortable. Stop when the baby gets older. Stop when society decides it’s gone on long enough.

But this image reminds us Nourishing a child with your body has always been powerful. Always worthy. Always human.

If it was sacred then It is sacred now.

01/17/2026

She’s a mama’s girl.
The kind who follows me everywhere.

If I walk into another room,
she’s right behind me.
If I go to the bathroom,
she comes with me.
If I’m cooking,
she’s on my hip watching every move.

She sits in the sink while I brush my hair.
Stands between my legs while I brush my teeth.
Waits on the floor while I shower.

Sometimes she doesn’t even want anything.
She just wants to be where I am.

And I know this won’t last forever.
One day she won’t need to follow me room to room.
One day I’ll get my space back.

But right now…
I’m her safe place.
Her comfort.
Her home.

And honestly,
I wouldn’t trade this season for anything.

01/12/2026

Gentle physical contact during sleep plays a measurable role in early brain development, shaping how infants respond to safety and stress. Research published in Nature Neuroscience shows that holding a baby while they sleep strengthens connections between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, two regions central to emotional control. These pathways are responsible for regulating fear and anxiety by allowing higher brain regions to calm emotional responses. When caregiving is consistent and soothing, the developing brain learns more efficient stress regulation patterns. Over time, these early neural connections can influence emotional resilience and mental health later in life.

01/07/2026

01/06/2026

If you breastfed at any point in 2025… let’s talk about what your body was really doing.

Whether it was exclusively at the breast, pumping around the clock, combo feeding, nursing for comfort, or doing your best on the hardest days your body was not just showing up. It was performing.

Not perfectly. Not effortlessly. But powerfully.

This year, your body carried a workload most people never see.

Here’s what that actually looked like 🤱

⏳ Time invested Breastfeeding mothers spend an estimated thousands of hours feeding, soothing, pumping, cleaning parts, waking at night, and being on call with their own body.

That is time that never clocks out. No weekends. No PTO. No sick days.

🔥 Energy output Milk production alone requires hundreds of extra calories every single day. Over the course of a year, that is enough energy to fuel a marathon level effort again and again.

Your body did not “hold onto weight.” It redirected fuel to keep another human alive.

🧠 Immune intelligence Breastmilk is biologically responsive. It changes with seasons, illness, exposure, and age.

Your body actively analyzed your baby’s environment and adjusted the milk accordingly. Custom immune support. Real time protection. Living biology.

That is not basic nutrition. That is advanced physiology.

💞 Nervous system support Breastfeeding is not just nourishment. It helps regulate your baby’s breathing, heart rate, temperature, stress levels, and sense of safety.

When your baby settled at the breast, their nervous system settled too. You were not just feeding. You were grounding.

✨ What it did for you Throughout the year, your body released oxytocin over and over. That hormone that helps with bonding, healing, uterine recovery, and emotional connection.

Breastfeeding has also been linked to long term protective benefits for maternal health. Your body was caring for two futures at once.

So if you breastfed in 2025… For a week or the whole year. Through cluster feeding, sore ni***es, mental exhaustion, pumping at red lights, nursing through tears, or quietly wondering if you could keep going…

You did real work. Biological work. Invisible work.

You did not “just feed a baby.”

You carried a living system with your own body.

And that deserves to be seen.