Mother’s Milk Source

11/06/2021

Thank you to all those who have supported me from the beginning those who continue to recommend and refer me to friends and family! Your support in this small business of mine is so greatly appreciated! ❤️

01/27/2021

01/16/2021

The human body really is incredible.
Skin to skin isn't just for after birth! X

11/20/2020

We hear this so often: “I’m only pumping 3-4 oz at a time.” The reality is 3-4 oz is a normal pump output! And baby typically needs no more than that per feed.⁣
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How many times you need to nurse or pump to maintain your supply has a lot to do with your breast storage capacity. ⁣
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Storage capacity refers to the maximum amount of milk your breasts can hold when full. A smaller storage capacity means your breasts take less time to get so full that milk-making slows and you may need to nurse or pump more often to maintain milk production. ⁣
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A larger storage capacity means your breasts take more time to get so full that milk-making slows and you may not need to nurse or pump as often to maintain production. When in doubt, keep in mind that 7-8 milk removals per 24 hours seems to be the average necessary to MAINTAIN milk production.

11/19/2020

On International Mens Day, shout out to all the Dads, Grandads, Stepdads, Uncles, Brothers etc who shape up, step up and get stuck in.

Now it should go without saying but, you know, this is the internet in 2020, so I'll spell it out...

If you choose to introduce a bottle for whatever reason that's cool. That's your choice and it's perfectly valid. Top tip- if you're introducing a bottle check out paced bottle feeding. This can help reduce the risk of baby developing a bottle preference. And paced bottle feeding is now recommended for all babies even if they are exclusively bottle fed.

If your circumstances mean that you need to introduce a bottle that is absolutely OK, understandable and valid.

This image is taking aim at the myth that families who do not want or need to introduce a bottle must do so because it's the only way for partners to help out, and bond with their baby. Not just partners either, grandparents, aunts, uncles, freakin second cousin Doris twice removed on your fathers side.... Sorry I digress. But many families are coerced into introducing bottles against their will by this myth even when they don't want to because it's something they're told they must do.

The fact is there are many ways partners and friends and relatives can help out that have nothing to do with bottles. Cook, clean, shop, do dishes, do laundry, offer to take baby for a walk while mum showers...Honestly letting mum sit down with a cup of tea, a plate of food, and put her feet up while she feeds the baby and you run a mop over the kitchen floor is likely to be far more helpful than you sitting on your bum feeding the baby while she loads the dishwasher.

Ditto bonding. You can have skin to skin give cuddles, you can wear baby in a sling and take them for a walk, you can bath them, change nappies, sing to them, talk to them, baby massage...Literally everything except feed them. If you did everything except breastfeed then you would be the primary carer. You do not need to bottlefeed in order to bond.

11/19/2020

Pump settings can be confusing, but they don’t have to be. Here’s a cheat sheet for the spectra pump to make pumping easier. I‘ve shared it with pumping parents and am so happy to share that most of them were able to remove more milk than usual! Here are details:
1. Massage breasts/chest from your chest wall toward your ni**le
2. Turn pump on & press letdown button (the wavy one)
3. When milk starts flowing or after 1-2 minutes, press the letdown button again. Change the cycle to 38 & the vacuum to the highest comfortable setting.
4. When your milk flow slows down repeat steps 1-3.
5. After pumping, finish with about 5 minutes of hand expression.
Things to keep in mind:
-Only go to your highest comfortable vacuum setting. Higher doesn't mean more milk. If the vacuum is too high for you, your milk won't flow well.
-We are all different! Play around with the settings & do what works best for you.
-Make sure your fl**ge is the right size for you & your ni**le is centered. (if you aren't sure about sizing, reach out to me. I offer fl**ge fitting consults.)
If you use the Spectra pump, try this out & let me know how it goes! And of course, be sure to share with all of your pumping friends!
A huge thank you to my super talented friend for this drawing! You’re the breast 🖤

11/17/2020

colostrum👏🏻is👏🏻milk👏🏻

wanna hear how cool our female bodies are?! when you’re about 16-22 weeks along in your pregnancy, your breasts start producing colostrum. Colostrum is what your newborn needs right after birth. It is highly concentrated with antibodies & saturated with nutrients.

within the first few days of life, newborns only need very small amount of colostrum because:

✨ their stomachs are tiny
✨ colostrum has so many nutrients in it

many moms get concerned if they pump the first few days because sometimes only drops are produced. they’re worried their “milk hasn’t come in”.

typically your milk transitions to “more mature milk” between 2-5 days after birth. but milk changes due to what baby’s needs are 🤍

bottom line, trust your body to make milk for your baby & if you’re ever concerned, help is here for you!

& baby being at the breast frequently is the best thing for your supply 👶🏼

11/14/2020

If you or anyone you know is having a baby! Here at mother’s milk source we offer zoom breastfeeding and back to work classes! Along with breastfeeding support! Contact us for details!

10/13/2020

In 1929 Ge**er began an advertising campaign to convince dieticians and pediatricians that canned baby food was just as nutritious as homemade food, and even better because it was scientifically prepared.
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As part of the campaign, doctors received free Ge**er products for patients. Ge**er also funded research touting the health benefits of their food. That research—vaguely worded and devoid of peer review—was published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, positioning it as scientific fact.
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Alongside these efforts, Ge**er stated that women who prepared their own baby food were neglecting their husbands—and babies. One 1933 ad read, “For Baby’s Sake, Stay Out of the Kitchen!”
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Alongside these efforts, Ge**er advocated for starting solids at 3 months old. And by the 1950’s—after 20 years of advertising—the average age of introducing solids fell to just 6 weeks old.💔
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Since then the medical community realized that too-early introduction of solids displaced valuable nutrition from breast milk/formula. The consensus among medical institutions today (AAP, U.S. National Institutes for Health, and World Health Organization) is that it’s best to introduce solids at 6 months old. It is at this time that most babies are developmentally ready to eat and need more iron. Conveniently, 6 months is also when babies are capable of feeding themselves.
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Baby food was invented. Mom guilt was marketed.
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There is no perfect order of introducing solids. No no need for “stages” of thickness. These were all constructs in the name of profit.
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Convenience has its place. I love a good yogurt pouch and rely on Cheerios when traveling. But the idea that real food has to be hard isn’t good for anyone. Babies don’t need banana pudding or pricey pouches—a banana is fine!
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There is a reason feeding feels complicated. Corporations spent the last century telling your grandmothers and great-grandmothers that they would be bad moms and wives if they didn’t buy pre-prepared baby food. So the next time you feel a twinge of guilt for feeding your baby YOUR way, remember that it’s not you. It’s history.

09/07/2020

𝐈𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐞𝐱𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫!!! ⁣⁣
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A newborn who’s “refusing” to latch is a newborn who’s unable to latch, so if you’ve been given the advice to keep waiting until baby is hungry, then absolutely disregard that advice! A starving baby can turn into a dehydrated baby who’s doesn’t even have energy to latch. ⁣⁣
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Similarly, if your newborn is too sleepy to nurse frequently (at least every 2-3 hours in the early days), getting feeds into them will help them perk up and become more active. ⁣⁣
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Whatever the scenario, these steps help you on your way to a healthy breastfeeding journey:⁣⁣
▪️𝐅𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐛𝐲: spoon, syringe or cup⁣⁣
Are preferred. Expressed milk is first choice, donor milk or artificial milk are other options. ⁣⁣
▪️𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐲: hand express, start early and often. If you’re not sure how often, that’s where the IBCLC comes in. Be sure to check my video on hand expression for the proper technique. Use a pump after hand expressing if available to stimulate the breasts even more. ⁣⁣
▪️𝐃𝐨 𝐒𝐤𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐒𝐤𝐢𝐧: Take your top off, undress baby down to the diaper, and just put them on your bare chest. It doesn’t have to be feeding time to do this! there’s no limit on how often and how long you can do skin to skin. There’s also no expiry date on when this stops working. Skin to skin is the mother of all reset buttons, whenever there’s a problem with breastfeeding. ⁣⁣
▪️𝐂𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐧 𝐈𝐁𝐂𝐋𝐂: while it’s very important for your pediatrician to be involved in assessing the situation, I can almost guarantee you that you will get inappropriate feeding advice from a physician, unless they also hold some lactation credentials. So if or human milk feeding is a priority to you, call an IBCLC as soon as possible. ⁣⁣
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If you’re having trouble with latching your newborn, (or any age baby), give me a call. Even through virtual appointments, I am able to support you through the situation and guide you into finding a solution!
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08/22/2020

Sharing again.

This is a question that is asked a lot.

It's very common for babies to be fussy and unsettled at times, and even quite often in some cases.
But it may be unnerving for parents who become concerned that perhaps the baby isn't getting enough milk.
So a bottle is given to 'test' this theory and the baby wolfs it down and then crashes to sleep. Parents are left feeling utterly deflated that the they were letting their baby go hungry.

So why is it that those of us in the world of lactation say that drinking a bottle after a breastfeed isn't neccessarily sign that the baby was hungry?

To understand fully we need to look at two things, firstly normal behaviour at the breast, and secondly, normal response to a bottle.

Society would have us believe that babies latch onto the breast, feed and then settle. But that's not actually the case. There is usually quite a lot of fussing and bashing while they figure out where they're latching, then lots of quick sucks and tugging and hitting while they encourage your milk to let down. Then there is likely a period of calmer feeding while they have a good quantity of milk (look and listen for swallowing!) and then they may start to qet squirmy, tugging, gumming and hitting again as the flow slows down. This is all VERY normal behaviour.
Keep in mind in an evening, when most parents find their supply is running slower, and during growth spurts, babies will often be a lot more fussy at the breast, and that's ok too! Its stimulation behaviour to get the milk flowing. And the more milk that's removed, the more milk is replaced.
Babies have tiny tummies, digest breastmilk quickly, and use the breast for plenty of reasons other than food, so it's also very common for babies to decide that actually they would quite like to go back to the breast please, even though they had appeared to have finished not long before. Again, normal. (I didn't say easy, I said normal!)
Looking at all of the above, we can completely understand why parents may assume their baby is unhappy or not getting enough. Usually once they've had the information about it all they feel empowered to carry on the way they are.

But, if they don't have that information, they may carry on and give that bottle. So why would the baby take it?
Well, firstly, because babies love to suck. Its soothing and comforting and releases pain relieving hormones and means they are next to your body and in your arms. They're clever little creatures.
Plus, it's pretty easy to get a bottle teat into a baby's mouth, they barely need to open at all compared to latching at the breast.
But why once the teat is in do they drink? Well, sucking is a reflex that happens if something touches the back of the roof of the baby's mouth. So they can't actually help themselves.
When a baby feeds at the breast, sucking is only a part of it, the tongue compressing the breast against the roof of the mouth in a wave like motion moves the milk. But the feeding action with a bottle is very different. Even gentle sucks will cause milk to flow, and we've already seen that babies can't help but suck the teat, so end up with a mouth full of milk whether they want it or not. So they swallow, because once again it's a reflex in babies.
They end up sucking and swallowing until they're so exhausted that they stop.
By this point they're overly full and exhausted so their body shuts down to work on digesting the heavy meal.

So a baby will take a bottle because of their reflexes, not necessarily because they need it.
If they're doing plenty of wee and poo, and gaining weight as expected, there's no need to offer a bottle (unless you choose to). If you're concerned about your baby and feeding in any way get some skilled support to fully assess and reassure you that all is well. But try and trust your baby and trust your body, they know what they're doing x