One of my favorite things that my local hospital does is host a breastfeeding/postpartum (formula moms are welcome too!) support group every single week, same place, same time, rain or shine, run by a nurse who's a lactation consultant. No advance registration needed, you can come in your pajamas, its totally free and they provide donuts, water and a baby scale if you need to do a weighted feed.
It's more of a community than a lactation consultant meeting. We swap advice about sleep, teething, solid foods, etc. I wish this were more common.
My hospital had this too and the LC that ran it also had an online support group that was an extension of the group. It was such a great resource for me.
I already restacked a quote from here and poured my heart out so I won’t get dramatic in the comments too but this article made me emotional and dug up some feelings and pain I had buried deep.
Thank you for writing this, I hope it helps new mothers feel less alone, scared, and helpless than I felt.
I think another important ‘succesfactor’ of breastfeeding is, and you are touching upon that, is that’s it’s the norm and there is no question whether to do it or not. If alternatives are handed on a plate easily, when things get difficult, you might give up (like giving birth naturally or in a hospital that interventions are more common because they are easily given out).
My personal experience with both birth and breastfeeding is that I have a big tribe of women that it’s the norm to do it naturally, we have online groups where we support each other and I can call some women that I trust deeply. I also had a wonderful ‘Kraamverzorgster’ (have you heard of this Dutch post birth help that comes and support in every way for 2 weeks?) and next to all the domestic chores she was a lactation specialist who supported me long after her job was done.
But in general it’s so empowering to believe in oneself and the strong belief that ‘it’s possible’. I think that alone will help you through some difficult moments.
I think part of the instinctual nature of breastfeeding is the instinct to find hands-on, personalized, productive and meaningful help. That sort of help often cannot be bought. Much of lactation support is now virtual—that falls short. Many platforms are moving towards AI lactation support-don’t get me started. Hands on help from a lactation professional can be helpful but it’s temporary. Help that comes from the internet, or a book, or a paid professional isn’t necessarily tailored to the specific needs and desires of the mother, nor is it tailored to her personality. I say this as a lactation professional!
That instinct to seek that help has been broken because so many of our own mother’s instincts were broken first, by the expert advice you referenced here. It’s the trickle down impact of decades of bad advice, predatory marketing, the monetization of motherhood, probably a decent amount of shame, totally disordered attitudes about nursing in public, and now so much “don’t mom shame/fed is best” speak which makes women who are successful feel like they aren’t allowed to utter it out loud. Our own mothers likely didn’t breastfeed or turned to formula at some point, and their own mothers were mixing Karo syrup with Carnation and feeding every 4 hours.
I’m encouraged by the fact that there are so many women today who are totally rejecting all of this, reading the history of how we were essentially sabotaged by industry, and choosing to push through challenges, nurse in public, and proudly gush about the beautiful parts of breastfeeding—because this is what we need to heal that instinct so that our own daughters may one day come to us the way the Himba women go to their own mothers.
That first paragraph is exactly how I feel about it and exactly why I struggled so much at the start of my own breastfeeding journey. Not to discount all the advice and support I DID receive of course, but it’s just not possible to resolve all the problems, anxieties, uncertainties in a 1h appointment.
I kept trying to prepare for these appointments as much as I could and ask for longterm solutions or contingencies or plans “in case this happens or I have that issue in the future” and the response was consistently a slightly patronising “oh bless your heart, inexperienced new mom”-type of assertion that I’m just an anxious perfectionist looking for certainty that isn’t there. I accept that to a degree, but now that I’m on this side of it there DEFINITELY were proper answers I could have received to at least some of my questions and there would indeed have been more to gain from hands-on, continuous support.
Yeah, I think as a clinician, this is a good example of an opportunity to truly listen to what a patient desires in terms of knowledge gained in the time they paid for. There is wisdom in the idea of “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it” when it comes to certain issues and situations, but that has to be applied appropriately and also tailored to the individual woman. Some mothers will be relieved by that rhetoric, others will see it as lacking/lazy. Not just that, questions about potentialities are wise in and of themselves. Professionals should be able to suss out the difference between feeding into health anxiety in a bad way and giving guidance to help plan for certain eventualities or potential problems!
>“don’t mom shame/fed is best” speak which makes women who are successful feel like they aren’t allowed to utter it out loud
Speaking only for myself, I'm happy for women who are successful breastfeeding and I am not in any way against their "uttering it out loud." I'm just asking for a bit of tact, a bit of compassion for other women who really, truly struggled and tried to breastfeed and couldn't, for reasons outside their control.
As long as you say it as "I'm very fortunate and grateful to be able to breastfeed exclusively" and not "I'm a good mom, because I breastfeed exclusively, and mothers who can't do what I do are INFERIOR," you should be fine. I mean, someone will object, because on the internet someone will always object, that's just life.
I mean, I have literally never once in my life heard a breastfeeding mother say that it made her a good mom and everyone else is inferior, that’s crazy.
This is spot on Elena- thank you. When I think of my own journey with breastfeeding I was lucky enough to be surrounded by sisters, friends and a mom who had all breastfed and had the support of a local LLL group. The women I see now in my practice are so lacking in that village of women to surround them with support, knowledge, care and strength.
My mom breastfed all four of us, but I have no memory of it as I was only 6 when my youngest sibling was born and he had to be weaned super early. I do remember having dolls that all came with bottles, and it never occurred to me to pretend to breastfeed them because I never saw women doing it in public. I have three boys and have very openly breastfed all of them so that 1) my nieces and other younger women in my family will see how normal it is and 2) so that my boys will have a healthy attitude about it if they have kids someday. My husband came from a family where breastfeeding/co-sleeping was the norm and really encouraged me when I was struggling to breastfeed my first. I know several women whose husbands more or less encouraged them to give up when breastfeeding was difficult, because they didn’t see or understand how important it was (and felt bad for their wives). I think today especially, a male partner’s attitude toward breastfeeding also makes a big difference in a woman’s experience and willingness to power through difficulties.
This makes so much sense! So many first-time mothers in our culture (myself included) never had the opportunity to closely watch an infant breastfeed before we had our own babies. Sure, we took the classes and read the books, but we were missing a lifetime of IRL education. I remember how abstract it all seemed until I had the actual infant at my nipple.
And imagine if having a live-in lactation expert who'd known you all (or most of) your life was the norm! It sounds like new Himba mothers have the benefit of a full-time postpartum doula:
"The key helper doesn’t just give advice from a distance; she sleeps in the same hut, provides round-the-clock support, and takes over cooking, washing, and other household tasks so the new mother’s main job is recovering and learning to feed."
If only all moms could be so fortunate.
I also find it fascinating that female primates experience higher social status and quality of life when they're able to maintain close ties with their maternal kin rather than being abruptly cut off and isolated when they start their own families. Something else that the Himba get right!
Yes, and....! I think there's something to be said for the professionalism of breastfeeding advice, specifically lactation consultants.
I had three close mom friends present at my birth and they all gave me breastfeeding advice that had worked for their children, often conflicting. The first night one of those friends stayed over and while she was a complete angel, taking the baby and rocking him so I could sleep between feedings, the way she'd breastfed her kids didn't work for me (whether it was differences in our boobs or our babies' palates or what, I don't know). It was painful and awkward and seemed to require five hands at all times.
When my IBCLC aunt came to stay for the next two nights, we were able to troubleshoot my problems and quickly get to a place where I could feed him comfortably and he stayed latched. She's seen hundreds and hundreds of boobs, breastfed her own children, AND read the literature (for what it's worth). She's continued to help me as he's grown and I need new tricks. That said, my pediatrician - who's also a mom friend! - gave me patently bad advice!
I feel like our lactation consultant gave us a lot of bad advice, and in some cases she made it clear that the advice she was required to give (like not bedsharing) ran counter to her personal beliefs. What an industry in need of reform.
I think it's hit or miss, like with doulas. I had one amazing doula and one terrible one. In societies, like the Himba, where there are strong cultural norms around best-practices and webs of support that extend beyond individuals, mothers are better supported and not left to the luck of the draw.
Modern society works so hard to make anything intuitive seem the opposite. Propaganda, pressure, white coat syndrome — the perfect combination to make women lose all confidence. Never has there been so much information readily available, yet so many confused women. Of course women don’t have the confidence to trust their bodies and themselves when there’s so much contradicting information out there.
What’s happening globally in the childbirth and breastfeeding space feels like a crime against humanity. Such a disservice to women and babies, that companies profit off of them and have directly affected the health of generations. It’s a massive marketing campaign that only leaves women more confused and insecure.
It’s unfortunate that in the modern age we have to build and seek out our own support systems just to have a decent postpartum experience. I feel lucky I was able to have my village of maternal figures help make my postpartum, particularly breastfeeding, so seamless. I love what you shared about Himba mothers returning to their natal home postpartum — imagine what a better world it would be if more of us had that kind of support 🩷
This part right here: “And we are still living with this legacy today. I cannot tell you how many women have reached out to me over the years to say that they were relieved to learn that on-demand feeding was the norm throughout most of human history, because they had been taught by doctors, nurses, or relatives that they should follow a breastfeeding schedule and ignore their babies cues.
Clearly, there is such a thing as bad breastfeeding advice.”
I ignored my mom’s breastfeeding advice to feed on demand with my first kiddo because of all the modern advice I read about—it didn’t go well and I appreciate her also supporting me in deciding to stop as well because ignoring my instincts in order to follow “expert advice” really messed up a lot for me and my kiddo early on. He’s okay now and I luckily had some second time mom wisdom and listened more the second time and can you believe it is going way better. But I so wish I had had exposure to more breastfeeding in my life before becoming a mom so I could have seen how nonsensical all of the scheduled feeding and sleeping advice was…thankful that humans are resilient but oof.
Yes! To all of it! We’ve moved away from so many “natural ways” of living and breastfeeding is one of them. Support and normalization is needed more than ever.
Couldn't agree more. I was lucky enough to have great support from our doula with our first child and I felt so passionate about the importance of that early good support that I trained to be a breastfeeding peer supporter so that I could help other mums. Breastfeeding felt like the most natural thing in the world 🌍 to me but I firmly believe that is only because I had the right support.
One of my favorite things that my local hospital does is host a breastfeeding/postpartum (formula moms are welcome too!) support group every single week, same place, same time, rain or shine, run by a nurse who's a lactation consultant. No advance registration needed, you can come in your pajamas, its totally free and they provide donuts, water and a baby scale if you need to do a weighted feed.
It's more of a community than a lactation consultant meeting. We swap advice about sleep, teething, solid foods, etc. I wish this were more common.
This was the #1 reason my breastfeeding journey was so successful. The community knowledge was so valuable to me.
My hospital had this too and the LC that ran it also had an online support group that was an extension of the group. It was such a great resource for me.
I already restacked a quote from here and poured my heart out so I won’t get dramatic in the comments too but this article made me emotional and dug up some feelings and pain I had buried deep.
Thank you for writing this, I hope it helps new mothers feel less alone, scared, and helpless than I felt.
So glad you found it helpful :)
Thank you for this perspective.
I think another important ‘succesfactor’ of breastfeeding is, and you are touching upon that, is that’s it’s the norm and there is no question whether to do it or not. If alternatives are handed on a plate easily, when things get difficult, you might give up (like giving birth naturally or in a hospital that interventions are more common because they are easily given out).
My personal experience with both birth and breastfeeding is that I have a big tribe of women that it’s the norm to do it naturally, we have online groups where we support each other and I can call some women that I trust deeply. I also had a wonderful ‘Kraamverzorgster’ (have you heard of this Dutch post birth help that comes and support in every way for 2 weeks?) and next to all the domestic chores she was a lactation specialist who supported me long after her job was done.
But in general it’s so empowering to believe in oneself and the strong belief that ‘it’s possible’. I think that alone will help you through some difficult moments.
Yes of course. The Himba have no choice, so if it's painful, you just power through. For better or worse, we have easy alternatives.
I think part of the instinctual nature of breastfeeding is the instinct to find hands-on, personalized, productive and meaningful help. That sort of help often cannot be bought. Much of lactation support is now virtual—that falls short. Many platforms are moving towards AI lactation support-don’t get me started. Hands on help from a lactation professional can be helpful but it’s temporary. Help that comes from the internet, or a book, or a paid professional isn’t necessarily tailored to the specific needs and desires of the mother, nor is it tailored to her personality. I say this as a lactation professional!
That instinct to seek that help has been broken because so many of our own mother’s instincts were broken first, by the expert advice you referenced here. It’s the trickle down impact of decades of bad advice, predatory marketing, the monetization of motherhood, probably a decent amount of shame, totally disordered attitudes about nursing in public, and now so much “don’t mom shame/fed is best” speak which makes women who are successful feel like they aren’t allowed to utter it out loud. Our own mothers likely didn’t breastfeed or turned to formula at some point, and their own mothers were mixing Karo syrup with Carnation and feeding every 4 hours.
I’m encouraged by the fact that there are so many women today who are totally rejecting all of this, reading the history of how we were essentially sabotaged by industry, and choosing to push through challenges, nurse in public, and proudly gush about the beautiful parts of breastfeeding—because this is what we need to heal that instinct so that our own daughters may one day come to us the way the Himba women go to their own mothers.
That first paragraph is exactly how I feel about it and exactly why I struggled so much at the start of my own breastfeeding journey. Not to discount all the advice and support I DID receive of course, but it’s just not possible to resolve all the problems, anxieties, uncertainties in a 1h appointment.
I kept trying to prepare for these appointments as much as I could and ask for longterm solutions or contingencies or plans “in case this happens or I have that issue in the future” and the response was consistently a slightly patronising “oh bless your heart, inexperienced new mom”-type of assertion that I’m just an anxious perfectionist looking for certainty that isn’t there. I accept that to a degree, but now that I’m on this side of it there DEFINITELY were proper answers I could have received to at least some of my questions and there would indeed have been more to gain from hands-on, continuous support.
Yeah, I think as a clinician, this is a good example of an opportunity to truly listen to what a patient desires in terms of knowledge gained in the time they paid for. There is wisdom in the idea of “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it” when it comes to certain issues and situations, but that has to be applied appropriately and also tailored to the individual woman. Some mothers will be relieved by that rhetoric, others will see it as lacking/lazy. Not just that, questions about potentialities are wise in and of themselves. Professionals should be able to suss out the difference between feeding into health anxiety in a bad way and giving guidance to help plan for certain eventualities or potential problems!
>“don’t mom shame/fed is best” speak which makes women who are successful feel like they aren’t allowed to utter it out loud
Speaking only for myself, I'm happy for women who are successful breastfeeding and I am not in any way against their "uttering it out loud." I'm just asking for a bit of tact, a bit of compassion for other women who really, truly struggled and tried to breastfeed and couldn't, for reasons outside their control.
As long as you say it as "I'm very fortunate and grateful to be able to breastfeed exclusively" and not "I'm a good mom, because I breastfeed exclusively, and mothers who can't do what I do are INFERIOR," you should be fine. I mean, someone will object, because on the internet someone will always object, that's just life.
I mean, I have literally never once in my life heard a breastfeeding mother say that it made her a good mom and everyone else is inferior, that’s crazy.
My sister taught me how to breastfeed and she was the first person I ever saw breastfeed 🤱🏼 My mom had 8 kids and I never saw her breastfeed.
This is spot on Elena- thank you. When I think of my own journey with breastfeeding I was lucky enough to be surrounded by sisters, friends and a mom who had all breastfed and had the support of a local LLL group. The women I see now in my practice are so lacking in that village of women to surround them with support, knowledge, care and strength.
My mom breastfed all four of us, but I have no memory of it as I was only 6 when my youngest sibling was born and he had to be weaned super early. I do remember having dolls that all came with bottles, and it never occurred to me to pretend to breastfeed them because I never saw women doing it in public. I have three boys and have very openly breastfed all of them so that 1) my nieces and other younger women in my family will see how normal it is and 2) so that my boys will have a healthy attitude about it if they have kids someday. My husband came from a family where breastfeeding/co-sleeping was the norm and really encouraged me when I was struggling to breastfeed my first. I know several women whose husbands more or less encouraged them to give up when breastfeeding was difficult, because they didn’t see or understand how important it was (and felt bad for their wives). I think today especially, a male partner’s attitude toward breastfeeding also makes a big difference in a woman’s experience and willingness to power through difficulties.
This makes so much sense! So many first-time mothers in our culture (myself included) never had the opportunity to closely watch an infant breastfeed before we had our own babies. Sure, we took the classes and read the books, but we were missing a lifetime of IRL education. I remember how abstract it all seemed until I had the actual infant at my nipple.
And imagine if having a live-in lactation expert who'd known you all (or most of) your life was the norm! It sounds like new Himba mothers have the benefit of a full-time postpartum doula:
"The key helper doesn’t just give advice from a distance; she sleeps in the same hut, provides round-the-clock support, and takes over cooking, washing, and other household tasks so the new mother’s main job is recovering and learning to feed."
If only all moms could be so fortunate.
I also find it fascinating that female primates experience higher social status and quality of life when they're able to maintain close ties with their maternal kin rather than being abruptly cut off and isolated when they start their own families. Something else that the Himba get right!
yes, matrilineage seems to be a prerequisite for matriarchy in the animal kingdom
So so good
My God I needed this article when I was pregnant. I was so wholly unprepared.
Yes, and....! I think there's something to be said for the professionalism of breastfeeding advice, specifically lactation consultants.
I had three close mom friends present at my birth and they all gave me breastfeeding advice that had worked for their children, often conflicting. The first night one of those friends stayed over and while she was a complete angel, taking the baby and rocking him so I could sleep between feedings, the way she'd breastfed her kids didn't work for me (whether it was differences in our boobs or our babies' palates or what, I don't know). It was painful and awkward and seemed to require five hands at all times.
When my IBCLC aunt came to stay for the next two nights, we were able to troubleshoot my problems and quickly get to a place where I could feed him comfortably and he stayed latched. She's seen hundreds and hundreds of boobs, breastfed her own children, AND read the literature (for what it's worth). She's continued to help me as he's grown and I need new tricks. That said, my pediatrician - who's also a mom friend! - gave me patently bad advice!
I feel like our lactation consultant gave us a lot of bad advice, and in some cases she made it clear that the advice she was required to give (like not bedsharing) ran counter to her personal beliefs. What an industry in need of reform.
I think it's hit or miss, like with doulas. I had one amazing doula and one terrible one. In societies, like the Himba, where there are strong cultural norms around best-practices and webs of support that extend beyond individuals, mothers are better supported and not left to the luck of the draw.
Modern society works so hard to make anything intuitive seem the opposite. Propaganda, pressure, white coat syndrome — the perfect combination to make women lose all confidence. Never has there been so much information readily available, yet so many confused women. Of course women don’t have the confidence to trust their bodies and themselves when there’s so much contradicting information out there.
What’s happening globally in the childbirth and breastfeeding space feels like a crime against humanity. Such a disservice to women and babies, that companies profit off of them and have directly affected the health of generations. It’s a massive marketing campaign that only leaves women more confused and insecure.
It’s unfortunate that in the modern age we have to build and seek out our own support systems just to have a decent postpartum experience. I feel lucky I was able to have my village of maternal figures help make my postpartum, particularly breastfeeding, so seamless. I love what you shared about Himba mothers returning to their natal home postpartum — imagine what a better world it would be if more of us had that kind of support 🩷
This part right here: “And we are still living with this legacy today. I cannot tell you how many women have reached out to me over the years to say that they were relieved to learn that on-demand feeding was the norm throughout most of human history, because they had been taught by doctors, nurses, or relatives that they should follow a breastfeeding schedule and ignore their babies cues.
Clearly, there is such a thing as bad breastfeeding advice.”
I ignored my mom’s breastfeeding advice to feed on demand with my first kiddo because of all the modern advice I read about—it didn’t go well and I appreciate her also supporting me in deciding to stop as well because ignoring my instincts in order to follow “expert advice” really messed up a lot for me and my kiddo early on. He’s okay now and I luckily had some second time mom wisdom and listened more the second time and can you believe it is going way better. But I so wish I had had exposure to more breastfeeding in my life before becoming a mom so I could have seen how nonsensical all of the scheduled feeding and sleeping advice was…thankful that humans are resilient but oof.
Thank you for spreading the good word about this.
Yes! To all of it! We’ve moved away from so many “natural ways” of living and breastfeeding is one of them. Support and normalization is needed more than ever.
Couldn't agree more. I was lucky enough to have great support from our doula with our first child and I felt so passionate about the importance of that early good support that I trained to be a breastfeeding peer supporter so that I could help other mums. Breastfeeding felt like the most natural thing in the world 🌍 to me but I firmly believe that is only because I had the right support.