It was 4 a.m. in the morning on Wednesday July 17, 2002, and I woke up thinking I had wet the bed! I woke up Casey and asked him to smell the bed to see if it was pee or amniotic fluid. After smelling the soaked bed, he reassured me that it was indeed odorless and therefore was the spontaneous breaking of my bag of waters…

It was 10:00 pm on the night of Valentine’s, February 14, 2005. My husband, Casey, and I were in the middle of doing our taxes, my final item on my ‘to do’ list before baby comes, and my water broke…

A contraction woke me up at 5:30am on Friday, January 4th, 2008 (I was exactly 39 weeks along). This one felt pretty powerful already and I needed to breathe and moan through it. Casey woke up and was listening to me and we were both wondering what was in store for us today…

My work in lactation has never been a job. It is my passion, something that powers my engine and makes my heart beat. I have an internal drive to help women find the joy I found, find the power in themselves, and know the accomplishment that can come from learning how to trust ourselves, our bodies and our babies…

Many women take regular medications and many women may get sick where medications are necessary to get them well again. When a mother is breastfeeding she may be told to interrupt breastfeeding, "pump and dump" or stop breastfeeding altogether when medications are introduced.

Many of us Lactation Consultants get emails, calls and questions about this very topic. Many well meaning people out there are offering used breastpumps to mothers, or selling them to mothers. You may be using one yourself.

As many of you well know, it can be undue hardship, to separate from your baby, especially if you do not have care for them already set up. Breastfeeding and Jury Duty comes up every so often and can send a mom into a frenzy of worry. So arm yourself now, should this happen to you in the future!…

Co-Sleeping. Bed-sharing.

Telling people don't do it, without explaining how to safely do it, will NOT avoid the inevitable accidental, unsafe, and unplanned co-sleeping.

There are times when breastfeeding mothers may encounter a circumstance when they would need to have a scan, normally performed by a Radiologist, in which they would be subject to a radio-contrast agent, also called radio-contrast dye. In the past, these mothers have been told to interrupt breastfeeding…

Have you ever had someone tell you that at "this age" {insert any age that you notice people start inappropriately discussing a woman's nursing relationship}, breastmilk is no more than water and has no nutrient benefits?…

When someone thinks about breastfeeding, many might first think of a mother and a child and a breast. Typically though, that mother has a support person, who may be the father of her baby, her husband, her boyfriend, her girlfriend, her sister, her wife, her mother, her mother-in-law…I could keep going…

So the question that many moms have and also one that many have been given incorrect information. How about alcohol and breastfeeding? I hope this helps explain to moms how it all works! I am an IBCLC and mom to 3 (of course!) breastfed boys who are now 16, 13 and 10 and I love helping other moms understand!…

I’m not ready. I write that out and tears flood my face. I can’t even see what I’m typing. Ironically, I am sitting in a nursing rocking chair right now, a crib across from me and a breastpump on the end table; none of which are mine…

“Mom, will you sing to me?” A question that I have heard now for more than 17 years as each day comes to a close. When my boys were babies, I started singing to them every night. As they grew, it didn’t change, although no longer cradling them in my nursing arms. I began to crawl into their bed with them, lay down, spooning them, and sing….

“Please make me look plump.” This character, Lavinia, states in the Apple+ series, Dickinson, about the poet, Emily Dickinson’s life. Make me look plump. Not skinny. My heart skipped a beat hearing this. This ‘rage’ to be thin, fit, svelte or ripped is all about now…2019…

Mental Illness. Women. Medications. Those words alone drudge up all sorts of feelings. Put them together, and they have more. Add women to the mix, and you have sweet proverbial triplets. I am still not sure what I think about these words, particularly "illness"…