Guest Author

One of my biggest worries when breastfeeding was having enough milk for my baby to grow and thrive. When talking to other breastfeeding mothers, many seems to worry that their breast milk supply is low. When breastfeeding you can’t see exactly how many ounces your baby is getting, so it’s hard not to worry that your baby is getting enough. For a lot of women this can cause them to think they have a low breast milk supply, and for some women, a low milk supply is an actual issue for them. If you are struggling with low milk supply, or worried about this, here are some tips to help put your worries at ease. 1. Establish ...Read More

This nutrition section is going to be a bit different from everything you’ve heard about breastfeeding. In this series we've learned about why breastfeeding is best for both baby and mom. Now, I’m going to be looking at what’s critical for growing a human brain, and how moms can influence not only her health, but her baby’s health, just through diet. ...Read More

Admittedly, I didn’t prepare to breastfeed my first child. I didn’t know I needed to. It wasn’t until I joined a forum with my second pregnancy that I learned about all the women that harbor fears that they won’t be able to successfully breastfeed. How to Prepare #1: Learn less I breastfed my first baby for 13 months and I didn’t even know what mastitis, thrush, or inverted nipples were. Breastfeeding is natural, instinctive, and normal. But I’ve never breastfed before, how do I know what to do? ...Read More

Have you ever tried to nurse a distracted baby? An inquisitive baby often times proves to be a distracted baby while nursing around other people or new environments.  Sadly, I didn’t understand the importance of being in private to nurse a distracted baby with my first child eighteen years ago. Nursing My First Distracted Baby When she was eight months old, we were visiting our family four hundred miles away, and I tried desperately to get my daughter to nurse, as usual. After a full day of trying, I became engorged and was in a lot of pain, all because she was more interested in the things going on around her ...Read More

There are a lot of factors to making breastfeeding successful. Sometimes it just comes easily and there are few problems; other times it can be quite a challenge for both mother and baby. Skin-to-skin contact between mother and baby has been shown to encourage successful breastfeeding. How does skin-to-skin help? Skin-to-skin contact during the first moments of birth for at least an hour after birth have been shown to help baby maintain his/her body temperature and to help maintain his/her heart rate. Another benefit of skin-to-skin contact is that babies have shown to latch on quicker and better. Babies who have had ...Read More

We had it all planned out.  We were expecting our first child and had made the perfect birth plan. We had done our research and knew the best practices for birth and the immediate postnatal period. Everything was going to be perfect for us and for our new little baby. We were going to have a natural, unmedicated birth in a private birth center. I was going to breastfeed the baby immediately after birth. Within a few hours of becoming parents, we were going to be back at our own house cuddling our new little baby. We were going to exclusively breastfeed for at least six months and continue breastfeeding for a minimum of a ...Read More

I was so excited about the idea of breastfeeding my baby. Soon after we found out that we were expecting, I began doing something I discovered a love for in college—research. So, so much research. I was really good at studying and getting good grades in college. What was the secret to my success? I'm a nerd and loved research. Surely, I could just apply the same principles that brought me college success to parenting, and soon enough, I'd be an expert mom. It didn't take long for me to discover the many benefits of breastfeeding—benefits which compounded by the month, and benefits that I definitely wanted in my baby's ...Read More

For my first child, I purchased three sets of cotton nursing pads. I won't mention the brands, because I don't exactly have much positive to say (other than that they saved me a lot of money). From day one, the pads were irritating. They had very thick edges, for one thing, and seemed to need ironing or the edges would ripple up. It's not like I had a ton of time to iron with a newborn, so most of the time, I just wound up with highly noticeable lumps on my chest. It was either that, or risk going out and having even more noticeable milk stains on my shirt. Not exactly a great choice!  ...Read More