Pamela contacted me while she was still in the hospital because her baby girl, Gabrielle, had a 10% weight loss while exclusively breastfeeding. She wanted to be discharged to go home to be with her other children but the hospital was concerned about her baby’s weight loss – so Gabrielle was was supplemented before her discharge and she was instructed to continue supplementing after nursing. Continue reading
Yesterday I addressed the disparities and some of the challenges black women face in breastfeeding their children. 
Today I’d like to talk about the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, and its role in supporting black mothers in healthy feeding practices for their infants.
Did you know that many women have the option of using the WIC program to help get infant formula and even food for themselves, both during and after their pregnancies? In most places, this state-run program is available until a child turns 5, and can be very helpful. Now women, including minorities like black women, can set themselves up to not only get a little milk and certain foods for themselves monthly, but they can ALSO get all the formula they need for their babies. No need to breastfeed…right? Continue reading
We are halfway through Black Breastfeeding Week, 
and I’ve learned since my last post to expect MANY eye rolls from those who don’t get the mission of having a week dedicated to supporting breastfeeding in African-American communities. But, as we’ve seen on the news, the black community needs support. #BlackLivesMatter – and Black Breastfeeding Week matters too. We HAVE to reach some level of understanding of the issues many of us face in our community, and that includes everyone’s issues – even those issues that are more prevalent in one subsection of the community than another. Continue reading
I recently interviewed Dr.Shannon Kelleher, a human milk researcher, about the staggering results from her recent publication “Biological underpinnings of breastfeeding challenges: the role of genetics, diet, and environment on lactation physiology,” published recently in the American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism. Dr. Kelleher’s mission is to use scientific and statistical research to uncover how lactation works, why it can fail, and how diet affects a woman’s ability to produce enough quality milk. In Part I, we talked about lactation statistics, and zinc. Today, in Part II, we discuss colostrum and genetics: Continue reading
I recently interviewed Dr.Shannon Kelleher, a human milk researcher, about the staggering results from her recent publication “Biological underpinnings of breastfeeding challenges: the role of genetics, diet, and environment on lactation physiology,” published recently in the American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism. You may remember my two-part interview with Dr. Kelleher about her published research on zinc related to mammary function.
During that series Dr. Kelleher said, “If you think about it, when you’re breastfeeding you have no idea how much milk you are producing or if the composition is optimal and as long as your baby isn’t overtly ill, you assume that everything is working well. But is it?” And that question has echoed in my mind in the years since that post.
