Before I became a concierge breastfeeding medicine expert, I worked as a hospital pediatrician. I cared for newborns during their first two days of life. As I cared for these families, I noticed a trend among most new mothers. Often, women came into the hospital to deliver their babies with the expectation that the delivery would be hard, but breastfeeding would be easy.
And even though I should have known better, I too had this expectation when I had my own baby.
Both the delivery of the baby and the early days of breastfeeding are challenging. These trials do not have to derail you or leave you crying in your postpartum room. It is impossible to learn everything that you need to know about breastfeeding in the first 24- 48 hours after delivery. Your breastfeeding education needs to begin long before your baby arrives on the scene.
My professional experience, coupled with the rocky road that I traveled in my own breastfeeding journey, lead me to become internationally board certified in lactation consulting. As a pediatrician IBCLC and breastfeeding medicine specialist, I have the unique ability to provide expert lactation care. My goal is to guide moms, as well as support the health of their babies. I provide lactation care in a nurturing and family centered environment.
The concierge breastfeeding medicine package includes one prenatal visit, a written feeding plan and two postnatal breastfeeding visits.
Prenatal Concierge Breastfeeding Medicine Visit
During the prenatal visit, we will discuss your medical history. We will discuss anything that relates to chronic medical problems, pregnancy related issues and relevant family history. This information will helps guide my anticipatory guidance for you. It also allows for you to have realistic expectations when it comes to breastfeeding your new baby.
Assessing your knowledge base surrounding lactation related topics also gives me a starting off point to begin shaping your breastfeeding journey. Goal setting is a key component of breastfeeding education as well. Without a goal and a compass, it is hard to arrive at any destination.
This visit is also a great time to discuss your previous experience with breastfeeding. Maybe this is your second baby and you didn’t meet your feeding goals with your first. Maybe you struggled to produce milk or had such a painful latch that you quit all together. Or maybe you are going though pregnancy for the first time, but you have seen others struggle with breastfeeding.
This prenatal visit gives you the tools to jump into your breastfeeding adventure with confidence.
Breastfeeding Plan
Personalizing your breastfeeding goals even further, I will write out a plan that is unique to you. This written guidance will help you to keep track of where you are and where you are going. Each plan is based on the usual expectations of breastfeeding but with your unique experiences and medical history in mind.
Establishing breastfeeding well is a time sensitive endeavor. Certain hormones cause different bodily responses in the postpartum period. From early initiation of skin to skin contact with your baby to hand expressing the first few drops of golden colostrum, laying an early foundation will increase your ability to reach your breastfeeding destination.
First Postpartum Breastfeeding Medicine Visit
Once your baby is born and you have made it through your postpartum hospital stay or completed your birth at the birthing center, it is time to check in to see how things are going. Ideally, the first postpartum lactation visit should occur sometime in the first few days after delivery.
During this critical time, checking baby’s latch is crucial to future sustained success. A poor latch will lead to all sorts of problems that drive many women to give up breastfeeding entirely. A pediatrician with lactation expertise is the best professional to assess whether or not the baby’s latch is effective.
After latch, the next important milestone for this visit is assessing the well being of both mom and baby. This is an opportunity to discuss birth experiences and understand how these things relate to postpartum difficulties and achievements. Mother’s healing, mental health and establishing breastfeeding are all important during this crucial time.
Baby’s well being is also a top priority. We want to make sure that baby is getting enough to eat in order to thrive and grow. Protecting mom’s milk supply while ensuring that baby is prospering is an important balancing act in the first few days after delivery. My deep understanding of the physiology of both the newborn and of lactation allows me to give expert advise to keep babies safe and moms feeling confident.
Second Postpartum Breastfeeding Medicine Visit
A second postpartum lactation visit is best done around 2-3 weeks of life. This gives your body the time it needs for milk to increase, get past engorgement and really assess how well the baby does at the breast. Around this time, control of breastfeeding changes from hormonal to local control at the level of the breast. Understanding this expected change will help you to know how to maintain a supply of breast milk for your baby.
This is also a great visit to talk about how to maintain breastfeeding when returning to the work place. Or how to maintain lactation while continuing your status as CEO of your house and mom extraordinaire to your other children as well as your newborn. During this discussion, I can draw on not only my medical expertise, but my experiences as a working mother to give you a realistic picture of what this looks like.
Breastfeeding Medicine Concierge Expertise
After you announce the exciting news of your anticipated new arrival, there will be many voices that enter into your life. Most of them are well meaning and offer you advice about everything concerning your new baby. During these times, you need an expert in your corner to help you sift through what is true about breastfeeding and what is fiction. The expert advise that you receive in the concierge breastfeeding medicine package visits will give you the confidence to blaze your own path.
We have some recent articles on breastfeeding that you can find below:
The First 24 Hours of Breastfeeding
The First 6 Weeks of Breastfeeding
5 Factors that Decrease Breast Milk Supply
Of course, feel free to contact us if you’d like a consultation.
© 127 Pediatrics, December 2021
