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Breastfeeding is natural, but that does not necessarily mean it is easy. It is assumed the baby will know what to do after it is born because breastfeeding is intended by nature to sustain the infant post delivery and nurture him/her well beyond into toddlerhood. Whether it is the type of delivery, the birth setting, health of mother and/or baby, prematurity, etc. there are many variables that can interfere with nature taking its course.

The allied health profession of lactation consulting grew out of an awareness that there is a learning curve that can impact breastfeeding success. During my 6 years working in NICU, it was evident that human milk led to better outcomes for the sick or premature babies. What got lost a bit in the translation for the mothers in that intensive care environment was emphasis on learning the art of breastfeeding.

Throughout more than two decades as a lactation consultant and nurse, I have seen a steady increase in this medicalization of breastfeeding extend beyond the NICU.

The tug of war seems to be between those who insist on the baby doing it naturally no matter what that looks or feels like, and the experts micro-managing the process by emphasizing the use of gadgets and measurements to assess whether breastfeeding is successful.

What is often lost in the flurry of maternal hormones and well meaning encouragement from family and friends is the awareness that a positive breastfeeding experience will not always happen on automatic pilot.

It is a skill that needs to be learned, preferably not through painful trial and error. Pain should not be part of the process. Optimizing breastfeeding, rather than pumping is the way to empower mothers around their bodies.

We need to teach mothers how to latch-on their babies well; an excellant latch should be reinforced and repeated so that their babies will learn to breastfeed properly. We need to be move away from being satisfied with just getting a connection to focusing on achieving a deep and pain-free latch. Sadly, many mothers lose faith in their bodies and ability to nurture their baby through breastfeeding when too much emphasis is placed on the external measurements to the exclusion of their comfort. (Bear in mind, that these are greatly skewed by the mixture of approaches that come under the umbrella of breastfeeding.)

I am seeing an alarming increase in both new and seasoned lactation consultants foregoing finetuning the latch. I am reminded of the lost art of safe vaginal breech deliveries. Young doctors don’t learn how to do it and have been taught that it is unsafe. In a similar fashion, there are an increasing number of lactation consultants who cannot assess a baby without a scale or a pump in tow. Worse yet they aren’t even touching the baby or mother during a consultation, except to weigh the baby to “see” if he/she got “enough”.

I am tired of hearing “it looks good, but….”

We must shift our attention back to helping mothers achieve a quality connection which is pain-free and transfers ample milk to their babies. It is through consistency in the latch-on that feedings can become optimized and many problems can be avoided or resolved.

The mother is the thinking partner and her baby feeding well drives the breastfeeding system and milk supply.