lactation consultants

It turns out nursing can be incredibly challenging and not that intuitive. My advice to any mom who wants to nurse is to proactively set an appointment with a lactation consultant for 1-2 days after you get home from the hospital. You want to set the appointment ahead of time because if nursing isn't going well or if you are in any pain, the last thing you want is to have to wait several days before a lactation consultant is available to make a house call.

Lactation consultants are incredibly helpful at troubleshooting and teaching all sorts of things, like testing our different nursing positions to find the one that's best for you, helping the baby latch correctly, measuring how much milk the baby is getting in each feeding, showing you how to use a pump and store milk, and generally getting you off on the right footing. In my experience the lactation consultants in the hospital were nice but not that helpful because they were in and out very quickly as they saw lots of patients on their rounds, plus I was in a dazed state of recovery where I couldn't really process much information anyway. By contrast, I got a 90-minute one-on-one session with a lactation consultant at home a few days later and found that much, much more helpful.

I met with a few different lactation consultants (nursing was really hard for us in the beginning -- lots of tears and struggles, but we got past it!), and my absolute favorite was Linda Hanna from My Nursing Coach.

Lastly, most of the lactation consultants require upfront payment, but I was able to submit the itemized bill to insurance and get reimbursed -- check with your insurance to see what they will cover.