Navigating Breastfeeding Care in the U.S.

Clearance to return to intimacy, to return to exercise, and they're given a brief spiel on postpartum depression and other mood disorders to keep an eye out for. They're given counseling on birth control if that's what they decide to do, and then they're sent on their way. They don't return to their obstetrician or gynecologist until the following year for their checkup or unless they get pregnant before that, and then the whole process starts again.

So first and foremost, a lot of women don't even realize that they can get lactation care covered by their insurance. I always like to use when I'm talking to moms and, my marketing as a business owner, you know that this is free lactation care, free care covered by insurance. I was talking with a business mentor one day though, and he is like, no, you're, you got that framed all wrong.

It's actually better than free 'cause they're already paying for it. And I'm like, oh yeah, you're right. I'm an entrepreneur. I've always been self-employed and so I've not ever had. Health insurance in the way that most people do. So, I was not framing it that way because yeah, if you are insured through your employer, you have to pay for that insurance.

Most moms don't realize that it is something they're already paying for. And so you already are doing all the hoops to have your insurance and a lot of moms are not realizing that they can get.

Of lactation care, you can get that care covered by your insurance. IBCLCs do exist. I think a lot of mothers don't even realize that lactation practitioners exist outside of the hospital or the clinical setting. There are plenty of IBCLCs in private practice in the us. But there are not enough to meet the demand of moms in terms of how many moms we have, becoming mothers every day in the US it's about 10,800 ish babies being born every single day.

So in my private practice, the Latch Link, I am really focused on helping mothers get access to not just quick care, not just care that's covered by their insurance, but the best care that they can access. Because a lot of times mothers are.

Lulled into this sense of, I need to get care that's in home because how can they help me if they're not hands on? And so they just default to hiring the person who happens to be in their neighborhood, when in reality that person may not be the best practitioner for them. Depending on where you live, you might have an excellent I-B-C-L-C near you, but you might not.

A lot of IB CLCs carry a lot of bias around their own opinions, and unfortunately, a lot of times from their own experiences as moms. The last thing a mom needs is a lactation consultant, a nurse, a doctor. Whomever coming to her and giving her advice based on their own personal opinions.

What Moms deserve is access to care. That's based on, evidence and fact and, objective data, not just on their subjective experience and opinions relating to breastfeeding care. I've had so many moms come to me and tell me that they had an I-B-C-L-C who came to them and was just really judgy and pushy, and it was.

And so just remember that there are plenty of IB CLCs like myself who exist, who are not trying to push upon you our opinions. My biggest goal as an I-B-C-L-C is to meet moms exactly where they are. And support them in whatever their breastfeeding and infant feeding journey looks like. And there's like a million different ways to breastfeed a baby and to feed a baby.

So just remember that you are not stuck with whomever is in your neighborhood. With my private practice, the latch link, my biggest goal is to fill in the issue of lack of continuity of care. As I touched on earlier, it definitely is lacking within the maternal healthcare space, but it's also severely lacking within the breastfeeding care space as well.

A lot of times moms will. Start to struggle with breastfeeding and they'll look on Google and they'll try to find someone locally, and hopefully that practitioner is good enough, as I mentioned. But even if they are, it's very likely that they won't be able to get them in for, you know, a day, a couple days, maybe even a week.

At my practice, we're able to get moms in within 12 hours sometimes, but definitely within 24. It's one of the ways that we're revolutionizing lactation care to help moms get the access to care that they deserve and that they really need.

Are really easy to get scheduled for, and we offer support, not just for the putting out fires aspect of breastfeeding care, but also for baby led weaning. You watched a weird video on TikTok and now you're feeling confused. You're going to your mother-in-law's house for her birthday and you know you're gonna have to breastfeed in front of everyone and you're feeling overwhelmed.

We're there for everything. Starting solids returning to work. Baby is teething. You guys got the flu. Whatever it is, we are here across. The entire time. One thing that I'm asked frequently though is don't you need in-home care in order to learn how to do a good latch or how to have a good latch, or how to position your baby?

And then I leave. And later you go back and you try to do a pull up and you're like, wait, I could do one before what happened? That's how breastfeeding care can be. When we're reliant on someone coming in and showing us how to do it for us, because unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you frame it, our brains like to default to the easier path.

And when someone is there for us and we're exhausted and we're overwhelmed and we look at this person as and experts and like they're here to save the day, it's very easy for us to check out and just let them do the hard work. For us when it comes to latching our baby, the bottom line and the truth is, in the middle of the night at 2:00 AM when your baby needs to latch and your nipples are bleeding and you're in pain and you're overwhelmed, you're not gonna have that I-B-C-L-C there to repeat what she taught you in person.

We want to have our customers come back to us, but that's not the way we want them to come back to us. And I have literally heard other IB CLCs. Talk about how they do weekly appointments with moms. 'cause they just, that's the only way they can learn how to latch is they have to come out and latch for them and then they leave and then it goes to hell again and they have to come back.

And do things for us. A lot of times those things get lost in the woodwork Beyond that, not to get off on a tangent, but we have a lot of studies around, is home birth safe? Is home birth not safe? I'm not gonna get into that at all. But, a big issue with anything around birth is that once we observe something, it's difficult to assess its safety or efficacy.

In a place when it's not observed, because once you're observing it, you're messing it up. And that's exactly how in-home care can be when it comes to lactation. While of course, even in virtual care, you're being observed, and that's gonna add a layer of complexity that you wouldn't have if you weren't.

It's much better to have someone come in your home, but there's a certain level of stress in receiving someone into your home, especially during that really sensitive time postpartum. And try as we may to be cool and chill. If someone's coming into our house, we're gonna feel like we need to pick stuff up and do this and that.

But in virtual care, it is so freaking awesome because you can literally just plop out on your couch in your, depends one boob out hair in a messy bun. It literally doesn't matter. And I can meet you right where you are right then in the environment that you actually breastfeed in, In addition to that, we are able to provide really excellent education after the fact. I am so, passionate about providing clients with educational resources that they can utilize to implement the changes we talked about.

And I had a friend who had an issue, and I shared this with her, and it totally fixed things from the beginning. And she didn't even need to see anyone. She just shared, like a screenshot of something that I had. Sent her or shared with her, and it was so impactful on a friend. So it's really. Important.

I think as we move into this kind of, uncharted territory of the future where we have so much access to technology and different things that we make sure that we're adapting and not being left behind. Because as we can see, the maternal healthcare space in general is very antiquated. It is very.

I have so many moms that I work with where we have standing biweekly, monthly appointments where we can check in, they can get all their questions answered, because the last thing that new moms who are vulnerable need is to just be in the chasms of the internet. Watching on TikTok and YouTube pretty much being sold to from every angle from companies and brands and people who might not have their best interests at heart.

What Moms deserve is access to care that is focused on them and their goals, and so that's what we're doing at the Latch Link. I just wanted to make this podcast because I feel like a lot of moms. Number one, don't realize that they can get care covered by their insurance, but they definitely don't frame it from the place of, oh my God, I'm already paying for this.

You do not need to wait to reach out until things are a mess. I think that's a big lack that we have within the healthcare space in the US in general, is that a lot of it is treating issues that have already happened rather than being preventative so a lot of the care that we see in the US in general is just focused on fixing issues once they have already happened. But the beautiful thing about breastfeeding care is that we can work together across your entire breastfeeding journey.

If you have insurance, you most likely already qualify for that to be covered a hundred percent. So don't sleep on that. Get support. Don't wait for things to be. A mess before you reach out. And remember that lactation care is here for you across your entire journey. You are not limited to that one lady who happens to be in your zip code.

And virtual care, in my opinion, is superior to in-person care because of the continuity that we can provide across time. And because of all of the other reasons that I laid out, like not having to have a stranger come into your house, learning how to do things yourself in a way that's repeatable. So just remember you have options and you deserve support.