Breastfeeding & Beyond - Dr Melody Jackson

07/04/2026

Acceptance is not passive.
It is active, intentional, and ongoing.

BreastfeedingMedicine BreastfeedingMedicinePhysician breastfeedingandbeyond drmelodyjackson

05/04/2026

There is no evidence that babies who have formula sleep better, despite this being a common reason for tired parents to introduce a bottle of formula before bed.

Formula milk marketing exploits parental anxieties about common infant behaviours such as fussiness or poor sleep.

Premium branding is paraded as having 'premium benefits', when in fact the only difference is the price.

Claims made by the formula milk industry about their products are often misleading, scientifically unsubstantiated & violate the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes.

WHO is calling on governments to end exploitative marketing and protect babies’ health.

02/04/2026

Capability vs Capacity
You are capable of amazing things.
You are strong, skilled, loving, and resourceful.
But capability and capacity are not the same.
Capability is what you can do.
Capacity is what you can manage right now,
in this season, with this body, this sleep, this support.
Sometimes our capability stays the same,
but our capacity shrinks —
from exhaustion, stress, grief, or simply the relentlessness of caregiving.
That doesn’t make you less. It makes you human.
You don’t have to do everything you could do.
You only have to do what’s possible today.
The rest can wait.
Be gentle with your capacity.
It expands again, in time. 🌿

PostpartumCare TraumaInformedCare ParentingSupport BabyHealth BreastfeedingJourney ParentingTips PostpartumRecovery SydneyMums NewMums

31/03/2026

Endometriosis is not just “bad period pain.”
It is a whole-body experience of living with something that is often invisible, often dismissed, and too often endured in silence.

It is the teenager told it’s normal.
The woman who learns to function through pain.
The appointments that don’t quite land.
The years between knowing something is wrong and finally being believed.

It can shape how someone moves through their day,
their work,
their relationships,
their fertility,
their sense of self.

And for many, it intersects quietly with other parts of their story —
pregnancy, postpartum recovery, feeding journeys, intimacy, trauma.
Layers that are rarely spoken about, but deeply felt.

Endometriosis asks for more than awareness.
It asks for listening.
For curiosity instead of dismissal.
For care that is consistent, informed, and compassionate.

Because when pain is normalised, people learn to doubt themselves.
And when people are believed, everything begins to shift.

This month is a reminder:
to take pain seriously,
to hold space for complexity,
and to keep doing better — in our clinics, our systems, and our conversations.

You are not too sensitive.
Your pain is not too much.
And your story deserves to be heard.

TraumaInformedCare BreastfeedingMedicine BreastfeedingMedicinePhysician breastfeedingandbeyond drmelodyjackson

27/03/2026

3.30am start today 🤪 I’m heading to Melbourne today in preparation for a busy weekend with amazing colleagues in the world of breastfeeding medicine. The BMNANZ board will be busy working on our strategic direction and short and long term goals 🤱

08/03/2026

I’m feeling quite pensive this year about International Women’s Day. The world feels like a terrifying place right now, where even the most “advanced” western countries are sending women’s rights backwards. Here in Australia there’s been multiple events in just the last week in the media about situations where women have been not seen, not believed and not given autonomy in their own healthcare. I often wonder how it will all end. I really don’t know, but in the meantime, I’ll just write some more poetry 🙃

01/03/2026

It’s been a few months now since my poetry book, Tender Thresholds: Reflections on Motherhood and Medicine, made its way out into the world.
I wrote these pieces in quiet, in-between moments over the past 8 years, before collating them last year. I was encouraged to publish by a beautiful colleague — and I won’t pretend there wasn’t a great deal of angst about whether I should.
At the time, I struggled to articulate what I hoped would come from sharing it.
But if it was anything, it was this. To hold space for your story, and for mine. And for you to be seen in this journey of motherhood

28/02/2026

❤️ this video!

28/02/2026

If our systems protect prestige more fiercely than patients, that is not feminism.
It is patriarchy in a white coat.

We can hold excellence and accountability in the same hand.

We must.

17/02/2026

New analysis highlights breastfeeding rate trends across Europe, noting that comparisons between countries can be complex due to differences in how data is collected and reported.

The findings add to ongoing conversations about how breastfeeding data is measured and interpreted across health systems.

See the analysis: https://factcheckni.org/articles/health-in-ni-are-northern-irelands-breastfeeding-rates-among-the-lowest-in-europe/