Mama's Instinct - Lactation Consultant IBCLC

25/10/2025

24/10/2025

Self-feeding pillows can be deadly. That’s because the baby can’t push the bottle away, so can choke or suffer aspiration pneumonia.

Your baby needs you with them while they are feeding, so you can react if they start gagging or choking.

Avoid using anything that encourages you to leave your baby alone to feed with a propped-up bottle.

In 2022, an urgent safety alert was issued for baby self-feeding pillows. Yet, self-feeding pillows are still available to buy in some places. And, Office for Product Safety and Standards warned today that new variants of these dangerous products are available online.

To learn more about these and other dangerous baby products visit: https://capt.org.uk/10-baby-products-that-could-pose-serious-safety-risk/

10/10/2025

I’m back open with limited availability. Saturday I will be spending the day in a Tongue Tie Study Day with other Lactation professionals.

09/10/2025

30/09/2025

Will let you know as soon as I’m back up and running. Thank you for your understanding. Bex

29/09/2025

Join our next North Kent MNVP Service User Listening Event online this Friday 3rd October 10am-12pm to have your say about local maternity & neonatal services. 📢📢📢

If you have experienced maternity or neonatal care at Darent Valley Hospital or in the local Gravesham or Dartford areas in the last 2 years or so, we would love for you to come along to share your feedback & experiences. 🤰👶🤱

Sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/dvh-parent-education-team-34959131833

25/07/2025

Mother’s experiences of access to International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) support in the UK

We are conducting research to understand who accesses IBCLC support in the UK and what facilitates this access. You do not need to have breastfed, and you do not need to have received support from an IBCLC to take part.

As a thank you we would like to offer participants the opportunity to be placed in a prize draw to win one of 10 x £20 Love2Shop vouchers.

This is a Swansea University research project led by Emily Lunny as part of a PhD study, supervised by Dr Catrin Griffiths and Professor Amy Brown from the Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences. You can contact Emily, Catrin or Amy for further details of the research.

Email Emily: 2457218@swansea.ac.uk
Email Catrin: c.r.griffiths@swansea.ac.uk
Email Amy: a.e.brown@swansea.ac.uk

The research has been approved by the Health and Social Care Research Ethics Committee (approval number 2 2025 13501 13457).

Our research aims to understand mothers’ experiences of accessing IBCLC support in the UK, whether they chose to or were able to access IBCLC support or not.

We understand that talking about infant feeding experiences can be upsetting if things didn’t go to plan. Please contact the Birth Trauma Association or any of the breastfeeding support associations in the UK if this is upsetting for you.
La Leche League: https://laleche.org.uk/
The Breastfeeding Network: https://www.breastfeedingnetwork.org.uk/
Association of Breastfeeding Mothers: https://abm.me.uk/
The Birth Trauma Association: https://www.birthtraumaassociation.org/

As part of this we are looking for mothers to complete a survey that will take between 20 – 30 minutes depending on how much you would like to say. Our survey will remain open for the next 4 weeks from 24th July to 21st August 2025.

We would like to hear from parents who:

• Are based in the UK
• Had a baby between May 2021 and May 2025
• Breastfed, formula fed, combination fed or anything in between

We would like to hear from mothers and parents no matter how they fed their baby, and whether they received IBCLC support or not.

If you’d like to take part please click the link for further information and the survey questions https://swanseachhs.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8uGyfv2Nl3ugWZ8 The

14/07/2025

31/03/2025

27/03/2025

Kent Family Hubs offers £25 vouchers for nursing wear to eligible Healthy Start families. Visit the link in the comments to check eligibility and learn how to apply.

25/03/2025

This is mapping of education v qualification’s of the support for breastfeeding you could recieve in the Health Care System. IBCLCs are the only profession to be green in every box!

Our second WBTi report found many gaps in the high-level training standards for nurses, doctors, dietitians and pharmacists (this would be the required minimum knowledge for those qualifying).

The red squares indicate that breastfeeding/infant feeding topic is not required in their training standards. Yellow indicates it is unclear or partially included. Green means it is included.

So many of our health care professionals have little to no training around infant feeding.

Midwifery training has a strong cluster of breastfeeding knowledge and skills, as do BFI accredited health visitor university programmes.

We recommend that all health visitor university training should meet BFI standards, and that other health professions should address the gaps in their requirements.

Read all about it in our new report (see also Part 2 for more details)

https://ukbreastfeeding.org/wbtiuk2024/

05/03/2025