Caoimhe Whelan, IBCLC

08/04/2026

I recently read a book called 'The Least of These: The tragic story of Dublin's foundling hospital' by Mark B. Roe - the breastfeeding nerd in me was particularly fascinated by the accounts of how babies in the hospital were fed (or as was often the case, not fed). Some were sent to wet nurses in the country while some were 'hand fed' pap (a mixture of milk and flour) or panda (a mixture of broth and breadcrumbs). Not surprisingly, most of these babies died.

There was a reference in the book to this really old Midwifery text from 1671 'Speculum Matricis Hybernicum' by James Wolveridge. So I ended reading the chapters on feeding ' one on 'fever of milk' and the other of chosing a wet nurse, because the book assumes that babies will be fed not by their birth mother, but by a wet nurse.

Anyway, there's a small section that details remedies for low milk supply, including dried earthworms 🤮 Other remedies mentioned are fennel seeds, rubbing the breasts with 'the oyle of Lillies', chicken broth with cinamon and mace, poached eggs with seeds of annis and dill, and the roots of parsnips boiled in barley water and buttered.

If milk production does not increase sufficiently, it is recommend that the parents employ a new wet nurse.

07/04/2026

This longitudinal study found that Large for Gestational Age (LGA) babies, ie those born with a birthweight > 90th percentile, gain weight more slowly in the first 6 months than babies who are born Appropriate for Gestational Age (AGA), ie between the 10th and 90th percentiles. The study also concluded that by 6 months of age, LGA babies are "anthropometrically similar" to AGA babies.

I often see this in my practice with LGA babies. Very often their weight gain is a little bit slower than expected in the first few months, despite the fact that breastfeeding well and that there are no other obvious issues. Parents are sometimes put under pressure to supplement - this study suggests that supplementation (or efforts to increase milk production) may not always be necessaery. Ultimately it's important to look at the bigger picture.

The authors of the study suggest that intrauterine factors may have led to the high birth weight, and that ex utero the babies experience a "natural expression of their genetic growth patterns." - a sort of levelling out.

Chiavaroli V, Cutfield WS, Derraik JG, Pan Z, Ngo S, Sheppard A, Craigie S, Stone P, Sadler L, Ahlsson F. Infants born large-for-gestational-age display slower growth in early infancy, but no epigenetic changes at birth. Sci Rep. 2015 Sep 30;5:14540. doi: 10.1038/srep14540. PMID: 26419812; PMCID: PMC4588582.

02/04/2026

Reverse pressure softening is an easy technique that you can use to soft
en your ar**la and make it easier for your baby to latch. It involves gently pushing fluid (milk, blood and lymph) away from the ar**la and into the breast. When your breasts are very full or engorged (eg when milk first comes in on or around day 3), doing RPS before feeding can reduce the risk of your baby just latching on to your ni**le and causing pain or damage.

It is easier for a baby to latch to a softer ar**la.

Very often when I see mothers a week or two into breastfeeding with sore or damaged ni**les, the cause has been suboptimal latching due to breast fullness or engorgement. I'm always surprised at how few people seem to know about RPS, and how few people were shown how to do it in hospital.

Were you told about RPS in antenatal breastfeeding classes or during your hospital stay?

I mnetion RPS in my book 'Practical Breastfeeding: An Illustrated Guide for Parents' (illustrations by )

01/04/2026

Early bird tickets for this one-day breastfeeding and lactation study day are available now https://www.breastfeedingsupport.ie/events-2026/. There's a great line-up of speakers. I attended last year and would 100% recommend it to anyone looking to enhance their breastfeeding/lactation skills and knowledge. I'll be speaking about the politics of breastfeeding. Other topics will include birth trauma and breastfeeding, tongue tie, ni**le shields and triple feeding.

Triple feeding, ni**le shields, birth trauma, tongue ties and the politics of breastfeeding. One day. Four expert speakers. Dublin, June 2026.

26/03/2026

What an amazing day! I feel really uplifted after the Bfn Lambeth Study Day 2026 today which attended with Everyone was so welcoming and friendly - nothing beats the buzz and oxytocin of a face-to-face event like this. And the talks were amazing. I learned so much.
shaheda spoke about milk kinship in Islamic culture. There were some aspects of it that I was familiar with, but I hadn't ever considered the implications of milk kinship in modern settings eg in regard to milk banks. It was so interesting and thought-provoking.

Natasha Baker spoke about her PhD research into the infant feeding experinces of women who experienced severe mental illness. Some of the quotes from her research that Natasha read out were heartbreaking. We need to do so much better on this front.

Amber Clarke's presentation was about fl**ge sizing and it was excellent. She showed these really amazing videos of pumping with different fl**ge sizes, from 24mm down to around 10mm (yes, really!) - I kinda had to see it to believe it 🤣 Also loved the upsidedown pumping.

gave a very insighful talk about supporting lactation after loss. It was interesting to see all the different kinds of situations in which this topic needs to be broached with parents. Olivia mentioned a leaflet she put together outlining the options.

I presented my research on breastfeeding with primary low milk supply - for the first time at a live event!

The best part of the day was grabbing a quick coffee with my cousin, Lambeth resident Serafina Spicer who is a Green Party candidate for the Brixton Windrush ward in the upcoming local elections.

Also great to meet and all of the amazing Bfn Lambeth team 🥰 Thank you 🙏

The main takeaways are that infant feeding support is not black and white, and that individualised support and sensitivity must be at the heart of support interactions.

04/03/2026

I just finished reading 'Wet Nursing: A History from Antiquity to the Present' by Valerie Fildes, published in 1988. It does exactly as the title suggests, and it's fascinating. I thought I already knew a lot about wet nursing in the past, but I've learned so much. One of the big take aways for me was how complicated & controversial an issue infant feeding has always been. It's easy to assume that women only stopped breastfeeding in big numbers when formula became widely available - there's truth in this - but the reality is much more complex.

Since ancient times, how babies were fed was influenced by social class, economic status, social norms, patriarchal attitudes to womens' bodies and the milk they produced, religion and politics.

Particularly in Europe, wet nursing was not just practised by the aristocracy - it was in many countries entirely the norm for middle class families. For example, in Florence in the 1500's, by 2 weeks of age 80% of babies had been sent out to wet nurses in the country. The husbands made all the decisions about how the baby would be fed & by whom. There was a big emphasis on lineage - "nothing should detract from the wife's primary function of providing a sufficiently large number of infants to make sure one or more would survive to inherit."

Here's a couple of quotes from the book:

● "Women these days are too delicate or too haughty, or they do not like the inconvenience" - A 14th Century Scottish physician, Bernard of Gordon, on breastfeeding.

● "In Austria (in the 1930's), as elsewhere in Europe, wet-nursing, like prostitution, was one of two ever-available sources of income for poor young women. They could at all times earn their keep by becoming pregnant and selling their milk."

● "If Aunt Mary was feeding her own baby and Miss Lucy started crying Marse John would sn**ch her baby up by the legs and s***k him, and tell Aunt Mary to go on and nuss his baby fust." - A man describing how his aunt (a slave in Georgia) was made to nurse the slave owner's baby. Making slave women wet-nurse slave owners' babies was common practice in the Americas.

There's a wet-nursing museum in Burgundy - hope to visit some day!

24/02/2026

A blog on Lactation Consultant Burnout (Part 1)

24/02/2026

I do home visits in South Dublin. Contact me at caoimhew@gmail.com or (086) 3397671 to book a postnatal or antenatal consultation.

16/02/2026

A little bit of background reading in advance of a presentation I'm giving in UCD on Wednesday on 'The Politics of Breadtfeeding'. If it's a topic you're interested in and would like to learn more, I would suggest starting with 'Unlatched' by Jennifer Grayson and following with 'The Politics of Breastfeeding' by Gabrielle Palmer.

And of course 'Beloved' by Toni Morrisson for insight into intergenerational trauma in the context of slavery, motherhood and breadtfeeding.

10/02/2026

I've made a few changes to how I work. I'm no longer seeing clients at the office I shared in Churchtown with . Instead, I'm doing home visits in South Dublin and Zoom consultations.

Towards the end of 2025 I was feeling very burnt out. And exhausted. We had just built a house and moved in on 20th December. And I just didn't feel I had anything to give....so I took a long break. And it was the best decision for me. It gave me space and time to look after myself, look after my family, and figure out what I wanted to do workwise. I realised I needed to do less private practice work, and be more present at home.

It was so hard to let go of the office. Nicola and myself have been seeing clients there for almost 4 years. It's a beautiful space and I'm so proud of us for making it a success. I'm also very grateful to Niamh and Shawn in for being great landlords and for being so very supportive of us ❤️. Initially I felt a sense of failure that I was letting the office go but now I know it was the honest thing for me to do - to acknowledge that I needed to make a change and follow through.

Nicola will continue to see clients at the office. I'm just happy that the space will continue to be a place where families can receive excellent, sensitive lactation/breastfeeding support 💜

09/12/2025

08/12/2025

I'm so thrilled that June Magazine is featuring an excerpt from 'Practical Breastfeeding: An Illustrated Guide for Parents' in its Winter edition.

Caoimhe Whelan looks at how we gain the skills and confidence needed to breastfeed our babies