Maplewood Lactation

10/12/2025

10/02/2025

SO TRUE! And I love the representation of mammary tissue as grape clusters. I use that analogy as well as broccoli.

Did you know your body actually changes with each baby you have? After your second (and beyond), your breasts develop more milk sacs—meaning you can often make milk more efficiently than the first time around.

Your body learns, adapts, and grows right along with your family. 💕 Pretty incredible, right?

10/01/2025

Drugs and Lactation Database (LactMed®) [Internet]
Bethesda (MD): National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; 2006-.
Alcohol
Last Revision: November 15, 2023.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK501469/

09/05/2025

Ni**le shields are made of soft silicone and fit over the ni**le to protect it during breast feeding. The most common reasons to use a shield include:
🗝Help a premature, weak, or uncoordinated baby latch
🗝Help a baby practice latching to a flat, inverted or retracted ni**le
🗝Help a baby with tongue tie stay latched
🗝Help a damaged ni**le heal

The down side of using a shield include:
📌Can lead to less stimulation of the breast which can decrease milk supply
📌Some babies have a harder time transferring milk from a shield
📌Some babies can have a hard time transitioning off the shield once they get used to it
📌Some people use the wrong size shield or are not placing it correctly which decreases its effectiveness

Tips when using a shield:
💛Always seek guidance from a board certified lactation consultant when using a shield. We want to know WHY you need it and if there are other solutions before using one (like position changes or getting a tongue tie clipped)
💛Make sure you’re using the correct size. Find the correct size for your ni**le by measuring the diameter of your ni**le. The shield should be 2-3mm larger than your ni**le.
💛If there is a lot of space at the top of the shield, size down.
💛If your ni**le pokes through the holes by the end of a feeding, size up.
💛Do not just place the shield on like a bandaid. This does not draw the ni**le in far enough for baby to get a deep latch. Roll the shield down to make a cup, place your ni**le as far into the cup as possible, place the shield on your ni**le and stretch the sides of the shield to pop your ni**le as far into the shield as possible.
💛Fill the shield with breast milk prior to latching to help baby associate milk comes from your breast
💛Wash your shield with hot, soapy water after each use
💛Buy two and keep them in a small container. The clear shield is HORRIBLE to find in the dark at 2am

**leshield **leshields **leshieldweaning

09/02/2025

While it seems counterintuitive, the emptier your breasts are, the faster they make milk. A full bread has no place to store or hold the milk, so milk production slows to prevent plugged ducts and breast discomfort. Cluster feeding on an emptier breast actually tells the body to make more milk at a faster rate!! Some incorrectly assume you have to wait for the breast to “fill up” before feeding your baby or for pumping while at work. This will eventually lead to less milk, as a fuller breast tells your body baby isn’t eating very often and to slow milk production. The more frequent you empty the breast, the higher the fat content in that milk and the faster milk is made. The longer often you wait and the fuller the breast, the higher the water content in that milk and the slower your body will make milk overall.

Watch the baby, not the clock. Breasts may feel really full between feedings in the first few weeks after birth, but they’re also not supposed to stay engorged. There will come a time when they stay soft and don’t feel full between feedings or pumping, so waiting for that as a cue to feed will also sabotage your supply. Don’t be alarmed when your breasts no longer feel full between feeding. You’re entering a new stage where you’ll still make plenty of milk for your baby as long as you’re routinely emptying that milk. Trust your body. Trust your baby.

08/22/2025

The food you eat and the water you drink do not magically go directly to your breast milk. What you eat and drink goes first to your stomach to be broken down and then into your intestines to be absorbed and processed. Your digestive system breaks nutrients into parts small enough for your body to absorb and use for energy, growth, and cell repair. The muscles of the small intestine mix food with digestive juices from the pancreas, liver, and intestine. Special cells in the walls of the small intestine absorb water and the digested nutrients into your bloodstream. Your blood carries molecule-sized components such as simple sugars (carbohydrates), amino acids, white blood cells, enzymes, water, fat, and proteins throughout your body. As blood passes by the breasts, milk glands pull out these nutrients for milk production and pass some of them to your baby. Not all molecules are small enough to pass through into milk. (That’s why some medications are safe to take while breastfeeding and some are not. Molecules that are too big can’t get into the milk while really small molecules can.)

Nuts, seeds, beans, and grains all have plant based proteins. Meat and dairy are animal based proteins. Both plant and animal proteins carried in your blood can make it into your milk. Sometimes these proteins can affect baby’s digestive system, causing symptoms like reflux, gas, colic, and blood or mucus in the poops from iritations to baby’s intestinal lining. Diary proteins are the most common cause of upset in the stomach, however research suggests that the proportion of exclusively breastfed infants who are actually allergic to something in their mother’s milk is very small. (https://bit.ly/3rFHotE). Fussiness and gas alone are not enough to diagnose a cow milk protein allergy.

In general, there are NO foods that need to be avoided because you’re breastfeeding. Every baby is different in the foods they are sensitive to. IF your baby always seems to have a reaction when you eat a certain food or a large amount of a certain type of food, cutting back on it or cutting it out temporarily may be helpful.

08/18/2025

In case you needed a reason to be extra proud of yourself today ♥️ YOU DID AMAZING 💪👏

📸: .co 🥰

08/01/2025

06/19/2025

06/19/2025

06/10/2025

Your baby doesn't need to be trained to sleep. It's US parents who need to be trained. We need to learn how to help them sleep when it's best for them.

Sleep scientist Professor Helen Ball shares four surprising things every new parent needs to know about baby sleep – and what’s really going on when your little one just won’t settle

'I'm a baby sleep expert, this is why your baby won't go to sleep (and what to do about it)'
02 Jun 2025 BY Louisa Sherlock Associate Editor

"Tried all the baby sleep routines, tips and tricks you can find, and your little one still won’t sleep? That’s no surprise to sleep scientist Professor Helen Ball. One of the world’s leading infant sleep experts, she says baby sleep isn’t something that needs to be ‘taught’. Author of the new book ‘How Babies Sleep: A Factful Guide to the First 365 Days and Nights’, Helen says: ‘As a baby sleep scientist, I see numerous recommendations for baby sleep that make no sense. Here are four things about baby sleep biology that new parents should know.':

1. Babies don’t need to be taught how to sleep
I often see comments on social media and reels on Instagram about how we must ‘teach our babies to sleep’ by creating elaborate bed-time routines so they learn it is night-time, putting them down ‘drowsy but awake’ in their cots, and not rushing in when they rouse so they learn to ‘self-settle’.

But stop and think about this for a moment – this isn’t about teaching babies to sleep at all! They know how to sleep from the moment they are born. In fact they were sleeping in the womb before they were born. Sleep isn’t a learned skill, it is a biological process, and all babies will sleep when they need to. So what is ‘teaching babies to sleep’ all about?
It is about trying to make babies’ sleep patterns conform to cultural ideals about when and how babies ‘should sleep’ in a particular society. So don’t beat yourself up if your baby doesn’t stick to the script – so long as they take sleep when they need to you do not need to make them learn to sleep in any specific way.
2. Dark silent rooms for day-time naps are pointless (and can be unsafe)
It can be very tempting to encourage a baby to take long day-time naps. Many a baby has spent their day sleeping back in their cot in a dark silent room all alone, while mum gets on with chores downstairs, and siblings tip-toe around, forbidden to make noise in case they wake the baby.

But taking day-time naps in silence and darkness makes little sense for babies’ sleep biology. We are born with no day-night rhythm (circadian clock) and it takes 3-4 months for it to develop to the extent that we begin to stay awake longer in the daytime and sleep more at night.
The thing that drives the development of the body clock is daylight. Placing babies in dark rooms for every sleep means their brains are denied the cues needed for the body-clock to establish itself. There is also a greater SIDS-risk when babies sleep alone.

Keeping babies near you, in the daylight and everyday noise is best for their safety and their day-night rhythm.
3. Babies can’t fall asleep on command
Well, actually, none of us can! The only time we could possibly do so is if we are already super-sleepy and just longing for the chance to get our head down. This is because of sleep pressure – one of the biological processes that regulates the need for sleep.

Sleep pressure results from the build-up of chemicals in the brain that are a by-product of using energy while we are awake, and which are cleared from the brain while we sleep. The longer we stay awake the greater sleep pressure builds up, and when sleep pressure is high we can fall asleep easily. Sleep pressure builds up much more quickly in babies than adults, which means babies need to sleep regularly during the day as well as at night.
But if their sleep pressure hasn’t built up sufficiently at the time we have decided they should nap, or go to sleep for the night, then they won’t be able to. And sleep pressure builds up more quickly or slowly depending on how much the brain has been active when awake. So nap-times and bed-times won’t easily align with clock schedules.
4. In your arms or on your body is the place they most want to be
Human babies are born with only a quarter of their eventual adult brain size, and grow their brains at a rapid rate throughout the whole first year of life. Due to lack of neuro-muscular co-ordination, and poor muscle tone at birth, our babies can neither cling to us, nor stand and follow us. Yet they need to be in close proximity to us day and night for warmth, safety, comfort and food.

They need to feed frequently day and night, and they do not have the ability to defend themselves or keep themselves safe. Most newborns, and many older babies therefore crave contact and the comfort and safety of their caregiver’s body. Sleeping on you or while being held is the safest place they know, and the only place they can relax sufficiently to be able to fall asleep."
https://www.netmums.com/baby/sleep/im-a-baby-sleep-expert-this-is-why-your-baby-wont-go-to-sleep-and-what-to-do-about-it?