Lakeshore Lactation

01/28/2026

Denmark is officially moving away from the cry it out method after a nationwide study revealed it was still being taught in most municipalities. More than 700 psychologists signed a unified statement urging immediate discontinuation of the practice. They emphasized that prolonged crying without comfort elevates cortisol and affects how the infant brain forms emotional and stress regulation pathways. This national push reflects growing scientific awareness of early neural sensitivity.

Researchers highlight that when babies cry alone, their stress signals rise sharply. Without caregiver response, the brain begins wiring for self protection rather than trust. These early patterns influence later attachment styles emotional stability and even learning behavior. Denmark’s decision aligns with decades of neuroscience showing that infants depend on caregiver regulation to build healthy neural circuits.

Despite this, the cry it out approach continues to be recommended in parts of the U.S. where outdated models of infant independence remain common. Scientists argue that babies do not learn self soothing through isolation. Instead they learn through repeated experiences of comfort which stabilize heart rate breathing and emotional processing. This helps form long term resilience.

Denmark’s shift highlights a global conversation about infant well being. The science is clear. Responding to a baby’s distress supports healthier development than leaving them to cry alone.

01/18/2026

Toddler breastfeeding is amazing!!

This isn’t just comfort.
It isn’t just habit.
And it definitely isn’t something a child “no longer needs.”

A toddler at the breast is still receiving living, responsive nutrition. Breastmilk continues to adapt, changing in composition to meet their growing body’s needs. It still contains antibodies that support their immune system as they explore the world with sticky hands and curious mouths. It still provides healthy fats for brain development, proteins for growth, and enzymes that help with digestion.

But the benefits go far beyond what we can measure.

For a toddler, breastfeeding is regulation.
It is safety.
It is grounding when the world feels big, loud, and overwhelming.

When they nurse, their nervous system slows. Their breathing steadies. Stress hormones drop. They return to a familiar place where they know they are safe, seen, and soothed. That sense of security builds resilience, emotional regulation, and confidence that carries into independence later on.

Breastfeeding a toddler also continues to support oral development, jaw strength, and proper swallowing patterns. It can help with sleep, transitions, illness recovery, and emotional processing in ways no substitute can replicate.

And for the mother, it’s a relationship.
A quiet agreement that says, “I’m still here. You can come back whenever you need.”

This stage is not regression.
It is not indulgence.
It is not something to be rushed or shamed.

It is biology working exactly as intended.

A toddler breastfeeding is not taking anything away from the world. They are gaining security, health, and connection. And one day, when they no longer need it, they will let go knowing they were never pushed away.

This photo isn’t about clinging.
It’s about trust.

And trust is something worth nurturing 🤍

01/14/2026

01/07/2026

Latch & Learn, A Monthly IBCLC-Led Support Group at Schoolhouse Play & Cafe - https://mailchi.mp/9656db5b512f/latch-learn-a-monthly-ibclc-led-support-group-at-schoolhouse-play-cafe-17238946

12/28/2025

She discovered that mothers' bodies rewrite their milk in real-time based on whether their baby is sick—and science had never noticed because almost no one was looking.
California, 2008. Evolutionary anthropologist Katie Hinde is analyzing breast milk samples from rhesus macaque mothers at a primate research facility. She has hundreds of samples. Thousands of data points. Everything looks routine.
Until one pattern refuses to disappear.
Mothers raising sons are producing milk richer in fat and protein—denser calories, concentrated energy.
Mothers raising daughters are producing larger volumes with different nutrient balances—more milk, different composition.
It's consistent across samples. Repeatable across mothers. And completely at odds with what biology textbooks say breast milk is supposed to be.
Katie runs the numbers again. Checks her methodology. Reviews the data. The pattern doesn't budge.
She presents her findings to colleagues. The responses are polite but dismissive. Measurement error. Statistical noise. Coincidence. Because if milk composition changes based on the s*x of the baby, that suggests something biology wasn't ready to accept:
Milk is not just nutrition. Milk is information.
For decades, medical science treated breast milk as simple fuel. Calories in, growth out. A biological formula that delivers nutrients from mother to child. End of story.
But if milk were only calories, why would it change based on whether the baby is male or female? What biological purpose could that possibly serve?
Katie trusted her data. And the data was pointing toward something revolutionary.
She kept going.
Across more than 250 mothers and over 700 sampling events, the story grew more complex. Younger, first-time mothers produced milk with fewer calories but significantly higher levels of cortisol—the stress hormone.
The babies who drank high-cortisol milk grew faster. They were also more alert, more cautious, more vigilant. More anxious.
Milk wasn't just building bodies. It was shaping temperament. Programming behavior. Communicating environmental conditions from mother to infant through chemistry.
Then Katie found something that changed everything.
When a baby nurses, microscopic amounts of saliva flow backward into the breast tissue. That saliva carries biological signals—chemical messages about the infant's immune system, about pathogens the baby has encountered, about whether the baby is getting sick.
The mother's body reads those signals.
And within hours, the milk changes.
White blood cells increase. Macrophages multiply. Targeted antibodies appear—custom-designed to fight whatever pathogen the baby's saliva revealed.
When the baby recovers, the milk composition returns to baseline.
This wasn't coincidence. This wasn't passive nutrition delivery.
This was conversation.
A biological dialogue refined over millions of years. Mother and infant exchanging chemical information in real-time, the mother's body responding to the baby's needs before the baby even shows symptoms. An immune system tutorial being delivered through milk, teaching the infant's developing defenses how to fight.
And science had missed it. Completely.
As Katie surveyed existing research, she found something that made her furious. There were twice as many published studies on erectile dysfunction as on breast milk composition.
Think about that.
Breast milk is the first food every human being consumes. The substance that shaped our species' evolution. The biological system that kept every single one of our ancestors alive long enough to reproduce. It's been studied for decades.
And we knew almost nothing about how it actually works.
Because research funding follows cultural priorities. And women's biology—especially the biology of motherhood—has historically been treated as less worthy of investigation than male s*xual function.
Katie decided to change that conversation.
In 2011, she launched a blog with a deliberately provocative name: "Mammals Suck...Milk!" The title was designed to make people do a double-take, to draw attention to a field that had been ignored. It worked. The blog attracted over a million readers in its first year—parents, doctors, researchers, people asking questions science had never bothered to answer.
The discoveries kept accelerating.
Milk changes by time of day—morning milk has different composition than evening milk, with more cortisol in the morning to help babies wake and more melatonin-precursors at night to help them sleep.
Foremilk (the milk at the beginning of a feeding) differs from hindmilk (the milk at the end)—foremilk is more hydrating, hindmilk is fattier and more calorie-dense, teaching babies to finish their meals.
Human milk contains over 200 oligosaccharides—complex sugars that babies cannot digest. They pass through the infant's digestive system unchanged. So why are they there? Because they're not food for the baby. They're food for beneficial bacteria in the baby's gut. Milk is simultaneously feeding the infant and cultivating the infant's microbiome.
Every mother's milk is biologically unique—customized not just to the species, not just to the individual baby, but to the specific moment in that baby's development, the specific environment they're in, the specific challenges their immune system is facing.
In 2017, Katie brought this work to a TED stage, delivering a talk titled "What we don't know about mother's milk." It's been viewed over 1.5 million times.
In 2020, her research reached a global audience through the Netflix documentary series "Babies," where millions of parents learned for the first time that the milk they'd been producing was exponentially more sophisticated than anyone had told them.
Today, at Arizona State University's Comparative Lactation Lab, Dr. Katie Hinde continues expanding how medicine understands infant development, neonatal care, formula design, and public health policy.
The implications are staggering.
Lactation has been evolving for more than 200 million years—longer than dinosaurs walked the Earth. What we dismissed as simple nutrition is actually one of the most sophisticated communication systems biology has ever produced. An adaptive, responsive, intelligent system that shapes infant development in ways we're only beginning to understand.
Preterm infants in NICUs receive different care now because of this research. Formula companies are redesigning products to better approximate milk's complexity. Breastfeeding support has improved because we finally understand what milk is actually doing.
But here's what really matters:
Katie Hinde didn't just discover new facts about milk. She revealed that half the human experience—the biology of mothers and infants—had been systematically understudied because it was considered less important than male physiology.
She proved that nourishment is intelligence. That the first relationship every human has—mother feeding child—is not passive delivery of nutrients but an active conversation, a transfer of information, an education in immunity and behavior and how to survive in the world.
And she did it by refusing to accept that the pattern she was seeing was "just noise."
When colleagues dismissed her findings, she dug deeper. When funding was scarce, she built public interest through blogging. When traditional academic publishing moved too slowly, she took the science directly to parents through TED talks and documentaries.
She didn't wait for permission to study what mattered. She studied it anyway.
Today, comparative lactation is a growing field. New researchers are entering it. New questions are being asked. New discoveries are being made.
All because one scientist looked at data that didn't fit the accepted model and thought:
"What if the data is right and the model is wrong?"
Sometimes the biggest revolutions don't come from new technology or massive funding. They come from someone paying attention to what everyone else ignored. From someone trusting what the data shows even when it contradicts what textbooks say.
Katie Hinde thought she was studying milk.
What she uncovered was a conversation 200 million years in the making—sophisticated, adaptive, intelligent—hidden in plain sight because no one thought to listen.
Now we're listening.
And what we're hearing is revolutionary.
In honor of Dr. Katie Hinde, who proved that the most profound discoveries sometimes come from studying what science assumed it already understood—and finding out we understood nothing at all.

12/13/2025

So true. Crying it out and sleep training g is not the right answer for sleep deprivation in new parents.

Many parents believe letting a baby “cry it out” teaches independence and self-soothing. Neuroscience shows a very different reality. When a baby is left to cry alone, their nervous system goes into high alert. Heart rate rises, breathing becomes shallow, and stress hormones flood the body. The silence afterward is not calm, it is exhaustion.

In 2019, over 700 Danish child psychologists warned against solitary sleep training. Their concerns focused on elevated stress hormones and weakened attachment. When babies are left alone, the amygdala, the brain’s fear center, learns that strong feelings are ignored. The vagus nerve, which helps regulate stress, misses the practice it needs to calm the body. Over time, this can affect emotional growth.

Soothing a baby is not spoiling. It provides safety, supports healthy brain development, and teaches emotional regulation. Just as babies are guided when learning to walk, they need guidance in handling big feelings. Calm, consistent comfort teaches the brain that distress is temporary and that help is reliable.

Responding to a baby’s cry strengthens attachment, reduces stress, and lays the foundation for emotional resilience. Research shows that babies who receive responsive care develop stronger brains, better emotional regulation, and healthier relationships throughout life.

12/09/2025

Mothers traveling with breast milk have long dealt with inconsistent and unhygienic TSA screenings. Emily Calandrelli experienced it herself when agents refused to let her bring her cold packs through security, putting her pumped milk at risk.

“Yesterday, I was humiliated that I had to explain to three grown men that my breasts still produce milk when I’m not with my child… Today, I’m furious,” she shared.

After she spoke out, Emily heard from mothers with similar stories, from having their milk handled without clean gloves to being asked to dump it out even though it is exempt from liquid limits. One mother was even told to sip her own milk to prove it was safe.

Determined to change things, Emily worked with lawmakers to strengthen protections that were not being enforced. Her advocacy led to the BABES Enhancement Act, which was signed into law in late November. The law requires TSA to follow clear and hygienic guidelines, train officers consistently and clearly communicate parents’ rights.

For Emily, seeing the bill pass unanimously showed how many people agreed that no parent should be shamed, questioned or forced to dump their milk just to get through security.

It is a real win for mothers and a step toward making more supportive for every family.

11/28/2025

Love this. 🤱🤱🏻🤱🏽🤱🏿

In 2008, Katie Hinde stood in a California primate lab staring at hundreds of milk samples. Male babies got richer milk. Females got more volume. Science had missed half the conversation.
She was a postdoctoral researcher at the California National Primate Research Center, analyzing milk from rhesus macaque mothers. For months, she'd been measuring fat content, protein levels, mineral concentrations. The data showed something she hadn't expected: monkey mothers were producing completely different milk depending on whether they'd given birth to sons or daughters.
Sons received milk with higher concentrations of fat and protein—more energy per ounce. Daughters received more milk overall, with higher calcium levels. The biological recipe wasn't universal. It was customized.
Hinde ran the numbers again. The pattern held across dozens of mother-infant pairs. This wasn't random variation. This was systematic.
She thought about what she'd been taught in graduate school. Milk was nutrition. Calories, proteins, fats. A delivery system for energy. But if milk was just fuel, why would it differ based on the baby's s*x? Why would mothers unconsciously adjust the formula?
The answer shifted everything: milk wasn't passive. It was a message.
Hinde had arrived at this question through an unusual path. She'd earned her bachelor's degree in anthropology from the University of Washington, then completed her PhD at UCLA in 2008. While most lactation research focused on dairy cattle or developing infant formulas, Hinde wanted to understand what milk actually did in primate mothers and babies.
At UC Davis, she had access to the largest primate research center in the United States. She could collect milk samples at different stages of lactation, track infant development, measure maternal characteristics. She could ask questions that had never been systematically studied.
Like: why do young mothers produce milk with more stress hormones?
Hinde discovered that first-time monkey mothers produced milk with fewer calories but higher concentrations of cortisol than experienced mothers. Babies who consumed this high-cortisol milk grew faster but were more nervous and less confident. The milk wasn't just feeding the baby's body—it was programming the baby's temperament.
Or: how does milk respond when babies get sick?
Working with researchers who studied infant illness, Hinde found that when babies developed infections, their mothers' milk changed within hours. The white blood cell count in the milk increased dramatically—from around 2,000 cells per milliliter to over 5,000 during acute illness. Macrophage counts quadrupled. The levels returned to normal once the baby recovered.
The mechanism was remarkable: when a baby nurses, small amounts of the baby's saliva travel back through the ni**le into the mother's breast tissue. That saliva contains information about the baby's immune status. If the baby is fighting an infection, the mother's body detects the antigens and begins producing specific antibodies, which then flow back to the baby through the milk.
It was a dialogue. The baby's body communicated its needs. The mother's body responded.
Hinde started documenting everything. She collected milk from over 250 rhesus macaque mothers across more than 700 sampling events. She measured cortisol, adiponectin, epidermal growth factor, transforming growth factors. She tracked which babies gained weight faster, which were more exploratory, which were more cautious.
She realized she was mapping a language that had been invisible.
In 2011, Hinde joined Harvard as an assistant professor. She began writing about her findings, but she also noticed something troubling: almost nobody was studying human breast milk with the same rigor applied to other biological systems. When she searched publication databases, she found twice as many studies on erectile dysfunction as on breast milk composition.
The world's first food—the substance that had nourished every human who ever lived—was scientifically neglected.
She started a blog: "Mammals Suck...Milk!" The title was deliberately provocative. Within a year, it had over a million views. Parents, clinicians, researchers started asking questions. What bioactive compounds are in human milk? How does milk from mothers of premature babies differ from milk produced for full-term infants? Can we use this knowledge to improve formulas or help babies in NICUs?
Hinde's research expanded. She studied how milk changes across the day (fat concentration peaks mid-morning). She investigated how foremilk differs from hindmilk (babies with bigger appetites who nurse longer get higher-fat milk at the end of feeding). She examined how maternal characteristics—age, parity, health status, social rank—shaped milk composition.
In 2013, she created March Mammal Madness, a science outreach event that became an annual tradition in hundreds of classrooms. In 2014, she co-authored "Building Babies." In 2016, she received the Ehrlich-Koldovsky Early Career Award from the International Society for Research in Human Milk and Lactation for making outstanding contributions to the field.
By 2017, when she delivered her TED talk, she could articulate what she'd discovered across a decade of research: breast milk is food, medicine, and signal. It builds the baby's body and fuels the baby's behavior. It carries bacteria that colonize the infant gut, hormones that influence metabolism, oligosaccharides that feed beneficial microbes, immune factors that protect against pathogens.
More than 200 varieties of oligosaccharides alone. The baby can't even digest them—they exist to nourish the right community of gut bacteria, preventing harmful pathogens from establishing.
The composition is as unique as a fingerprint. No two mothers produce identical milk. No two babies receive identical nutrition.
In 2020, Hinde appeared in the Netflix docuseries "Babies," explaining her findings to a mass audience. She'd moved to Arizona State University, where she now directs the Comparative Lactation Lab. Her research continues to reveal new dimensions of how milk shapes infant outcomes from the first hours of life through childhood.
She works on precision medicine applications—using knowledge of milk bioactives to help the most fragile infants in neonatal intensive care units. She consults on formula development, helping companies create products that better replicate the functional properties of human milk for mothers who face obstacles to breastfeeding.
The implications extend beyond individual families. Understanding milk informs public health policy, workplace lactation support, clinical recommendations. It reveals how maternal characteristics, environmental conditions, and infant needs interact in real time through a biological messaging system that's been evolving for 200 million years—longer than dinosaurs.
Katie Hinde didn't just study milk. She revealed that the most ancient form of nourishment was also the most sophisticated. What science had treated as simple nutrition was actually a dynamic, responsive communication between two bodies—a conversation that shapes human development one feeding at a time.

10/24/2025

Breastfeeding has long been linked to a reduced risk of breast cancer, but how it has this effect isn’t entirely clear. Now, scientists have found that women who have breastfed have more specialised immune cells in their breasts, which may keep malignant ones in check.

Previous research suggests that the risk of breast cancer – the second most common form of cancer in the world – is reduced by 4.3 per cent for every one year of breastfeeding, with the protective effects perhaps particularly benefitting older mothers.

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2500663-breastfeeding-causes-a-surge-in-immune-cells-that-could-prevent-cancer/

Image: Svetlana Repnitskaya/Getty Images

09/29/2025

researchers have discovered something incredible about breastmilk, it actually changes depending on whether you have a son or a daughter.

your body doesn’t just make milk, it makes a custom recipe, guided by your baby’s own signals before birth.

for boys…
richer in fat and protein for higher energy
sometimes more calcium for faster growth

for girls…
often made in greater volume, so there’s more of it
may also have more calcium for strong bones and earlier development

and it’s not just humans, the same has been seen in monkeys, cows, and other mammals.

your milk isn’t just food. it’s alive, intelligent, and uniquely designed for the baby in your arms ! !

did you have boys or girls? 💙🩷

what did you notice in your feeding journeys?

09/25/2025

Why I still breastfeed my toddler and I’m not sorry.

People love to whisper. They love to judge. They love to ask with that condescending tone, “You’re STILL breastfeeding?”

Yes. I am.

Because breastfeeding didn’t suddenly expire the day my child turned one.
Because it’s more than nutrition 🥗 it’s comfort,
connection,
security.

Because it calms her tears, eases her fears, and reminds her she’s safe in my arms.

And no, I don’t need your approval to continue doing what’s best for my child.

I’m not “creating bad habits.”
I’m not “spoiling.”
I’m not “holding her back.”

I’m raising a human being who knows love so deeply that she’ll carry that security with her for life.

So to anyone who feels the need to roll their eyes,
to shame,
to sneer,
or to comment
here’s my answer:

✨ My baby. My b***s. My choice. ✨

And I won’t ever apologize for it.

08/31/2025

Baby’s digestive system lays dormant in utero and they don’t p**p. Meconium is that thick, tarry first p**p that builds in the gut and colostrum is a high protein milk that acts as a laxative to p**p this out after birth. When babies are born they p**p a lot, even over night. The digestive system is waking up and maturing. The contents of colostrum and transitional milk aid in this process. Transitional milk includes high levels of fat, lactose, and water-soluble vitamins and is different in nutrient composition than mature milk. It contains more calories than colostrum. Around 2 weeks your milk transitions to mature milk, which has a higher water content than transitional milk, grange the steady increase in the volume of your milk. As your body and baby adjusts to this change, your baby will eventually stop p**ping overnight: usually around 6-8 weeks. Some will still p**p overnight for longer than that (some times months) and that is also normal! Our digestive system wants to rest at night. Even as adults we typically don’t p**p overnight. Your body is very smart. It makes a higher water content, higher volume milk first thing in the morning to help baby have their first p**p of the day since their system has rested over night. It’s like their morning coffee. In the evening, your milk volume drops and increases in fat to help baby sleep and digest for growth and NOT to p**p. Diaper companies are aware of this change, hence the 12 hour leak protection diapers. Your milk and your baby are going through many changes. Many babies will start grunting more in the early hours of the morning as this change takes place. Increasing tummy time during the day and right before bed can help as can time and development. Trust your body. Trust your baby.

**p **ps