11 Insightful Ways to Tell if Your Lactation Help is Helpful
The early weeks of nursing a newborn can feel overwhelming, especially when things aren't going as smoothly as you'd hoped.
If you’ve seen a lactation consultant (International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, or IBCLC) at the hospital or in your pediatrician’s office and been left feeling confused or discouraged, you’re not alone.
Most of the time, these providers only have a few minutes to spend with each patient. This can make it hard for them to fully address your concerns, or personalize their support to your unique situation.
But sometimes the limited amount of time spent with a lactation professional isn’t the real reason why the visit didn’t feel helpful.
Let’s talk about how you can evaluate whether the lactation support you’re receiving is actually helpful and effective for you.
Finding the right fit
Every lactation professional is different—after all, we’re human!
We all have different backgrounds, approaches, strengths, and communication styles. Just like other professionals you might work with when expecting a baby (like OBs and midwives, pediatricians, doulas, etc.), it’s important to remember that not every provider will be a great fit for every family.
The same is true for lactation consultants! Just because someone has the type of expertise you need, doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be compatible with you. This especially comes up in situations where families get assigned to whichever lactation provider happens to be available, rather than being able to select a provider who feels like they could be a good fit.
We’re all unique. It’s important to honor that and make sure you’re looking for someone who will feel like the right person to provide guidance during this vulnerable time.
If you’ve worked with a lactation consultant who didn’t feel like the right fit for you, it doesn’t mean that lactation support itself isn’t right for you! It just means that you need to find a lactation provider who is more comfortable for you to work with.
If one (or even several) lactation consultants didn't "solve" your breastfeeding/chestfeeding challenges, it doesn’t mean you're out of options—it might mean you haven’t found the right lactation support person for YOU yet.
Skill level varies
Lactation and infant feeding is an extremely complex field!
I would even venture to say that sometimes it’s more of an art than a science. And as with other disciplines, people can have varying skill levels.
Of course we all have different strengths, and different experience levels. We also focus on different ages/stages. Many hospital-based lactation consultants don’t really deal with nursing challenges past the first few weeks of life. But out-of-hospital providers might work with parents of babies and toddlers throughout their lactation experiences.
Besides experience, some people may also have more natural aptitude for lactation care, just like with any other profession. From the kind of detail-oriented exploration and questioning that often helps to uncover the root cause of a particular challenge, to coming up with creative ways to support parents and babies in making nursing work, to explaining the finer points of a certain nursing position, to helping families feel at ease during these sensitive conversations… there are so many components of supporting breastfeeding/chestfeeding families.
Think about the teachers and mentors you’ve had in your lifetime. For most of us, there is at least one who communicated the material beautifully, and maybe even went out of their way to make a positive impact on our lives. And many of us have also had experiences with teachers who weren’t quite able to explain things so we could understand. Maybe even some that made us feel “less than” or criticized, even if that wasn’t their intention. The same holds true for lactation professionals.
Communication style is vital
In my opinion, communication skills (including listening and teaching) are some of the most important aspects of effective lactation consulting.
Teaching
Lactation-related topics can be really hard to explain to sleep-deprived new parents in a way that is understandable and not overwhelming.
You want to make sure to find someone who is able to communicate these details to you effectively, so you can better understand the context, your options, and possible next steps.
Listening
During the course of a 3-hour lactation consult in my practice, we might speak about a wide range of topics beyond the obvious ones:
anxiety around breastfeeding/chestfeeding
doubts and insecurities about being a parent
what happened during birth
body image
mental health
relationship difficulties
With such personal topics involved, it’s so important to find a lactation professional who puts you at ease. If the person who is helping you is someone you wouldn’t feel comfortable discussing these topics with, you probably haven’t found the right person to support you yet.
Evaluating your lactation support experience
Since most people haven’t interacted with lactation professionals before having little ones, it’s hard to know what to expect. You can’t really judge the kind of care you’re receiving if you don’t have any context for it.
I want to give you some tools to help you evaluate if the lactation care you’re getting is working for you. I recommend using this checklist after each interaction with a lactation professional. Maybe that’s in the hospital after giving birth, at the hospital lactation clinic, on the phone with a hospital lactation consultant, at your pediatrician’s office, or privately in your home.
Unfortunately, it’s common for people to receive lactation support that isn’t really helpful. This is partly because of the limited time that hospital and clinic-based lactation providers only have a few minutes to see each client, but there are other reasons too (see above about aptitude and communication style, and even systemic racism).
Having some guidelines on which to evaluate your care can give you the context you need to understand why an appointment felt frustrating.
Here are 11 questions to ask yourself after a lactation consultation:
1. Was the provider kind?
Unfortunately many of our clients have had interactions with lactation consultants that could not be categorized as kind. This should be a non-negotiable. Personal style/bedside manner makes a HUGE difference in both the effectiveness of lactation support, as well as your experience receiving care that can be so intimate and vulnerable feeling.
2. Did the provider ask questions? Do you feel that they got a detailed understanding of your situation and challenges?
If the visit felt like a one-sided conversation, that’s a huge red flag. Competent lactation support interactions should always begin with questions, not advice. If you felt “talked at” during the appointment, this person is probably not a good fit for you.
3. Did you feel heard?
Did the provider really take the time to listen to you? Do you feel like they made assumptions that don’t actually apply to you or your situation? Effective lactation care MUST be customized for your unique situation, so this is an important one.
4. Did the provider seem competent?
This can be hard to judge when you’re new to receiving lactation help. But often we get a gut feeling about someone’s competence when we work with them. Trust your gut here. Did the provider seem to know what they were doing/talking about? Did you feel you could trust them?
5. Was the interaction rushed?
Did you feel like the provider was trying to get you out the door, or did they take their time with you? In my experience, it really takes 1-2 hours at minimum to get through everything during a lactation visit (most of the time). My consults are actually 2-3 hours now because I’ve found that really gives us the best chance of addressing all the facets of someone’s situation. It’s just not realistic for a visit that is 30 minutes or less (very common in hospital and clinic lactation care) to give personalized support.
6. Were you able to get your questions answered?
Good lactation care should always prioritize answering parents’ questions. After all, the lactation provider is not the person who will be feeding the baby—the parent will. So it’s vital to give parents and opportunity to get the clarification they need to feel confident moving forward.
Getting questions answered about feeding your baby can also have huge mental health benefits. Many of my clients who experience postpartum mood disorders express that having unanswered questions about a topic as important as keeping their baby well-fed was part of what caused so much stress.
7. If changes were recommended, did the provider explain the reasoning behind them?
When you know the “why,” it’s easier to feel confident and in control of any shifts you’re making. As providers help you understand, they build trust and help the process feel more like a partnership. Plus, it’s much easier to give something a chance to see if it will help when the context makes sense to you.
8. Did you participate in creating the care plan?
There are two aspects of a “family-centered care plan” that are really important here:
It’s important that a care plan for moving forward is co-created by the lactation professional and yourself, so you can make sure everything feels doable.
Beware generic instructions. Personalization is key to lactation care, because no two families/babies/challenges are exactly the same! Your plan should be customized based on your unique situation and goals so it feels right for you.
Side note: Beware of any breastfeeding/chestfeeding “methods” that claim to prevent or solve all your problems. There are serious concerns with blanket advice like that, since no one approach will be right for each family.
9. Did the care plan have timeframes attached to it?
With most breastfeeding/chestfeeding families in the newborn period, things can change quickly. It’s usually much more effective to approach the plan like “let’s try this for x days and then check back in”, rather than leaving things completely open-ended. The lactation provider should give you information about how long it would be reasonable to stick with this kind of plan.
Especially if the plan involves “triple feeding” (a common recommendation from clinic-based IBCLCs), there should be a time limit of something like 24-48 hours due to the intensity of this process.
The other aspect of this is that babies grow and change quickly in the beginning. Advice you get in the first days after birth (positioning, timing of feeds, etc.) is unlikely to be helpful past the first week or two. But often lactation professionals neglect to mention this, leaving parents feeling trapped in “rules” that don’t apply anymore.
10. If you had any health or safety concerns for yourself or your baby, were they taken seriously?
If a provider is dismissive about any health or safety concerns you express, RED FLAG. There may be times when a provider isn’t worried about something you brought up, but they should be able to explain their reasoning to you so you have more context around the issue.
11. Did you leave the appointment feeling more confident?
A lactation provider should be helping you work toward your goals. If you leave a lactation consult feeling guilty, incapable, or scared, we can’t recommend highly enough seeking out a different professional to help you.
What now?
If based on the questions above you had a positive lactation support experience, great! No need to change your plans.
If after going through that list of questions you have some doubts about the provider you saw, look for a different lactation professional to support you.
I would love to work with you! You can learn more about my lactation services here (virtual and in-person support available).
If you want some other options in the Pittsburgh area, here are a few independent lactation consultants in Pittsburgh you can reach out to:
