The Evolve Lactation Podcast

Thank you for reading Evolve Lactation with Christine Staricka IBCLC. This post is public so feel free to share it. Happy IBCLC Appreciation Day! In celebration, I have a really special episode of the podcast for you. I am so excited to share with you my conversation with my dear friend and fellow IBCLC, Adrienne Guirguis. I cannot begin to count up how much I have learned from Adrienne over the y...

If my sisters have struggled with milk production, will I have a problem? Join me in the Lactation Consultant's Inbox as I discuss a question about the link between milk production and genetics. We'll talk about why getting advice from a trusted, professional source is crucial because family and friends might unknowingly share misinformation. It's important to work with a professional to assess pe...

Why hire a lactation consultant if you can just look up breastfeeding information online? Join me in the Lactation Consultant's Inbox as I discuss why people still need lactation consultants despite the abundance of information on the internet. We'll talk about the ways people access information and how they have changed significantly with the internet, compared to the early 2000s when they relied...

Evolve Lactation with Christine Staricka IBCLC is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. As healthcare workers, we should not be creating drama in the first days of breastfeeding. When you’re a parent in the throes of learning to breastfeed your new baby, it’s normal to have questions, doubts, concerns, and anxieties....

I wrote a book about early lactation care, but not everyone is going to like it.  Many health care providers are going to have a hard time with this approach, even though it’s entirely evidence-based.  Join me on this episode of the Evolve Lactation Podcast where I read a chapter from my new book, Evolving the Modern Breastfeeding Experience: Holistic Lactation Care in the First 100 Hours.  The bo...

Thank you for reading Evolve Lactation with Christine Staricka IBCLC. This post is public so feel free to share it. Hold on to your hats - this is a long, amazing, wide-ranging conversation! I’ve been following the blooming IBCLC career of Nicole Longmire (@MotheringNurtured on IG) for several years now on social media. Last week I reached out to her to praise her for a post she made that really r...

My day-to-day work revolves around supporting the current and the aspiring lactation care provider with the resources they need to continue learning, to practice evidence-informed lactation care, and to treat people with kindness and compassion in their contacts with them for the purposes of lactation support. I am immersed in the world of lactation care and the universe of lactation supporters ev...

In this talk, I discuss the challenges of talking about formula as a lactation care provider and provides ideas to stay inspired and ready to discuss formula with clients. I share my own experiences with infant feeding so that you know my context and emphasize the importance of understanding where clients are coming from when discussing formula. I also provide guidance on how to approach conversat...

Thank you for reading Evolve Lactation with Christine Staricka IBCLC. This post is public so feel free to share it. Why am I so serious about my work? How can we emphasize the importance of uncomplicating breastfeeding for individuals and on a population level? In this new episode of the Evolve Lactation Podcast, I’ll discuss the need for over-education and continuous learning in the field of lact...

In this episode I discuss my holistic approach to building resilience in your lactation career, why it's important, and how Evolve Lactation can help. We review 5 strategies for thriving in your lactation career: - prioritizing your own physical and emotional health - writing and re-assessing your practice philosophy - uncovering your own biases - being intentional in choosing your continuing educ...

Welcome to my IBCLC© Day 2023 Series! Each day I’ll share with you one piece of insight about our work. (If you’re too excited and you just want to read them all now, go here and download the whole list ) Let me know in the comments if you agree, disagree, never thought about it this way, or whatever you’re feeling! 1. Even when you are an IBCLC, you won't know the answer to every question your cl...

When we think about supporting exclusive breastfeeding in healthy term babies, we start from the default that exclusive breastfeeding works , that most people make all the milk that they need, that there are a set of practices that we do to make sure that happens, and there are the outcomes we look for to make sure that everything's going well. We observe and pay attention to ensure that, and we s...

If you are getting into the field of lactation care, you need to be ready for the trickery. Be prepared. The marketing deception, the lies, the outright bribery - it’s all coming at you. They’re just waiting to capture your attention and divert you from the science. Marketing works; that’s why companies spend money on it. It works on everyone. Works on me, that’s for sure. It’s why I drink a certa...

Something is missing in modern parenthood. Parents find a lot of messaging in their lives but not a lot of actual information about how to implement things. Social media is an easy structure on which to place blame, but truly all media holds some responsibility. Cherry-picked research articles framed in ways to grab attention, advertising space offered to anyone who can pay, mis- and dis-informati...

The proliferation of tools and devices designed to be used during lactation has occurred without an accompanying body of research to support it. Parents are receiving hundreds to thousands of marketing messages for these products during pregnancy and lactation, a time when they are especially vulnerable to being influenced about making buying decisions that they are told can impact their ability t...

It was with our second cohort of teaching future lactation educators that my colleague and I realized that some of our students needed more than just knowledge and information. They were in tears as they absorbed the information about how human lactation works and best practices. Some were angry, too, that they were given bad information when they were trying to breastfeed. They followed us into t...

There isn’t anything you can say about breastfeeding in our culture that won’t be met with vitriol and accusations. It can be true, it can be your personal experience, it can be the literal results of a well-done scientific study that was not funded by industry or anyone with a financial or reputational stake in the outcome. If you say “breastfeeding,” it will be met with polite argument at best,...

I finally figured it out. Over the past five years, I’ve been creating so many presentations and tracking so many ideas. I want to make these presentations accessible to more people, and I also want to keep creating new ways to share what I know and what I have learned. Learning from podcasts - from just listening to experts talk through things - has become such a huge part of my life, and I feel...

I attended an in-person conference and came away with some big realizations about the state of our work and advocacy. There have been some big shifts in this field which have led us to a place where new parents are becoming more likely to be encouraged to feed human milk than they are to breastfeed, regardless of what their own plans are and outside of the realm of informed decision-making. There...

Just a taste of the wisdom Amy Porterfield, online course creation and marketing expert, shared with me in our conversation recently:   “I can promise you that you are really good in one specific area, if not more, in your industry. There's more money to be made - and a bigger impact you can make - when you figure out your thing, what it is that you are really good at in your area of expertise.”  ...

On this episode of The Lactation Training Lab Podcast, my friend and colleague Fiona Lang-Sharpe turns the tables to interview me on my own podast. Together we break down the 3 elements of a great lactation consult. You'll get to know us both a little better as you listen in on our conversation!  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus...

Join me for a conversation with Irish IBCLC and antenatal educator Niamh Cassidy of MyBabyBeginnings . We're discussing mother support groups, building counseling skills, vicarious trauma as it relates to lactation work, and so much more. With a background in social work from her pre-lactation days, Niamh brings a sense of order to what lactation counseling requires and a gentle but firm rreminder...

Insights into how we approach products marketed to assist in lactation and breastfeeding, ethics of discussing products, and a framework for helping parents make decisions about lactation products. Parents are being targeted with marketing of products  purported to assist with or support breastfeeding and  human milk feeding ​ There is a growing need for lactation care providers  to consider  ethi...

If you work with or care for mothers and parents and their newborns, you need to hear this! It is far too easy to sabotage breastfeeding right from the start, and in this episode we cover 5 major ways it happens every single day.  From the words we use to the instructions and advice we give, everything that happens in and around the First 100 Hours of a baby's life impacts breastfeeding. We've got...

During Breast Cancer Awareness Month, let's look into what we know about how breastfeeding reduces the risk of breast cancer and what we can do to amplify this message. For this episode, I used the research articles listed here at this link: https://bit.ly/3oBTsuD This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ibclcinca.substac...