We asked Nurture Lactation, a local outpatient clinic based in Kansas City, what type of support they provide families both prenatally and postpartum to feed their infants.
Who we are:
We are a group of IBCLCs (International Board Certified Lactation Consultant), which is the highest lactation certification achievable worldwide. Lactation care once a family returns home from the hospital is important because it helps to set families up for success. Often, breastfeeding can seem like it is going well in the first few days post-birth only to fall apart once the family is home. Throughout the ages, generations have been around to help new moms and parents learn how to breastfeed their infants. In today’s world, often the “village” is not there, which makes private lactation care that much more important to help families navigate the often trying (and exhausting!) several first weeks after birth. Even more important, establishing a strong breastfeeding track from the beginning is crucial to a mother’s milk supply growing to an adequate amount for the infant(s).
What we do:
Though we primarily help families who are breastfeeding or pumping breastmilk, our infant feeding services go much further than that. We also offer help with bottle feeding (including bottle refusal), babies who have tongue ties or oral dysfunction, exclusive pumpers, those who are starting solids, weaning from breastfeeding or pumping and help with combo feeding (breastmilk and formula), just to name a few. One service we offer with pregnant people is prenatal education, both in the form of classes and consults. Prenatal education is incredibly important to help families learn about breastmilk feeding, including things like how the body makes milk, how much milk a baby will need and how to tell if the baby is getting enough, to name a few.
IBCLCs are credentialed to focus on the mechanics of breastfeeding as it relates to both how efficiently the baby removes milk from the breast or bottle as well as managing the lactating parent’s milk supply and helping identify any issues with breast health. This includes helping a parent to manage low milk supply, help to increase their baby’s weight gain, management of complications due to oral dysfunction and tongue ties, pain with breastfeeding or pumping, and a myriad of other feeding difficulties. While we cannot diagnose any condition, we are very knowledgeable about symptoms of many conditions such as mastitis, clogged ducts and over/under supply for parents and things like tongue ties and oral dysfunction for babies. We work with other healthcare providers (such as pediatricians, chiropractors, pediatric physical therapists, pediatric occupational therapists and dentists) to help manage and improve breastfeeding and/or bottle feeding for the dyad (parent-child pair). In short, IBCLCs are the infant feeding experts and are a crucial piece of any infant’s healthcare team.
Our services:
Consults: We offer consults prenatally and postpartum in our clinic spaces in Lee’s Summit, Liberty, and Leawood, in-home or virtually (worldwide!). During these consults, we take and review a full medical history to help us understand what might be contributing to issues with infant feeding. Our goal is to help families meet their infant feeding goals, no matter what those may be. For this reason, we prepare a care plan from each consult which helps to guide the path for improvement, no matter the issue.
Classes: We also offer classes prenatally for parents to learn more about breastfeeding, bottle feeding, pumping and how milk is made. These are offered in person or virtually.
Support Group: We offer a free support group for breastfeeding and pumping parents. Currently this is held in Lee's Summit and Liberty. You can find more details about times and days for the support groups by following our Instagram (link is below).
If you want to learn more about Sarah and her team click the link below to view her website and growing team!
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