Showing posts with label Breastfeeding Judgement. Show all posts

Friday, February 14, 2014

Exciting Offers For Our Moms through friends at Koala Kin

Exciting Offers For Our Moms!

We moms work so hard… We consistently put our needs last, and we do it with love, gratitude and a little bit of humor. Knowing that we are all in this together is what keeps us going, knowing that our sacrifice will give our babies the best, makes us fierce and powerful beyond belief.

We, here at KoalaKin, want to be able to give you something that will hopefully make your lives a bit easier. That’s why we are happy to have partnered with some amazing companies, and are able to offer you their products and services at a discount. Take a peek below at these amazing offers!

A Mother’s Boutique

A Mother’s Boutique offers everything a new mother or mother to be needs – from maternity clothing to breastfeeding gear, nursing bras, breast pumps and slings.

When owner Judy Masucci was a new mother, she had a difficult time finding quality nursing clothing and products that would enable her to be successful at breastfeeding. She realized this “unmet need” was also something many other mothers also experienced. Coming from a business background, Judy decided she could use her corporate skills to develop a solution for this need. She realized that she would be able to meet her personal goals of spending more time with her son, while achieving professional goals of helping other new mothers succeed with breastfeeding. This led her to start up A Mother’s Boutique.

PROMO: Judy is offering our awesome mamas a 10% discount off all orders. Just use the promo code KOALAKIN. The code expires 12/31/14.

http://www.mothersboutique.com

HadleyStilwell

The HadleyStilwell clothing line was inspired by the challenge of having to look pulled-together and professional at work with little sleep and possibly no shower (!), yet also needing to quickly and discreetly pump in public places. It’s a daunting situation for new mothers, and breastfeeding is often the first thing to go.

HadleyStilwell makes it easy for busy breastfeeding mothers to get dressed in two seconds flat with coordinating designs that help you feel beautiful when breastfeeding or pumping. But it’s much larger than the clothes: Aside from no skin exposure, quick access to breasts, and wrinkle-free durable fabric, it’s about a mother’s overall wellbeing. Feeling good about breastfeeding will spill over into all aspects of your life. And that is my vision for breastfeeding mothers…

PROMO: It’s our pleasure to offer a 15% discount through the end of May on the Fleece Lounging and Co-Sleeping Top to keep you warm this winter and in perpetuity. And…it’s the perfect layer under your KoalaKin! Code: GOMOM

http://hadleystilwell.com/sleepwear/fleece-lounging-and-co-sleeping-top.html

Snugabell Mom & Baby Gear

Snugabell designs and manufactures breastfeeding and pumping products. Our mission is to support moms’ decision to breastfeed through education, community and beauty. All of our products are designed for mamas who are not willing to forgo fashion for function, so they feel beautiful regardless of the last time they changed out of their PJs or had a shower! This may sound trivial in the wake of introducing a brand new person to this world, however our customers tell us that our products help them retain a little bit of “self” amongst all the baby-centric happenings of new parenthood. Snugabell works hard to enhance the breastfeeding relationship between a mother and her babe and we hope that our products continue to help thousands more dyads succeed in reaching their personal breastfeeding goals.

AMAZON PROMO: 20% off PumpEase - Ends: Feb 25 – 11:59pm

Code: KOALAKIN

Please ensure the listing says “Sold By Snugabell Mom & Baby Gear and Fulfilled by Amazon” or the promo code won’t work!

Undercover Mama

Undercover Mama is mom invented, mom owned and mom operated. They are passionate about breastfeeding and strive to provide mothers with an affordable alternative to an expensive nursing wardrobe. The Undercover Mama clips to any nursing bra and allows for you to keep your tummy and back covered while still giving full access for nursing. With Undercover Mama you can make any shirt a nursing shirt.

PROMO: Valid for 20% Off - Expires 2/25/2014

Code: MamaKin20

Plus free shipping on two shirts or more!

www.undercovermama.com

MamaPear Designs

Lara Audelo is a breastfeeding mother, educator, supporter of all moms, and has a passionate activist side that is drawn to many causes. Her most important cause is helping women make informed choices and supporting them in their mothering journeys. She is the owner of MamaPear Designs and the author of The Virtual Breastfeeding Culture, which was published in 2013.

PROMO: Lara is offering all our mamas 20% off her book “The Virtual Breastfeeding Culture: Seeking Mother-to-Mother Support in the Digital Age”, featuring raw, honest and uplifting stories, tips and resources for all breastfeeding moms. Code: KK20OFF

http://virtualbreastfeedingculture.com

MilkMakers

Emily Kane is the founder of Milkmakers. She created Milkmakers cookies because she needed them.

Emily went back to work after here first daughter was born and found herself in a new situation — trying to manage work life, home life, and fitting in the time to pump during an already busy day. Her milk supply started to go down and she worried that she wouldn’t be able to provide enough milk for her baby.

When a lactation consultant first told her about lactation cookies, it seemed too good to be true: She could eat delicious cookies AND increase her milk supply? To her surprise, she saw an immediate boost in her milk production.

Lactation cookies can help promote an abundant supply of breast milk. The result: a well-fed baby and a happy family.

PROMO: Emily is so excited to offer 10% off all their products with the code: KOALAKIN. (Limit one order per customer. Offer valid through December 31st, 2014)

http://www.milkmakers.com

The Naked Nursing Tank

The Naked Nursing Tank is 100% Canadian made. Owned and operated by 2 Guelph, Ontario Moms, it was invented with the intention to support breastfeeding moms, making it that much more comfortable to nurse their babies ANYWHERE! The Naked Tank is an award-winning product with international recognition for “The most UNIVERSAL Nursing Tank on the market!” Worn underneath your regular wardrobe, The Naked Nursing Tank is a midsection cover-up for breastfeeding women, that allows women the option to wear their most supportive bra of choice. The Naked Tank transforms your entire wardrobe into nursing wear making it a unique and affordable option for every mom! Going from size XS to 5X -we got all shapes and sizes covered!

PROMO: Purchase yours now with coupon code KOALAFREESHIP and receive Free shipping on ALL orders!

www.thenakedtank.com

Booginhead

In 2005, working mother Sari Davidson created the very first SippiGrip in San Ramon, California. Davidson became frustrated when her 1 year old son, Jake, would throw his sippy cup to the floor from his highchair, stroller, and car seat. Davidson was constantly picking up the cups that were either getting dirty or lost. Necessity really was the mother of invention; hence, the SippiGrip was born!

BooginHead is a term Davidson’s family used when one of their kids would do something they knew they shouldn’t, did it anyways, and you couldn’t help but laugh – they were being such a BooginHead! Davidson and BooginHead are committed to bringing products to on-the-go parents to help solve the BooginHead moments in life and make your life easier!

PROMO: Currently, Booginhead is offering 20% off their Pink Polka Dot and Asher Argyle PaciGrips

http://booginhead.com/products/paci-grip

Monday, June 24, 2013

Keep breastfeeding, it is tough sometimes - but so valuable!

Here is an important scientific article from the Science Daily.com taken from Brown University research, on the value of keeping up with breastfeeding even when things get tough!

I do want to put in a support line here for - any breastfeeding is better than none at all.

Even if you cannot produce enough, and need to supplement (use Organic!) every drop helps your baby develop!

We are here to support you! Let us know how we can!

Thank you,

Anne

Bella Materna

MRI study: Breastfeeding boosts babies' brain growth

MRI images, taken while children were asleep, showed that infants who were exclusively breastfed for at least three months had enhanced development in key parts of the brain compared to children who were fed formula or a combination of formula and breastmilk. Images show development of myelization by age, left to right. (Credit: Baby Imaging Lab/Brown University)

June 6, 2013 — A study using brain images from "quiet" MRI machines adds to the growing body of evidence that breastfeeding improves brain development in infants. Breastfeeding alone produced better brain development than a combination of breastfeeding and formula, which produced better development than formula alone.

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A new study by researchers from Brown University finds more evidence that breastfeeding is good for babies' brains.

The study made use of specialized, baby-friendly magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to look at the brain growth in a sample of children under the age of 4. The research found that by age 2, babies who had been breastfed exclusively for at least three months had enhanced development in key parts of the brain compared to children who were fed formula exclusively or who were fed a combination of formula and breastmilk. The extra growth was most pronounced in parts of the brain associated with language, emotional function, and cognition, the research showed.

This isn't the first study to suggest that breastfeeding aids babies' brain development. Behavioral studies have previously associated breastfeeding with better cognitive outcomes in older adolescents and adults. But this is the first imaging study that looked for differences associated with breastfeeding in the brains of very young and healthy children, said Sean Deoni, assistant professor of engineering at Brown and the study's lead author.

"We wanted to see how early these changes in brain development actually occur," Deoni said. "We show that they're there almost right off the bat."

The findings are in press in the journal NeuroImage and available now online.

Deoni leads Brown's Advanced Baby Imaging Lab. He and his colleagues use quiet MRI machines that image babies' brains as they sleep. The MRI technique Deoni has developed looks at the microstructure of the brain's white matter, the tissue that contains long nerve fibers and helps different parts of the brain communicate with each other. Specifically, the technique looks for amounts of myelin, the fatty material that insulates nerve fibers and speeds electrical signals as they zip around the brain.

Deoni and his team looked at 133 babies ranging in ages from 10 months to four years. All of the babies had normal gestation times, and all came from families with similar socioeconomic statuses. The researchers split the babies into three groups: those whose mothers reported they exclusively breastfed for at least three months, those fed a combination of breastmilk and formula, and those fed formula alone. The researchers compared the older kids to the younger kids to establish growth trajectories in white matter for each group.

The study showed that the exclusively breastfed group had the fastest growth in myelinated white matter of the three groups, with the increase in white matter volume becoming substantial by age 2. The group fed both breastmilk and formula had more growth than the exclusively formula-fed group, but less than the breastmilk-only group.

"We're finding the difference [in white matter growth] is on the order of 20 to 30 percent, comparing the breastfed and the non-breastfed kids," said Deoni. "I think it's astounding that you could have that much difference so early."

Deoni and his team then backed up their imaging data with a set of basic cognitive tests on the older children. Those tests found increased language performance, visual reception, and motor control performance in the breastfed group.

The study also looked at the effects of the duration of breastfeeding. The researchers compared babies who were breastfed for more than a year with those breastfed less than a year, and found significantly enhanced brain growth in the babies who were breastfed longer -- especially in areas of the brain dealing with motor function.

Deoni says the findings add to a substantial body of research that finds positive associations between breastfeeding and children's brain health.

"I think I would argue that combined with all the other evidence, it seems like breastfeeding is absolutely beneficial," he said.

Other authors on the study were Douglas Dean, Irene Piryatinsky, Jonathan O'Muircheartaigh, Lindsay Walker, Nicole Waskiewicz, Katie Lehman, Michelle Han and Holly Dirks, who all work with Deoni in the Baby Imaging Lab. The work was funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided byBrown University.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

Sean C.L. Deoni, Douglas C. Dean, Irene Piryatinksy, Jonathan O'Muircheartaigh, Nicole Waskiewicz, Katie Lehman, Michelle Han, Holly Dirks. Breastfeeding and early white matter development: A cross-sectional study. NeuroImage, 2013; DOI:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.05.090

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Breastfeeding vs Erectile Dysfunction!

This informative article highlights some steps forward for mothers! I recommend reading the whole article.

Breastfeeding dysfunction vs Erectile dysfunction! (both health issues). This comparison is actually causing the change we moms need for healthcare (ie Viagra is covered but Lactation Consulting was/is not!)

Ask your OB your healthcare provider, does s/he offer Lactation consulting as part of her services or at least refer? Demanding this can be your early steps in parenting (as my doula/coach reminded me)!

On a sensitive note: we are here to support each other- if you are struggling - reach out! Breastfeeding is awesome but not always easy, we try our best, these health care changes can offer more support.

Also - if you try your best and your baby needs more-- in my personal opinion supplement with formula! THAT is what is is FOR to supplement as necessary! You are still giving your baby breast milk (of course - you need good nursing bras for that....wahlah Bella Materna...)

-Anne

Here is a link to the article - I also pasted it below.

http://healthland.time.com/2013/01/02/is-the-medical-community-failing-breastfeeding-moms/

Breast-Feeding

Is the Medical Community Failing Breastfeeding Moms?

By Lisa Selin DavisJan. 02, 201333 Comments

The doctor blamed it on the baby. “She’s not absorbing your milk,” he told Colleen Kelly, in the days after he daughter was born, as the baby lost too much weight and cried constantly. Lactation consultants said, “She’s not latching properly.”

Kelly drove through rural Maine for hours to attend breast-feeding support groups and La Leche League meetings, yet the baby went from eight to six pounds and was diagnosed as “failure to thrive.” The baby’s kidneys were x-rayed and blood taken, but doctors found nothing wrong.

Not once in her travels did someone suggest that perhaps the problem was Kelly herself, rather than her baby or her ability to latch on. She told doctors that her mother hadn’t been able to produce enough breast milk—could that be happening to her?

No, they said. That was an old wives’ tale. But they never even looked at her breasts.

“It was clear that none of the doctors or nurses knew enough about breast-feeding to figure out what was happening,” Kelly says.

That’s because lactation is probably the only bodily function for which modern medicine has almost no training, protocol or knowledge. When women have trouble breast-feeding, they’re either prodded to try harder by well-meaning lactation consultants or told to give up by doctors. They’re almost never told, “Perhaps there’s an underlying medical problem—let’s do some tests.”

(MORE: Breast-Milk Donors Come to the Rescue of a New Mom with Breast Cancer)

When women have trouble breast-feeding, they are often confronted with two divergent directives: well-meaning lactation consultants urge them to try harder, while some doctors might advise them to simply give up and go the bottle-and-formula route. “We just give women a pat on the head and tell them their kids will be fine,” if they don’t breastfeed, says Dr. Alison Stuebe, an OB who treats breast-feeding problems in North Carolina. “Can you imagine if we did that to men with erectile dysfunction?”

ED, she points out, is within the purview of many doctors’ services, and insurance will cover Viagra, but lactation dysfunction? It doesn’t even exist as a diagnosis, no accompanying health insurance code for which doctors can bill. Within the database of federally funded medical research, there are 70 studies on erectile dysfunction; there are 10 on lactation failure.

No one argues that breast is best, but the truth is that breast-feeding is very difficult for many women, and for some, medical problems make it almost impossible without intervention. With the recent bans on giveaways of formula samples in some hospitals, it’s all the more important that the medical community have the tools and knowledge to help mothers breastfeed—or to figure out why they can’t. Until doctors and nurses are properly trained to help, women like Kelly will experience all of the pressure to breastfeed, with none of the support to figure out how.

(MORE: 20 Ways To Make Breast-Feeding Easier)

What do doctors learn about breast-feeding in medical school? “We learned that it’s what’s best for baby,” said my own pediatrician. “But that’s it.” They’re introduced to evidence that prolonged breast-feeding reduces the possibilities of obesity, SIDS and allergies, but the science of it, what’s happening at the anatomical level? Not so much.

“It’s an hour, or a half a day, and [students] don’t remember anything,” says Dr. Todd Wolynn, a Pittsburgh pediatrician and executive director of the Breastfeeding Center of Pittsburgh. There were years, he says, when there was literally nothing said about breast-feeding at all.

Why so little heed? “When most of the people who are currently leaders were in training, breast-feeding was really uncommon,” says Stuebe. Many teaching in medical schools today were raised in the better-living-though-chemistry age, when infant formula was thought to trump the attributes of breast milk. (Formula was certainly an improvement over the non-pasteurized cow’s milk that killed many infants at the turn of the 20^th century, when breast-feeding was not in vogue). “It’s generational for doctors to think it would be necessary to know anything about breast-feeding.”

It didn’t help that formula companies famously sidled up to doctors and nurses and insinuated themselves into hospital protocol; there’s a reason that, until the bans enacted in the last few weeks in some cities, new moms left the hospital with so much Similac swag.

In addition, doctors practicing today don’t know where to place breast-feeding problems—breasts are attached to the women, so shouldn’t they be the province of OBs, say pediatricians. And OBs note that breast-feeding is for infants; shouldn’t the baby’s doctor handle it?

This leaves breast-feeding problems either to the rare family physicians, or more commonly to lactation consultants who can assist with technical issues—improving the baby’s latch and such—but can’t write prescriptions, check hormone levels or offer a diagnosis.

(MORE: Bloomberg’s Breast-Feeding Plan: Will Locking Up Formula Help New Moms?)

That’s what a breast-feeding doctor—an OB, pediatrician or family physician with a subspecialty in breast-feeding medicine—would have done in Kelly’s case: a complete physical and medical history (yes, in fact, it is relevant if your mother couldn’t make milk) on mom and baby to see if any physical or anatomical factors were affecting supply. In the mother, they might check the shape of her breasts, to see if they were hypoplastic—a tubular shape that can indicate underdevelopment of the glandular tissue needed to make breast milk—or evaluate her hormone levels, ask if her breast size had increased during pregnancy. Perhaps they’d prescribe a galactogogue, a drug that promotes lactation. Today there are 88 physicians in the entire world who are fellows of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine, and have “demonstrated evidence of advanced knowledge and skills in the fields of breast-feeding and human lactation.”

But Kelly’s doctors weren’t trained in human lactation, and they told her what many women with lactation failure have been told before: “We’ve never seen this before. You’re the only one.”

Yet Kelly is clearly not alone. Dr. Amy Evans, a pediatrician and medical director of the Center for Breastfeeding Medicine in Fresno, CA, says that as many as five percent of all women have underlying medical conditions that prevent or seriously hinder lactation: hypoplasia, thyroid problems, hormonal imbalances, insufficient glandular tissue, among others. But even Dr. Wolynn, who is also a certified lactation consultant, seemed skeptical when I related Kelly’s tale—usually women struggle because they haven’t had enough support in the first few days after giving birth, in his experience. “Very few women really can’t breastfeed,” he said. “That’s very, very, uncommon.”

It’s a “normal mammalian function,” he said. Almost everyone can do it.

(MORE: Q&A With Breast-Feeding Mom Jamie Lynne Grumet)

Because the complexities of lactation failure are so little studied and so often misunderstood, women can often feel that they are at fault, rather feeling like they are suffering from a medical issue for which they need and deserve professional help. Dr. Marianne Neifert writes in her article, Prevention of Breastfeeding Tragedies, “The bold claims made about the infallibility of lactation are not cited about any other physiologic processes. A health care professional would never tell a diabetic woman that ‘every pancreas can make insulin’ or insist to a devastated infertility patient that ‘every woman can get pregnant.’”

Luckily, doctors are beginning to take breast-feeding on. Wolynn, Evans and Stuebe are all fellows of the physicians’ organization Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine (ABM). At Wolynn’s practice, all six of the pediatricians on staff are also certified lactation consultants.

ABM has developed 25 protocols to guide physicians in treating breast-feeding problems. They’ve successfully lobbied to include breast-feeding issues on the exams for the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the American Academy of Pediatrics. And the Affordable Health Care Act advises that, as of August 1, health insurance companies should provide “comprehensive lactation support and counseling, by a trained provider during pregnancy and/or in the postpartum period, and costs for renting breast-feeding equipment.”

Of course, we’re low on those trained providers, but there are more every day, as medical schools begin to adopt breast-feeding curricula. “It’s probably the most promising times we’ve seen,” says Wolynn.

“We’re in the early phases of what I’m hoping in the next five to 10 years will be more appreciated and more considered a real subspecialty,” says Evans. “It’s a whole new area of medicine.”

(MORE: Why Most Moms Don’t Reach Their Own Breast-Feeding Goals)

Still, there’s work to be done. Health insurance companies need to reimburse doctors for the time they spend attending to breast-feeding issues, to cover galactogogues, and to cover donor breast milk for women with lactation failure. And if we’re going to remove formula samples for women to promote breast-feeding, we better come up with a plan to feed the babies of that 5% of women who can’t sustain them—with 4 million births a year, that’s 200,000 moms who need extra help.

Doctors practicing today—especially those treating pregnant women and new mothers—need to know that lactation failure really does happen, and to be familiar with the potential causes of it, so that they can intervene early.

Perhaps most importantly, we need to stop demonizing mothers who can’t breastfeed, guilting them into starving their kids with insufficient milk supplies rather than supplementing with formula. Yes, breast-feeding can help prevent SIDS, obesity, childhood leukemia, asthma, and lowered IQ…but none of those matter if your baby is failing to thrive because of malnutrition.

In Kelly’s case, once the baby was admitted to the hospital, she began to use formula, fed through a syringe—she was told to avoid bottles because the baby would reject the breast. She stuck with formula, her baby gained weight, and today, “she’s happy, healthy and fine,” Kelly says. But her guilt and shame continued long after the baby recovered. It wasn’t until weeks later, in another doctor’s office, that Colleen happened upon an article that calmed her: some women, it said, can’t breastfeed, for physical reasons. If only her doctors had read that article, too.