Thrive Lactation Consultants- Josie Plant RN IBCLC

21/08/2026

"Hills I will d!e on": series.
It turns out, during my long career supporting families, I have developed some strong opinions on things.

These are the hills I will d!e on.

Today's hill: You can't trust AI generated infographics.

oh, have I seen some ridiculously incorrect information in AI generated infographics! Either the people posting them have no idea how wrong they are, or they just don't care enough to actually proofread before they post.

I've seen pictures of pump flanges on upside down, infographics suggesting massive bottle volumes and starting solids at 3 months, outdated mastitis advice, breastfeeding positioning labelled completely wrong (no, a football hold does not look like a cradle hold)......... AI is poo.

What concerns me is that people are seeing these posts and using them to guide their own decisions and practices. It's scary!
Anyone who posts health information should have a duty of care to make sure the information is correct to the best of their knowledge, and if they don't have enough knowledge, they shouldn't be posting.

Be really careful what you believe and who you follow. not everything on the internet is correct.

What awful AI infographics have you seen?

19/08/2026

"Hills I will d!e on": series.
It turns out, during my long career supporting families, I have developed some strong opinions on things.

These are the hills I will d!e on.

Today's hill: Breastfeeding responsively is the best sleep training.

Did you know that babies don't produce their own melatonin until around 12 weeks of age? Guess where they get their sleepy hormones from....you guessed it, breastmilk.

Breastfeeding on demand, responding to your baby's specific feeding needs, will give them the right hormones at the right concentration at the right time of day. Cortisol in the daytime, tryptophan (to melatonin) in the evening. That evening cluster feeding serves an important function.

Breastfeeding responsively establishes your baby's circadian rhythm- setting them up for natural sleep patterns.

It is biologically normal to breastfeed to sleep. Babies were designed to fall asleep at the breast. And while you can establish other layers of sleep associations, breastfeeding is what provides the hormonal and nutritional composition that supports sleep cycling.
Sleep is developmental. No amount of Ferber, or extinction methods, or graduated response is going to "train" your baby to sleep. If you remove the response, your baby just learns to stop asking for support, cortisol goes up at a time when levels should be low. Breastfeeding is what really trains a baby's system for sleep.

18/08/2026

"Hills I will d!e on": series.
It turns out, during my long career supporting families, I have developed some strong opinions on things.

These are the hills I will d!e on.

Today's hill: Skin to skin is vital for Caesarean birth.
Statistics tell us that you are less likely to get skin to skin contact with your baby is you have a caesarean. There are multiple reasons for this. But I would argue that skin to skin is even more important immediately after a caesarean birth.

A vaginal birth triggers oxytocin release. A scheduled caesarean birth releases no oxytocin, and a caesarean after some contractions will produce some oxytocin. Oxytocin is essential for breastfeeding/chestfeeding establishment. But, skin to skin contact produces oxytocin and repairs this process.

Caesarean birth puts unnatural stress on baby- increasing their risk of breathing problems, problems maintaining temperature and blood sugar levels etc after birth. skin to skin stabilises them.

Caesarean-birthed babies have lower levels of beta-endorphins in colostrum. This reduces their pain tolerance. skin to skin helps babies to feel less pain and physically recover from the forces of surgical birth.

Caesarean birth causes an unnatural establishment of the microbiome (in baby's gut and in birth parent breasts). skin to skin can re-balance the microbiome, supporting baby's immune system establishment and reducing risk of maternal mastitis.

Skin to skin creates new connections in the brain to support reading baby's cues, responsive parenting, attachment and bonding.

The hormones released in skin to skin can repair the sense of grief or distress in a birth that may not have gone to plan.

Caesarean is major surgery, with the risk of bleeding. Skin to skin releases hormones that reduce risk of post-partum haemorrhage, and helps muscles of the uterus to contract and recover.

Caesarean is painful....skin to skin increases pain tolerance for mum/birth parent.

Even though you are less likely to get skin to skin after caesarean, it is even more important to fight for.
Talk to your health care team about your skin to skin contact preferences in advance. In the case of a scheduled caesarean, the team should be able to plan your birth to facilitate skin to skin by providing care that reduces the risk of barriers to skin to skin.
Skin to skin is an essential care intervention that reduces the chance of you baby going to the special care nursery and supports your immediate surgical recovery.
Fight for it.

15/08/2026

"Hills I will d!e on": series.

It turns out, during my long career supporting families, I have developed some strong opinions on things.

These are the hills I will d!e on.

Today's hill: Oversupply is not an 'optimal' goal.
Stop engaging with pump and pour Tik Toks.
You don't need to see massive oversupply on your social feeds everyday.

I have talked about this before, but oversupply is not something to aspire to.

What is oversupply?
- Milk production excessive to the needs of the baby(ies).

What causes oversupply?
- overusing the breasts- (pumping culture). Pumping without need, pumping too much or too early, Haakaa/silicone milk catchers that work with suction.
- initial hormone driven supply establishment (around day 3 to 2-6 weeks post birth)
- hormone imbalance
- some medical conditions
- some medications

What's wrong with oversupply?
- increases risk of mastitis and inflammatory breast conditions
- can cause engorgement, discomfort and interrupt sleep.
- can cause issues with direct feeding- difficult latch from full breasts, overwhelming flow rates, breast refusal.
- changes the composition of breastmilk. Higher volumes are higher in water content and higher in lactose. This may result in gut discomfort for your baby, and baby not getting the balance of milk components they actually need (which would normally be driven by their direct demand).

Watching oversupply content can make you feel inadequate and cause anxiety.
Oversupply is mostly unnecessary and potentially detrimental. Please don't aspire to make masses of milk.

14/08/2026

"Hills I will d!e on": series.
It turns out, during my long career supporting families, I have developed some strong opinions on things.

These are the hills I will d!e on.

Today's hill: Health professionals with financial affiliations with bottles/formula/sleep training industry cannot be trusted to give unbiased feeding advice.

My social media algorithm shows A LOT of infant feeding, parenting, sleep, product advertising. I see a lot of the same ads that you do. I am assessed as a potential target audience customer because of the information sources I am accessing as part of my job.

One of the things I hate to see is health professionals selling out to companies that sell products and services that are known to be detrimental to biological feeding and supporting normal infant behaviour.

How can you possibly trust the advice of someone, whether they are a doctor or otherwise, if they are going to get financial kickback from the sale of or advertising of a product.

You WILL NOT get unbiased and accurate information and advice.

Selling products and services that are potentially detrimental to biologically normal infant feeding/care while providing advice on such is a CONFLICT OF INTEREST.

As a health professional in private practice, I have been targeted by companies to support their product advertisement. I REFUSE to sell out. I don't care if it's breast pumps, lactation cookies, bottles, formula brands, supplements, sleep training programs, feeding tracking apps.........anything that undermines the confidence and success of breastfeeding/chestfeeding goals.

Before you trust the information coming from a health care professional, ask yourself.......who is sponsoring them? what is influencing them? what are their motivations? can I trust this information to be non-biased and without conflict of interest? Scroll through their socials....what products are they affiliated with?

It's a minefield out there.
Don't let someone's greed (no matter their professional title) influence your journey.

What do you see on your algorithm?

14/08/2026

Do you know how to do skin to skin?

Skin to skin contact is when the front of baby and baby's skin is making significant contact with the chest skin of another person (most commonly mother/lactating parent).

Skin to skin contact requires baby to be stripped down to no clothes/naked or nappy only. The mother/lactating parent is not wearing a top or bra could cover the chest.

Skin to skin is NOT when baby has clothes on, OR when baby is near-naked but mother/lactating parent's upper body is clothed.

Not everyone knows this.
I have had colleagues say that the breastfeeding pair I'm about to go to support is having skin to skin time, only to find that they are not actually in skin to skin. Either the family has not been educated on what skin to skin means, or the health professional does not know the definition of skin to skin (concerning).

Ideally, skin to skin contact is also done with no hat/beanie on baby, no mittens and no socks. Covering skin can inhibit reflexes and intrinsic behaviours. Babies' heads have a unique smell, which helps oxytocin release in the mother/lactating parent. Covering the head inhibits this.

A light blanket can be used to cover both of you to maintain warmth, but ensure this does not hinder baby's movements if baby is actively looking to feed.

Skin to skin contact is great. It is in all of my care plans.
Let's do it the way it works best.

13/08/2026

"Hills I will d!e on": series.
It turns out, during my long career supporting families, I have developed some strong opinions on things.

These are the hills I will d!e on.

Today's hill is a pair of hills that go together: Undergraduate breastfeeding education for all health professionals is currently insufficient AND your non-IBCLC paediatrician/obstetrician is likely unable to give you good breastfeeding advice.

For my post-graduate diploma in clinical education studies, I have been scoping the research for information on undergraduate and post-graduate educational experiences of some health professional groups on breastfeeding specific education.

The papers I have read so far all conclude that breastfeeding and lactation education for health and medical professionals is insufficient. Students and new graduates report feeling a lack of confidence in managing common breastfeeding issues and relying on family and friends' personal experiences of breastfeeding to guide their knowledge. Even midwives, at the front line of breastfeeding support, report not having enough undergraduate education to help them feel confident in supporting breastfeeding challenges.

The confidence and capacity of your doctor or midwife then comes down to who has mentored them on the floor after graduation, or what education they have pursued on their own terms. And that experience can be highly variable.

People can't teach what they don't know.

I have personally witnessed too many interactions or reports of very poor/detrimental breastfeeding/lactation management advice which supports the conclusions of the literature.

It highlights two things
1. Undergraduate curriculum for health professionals needs updating to fill this educational gap.
2. until then, don't assume that your health professional understands the best way to support you..... the health professional with the most targeted and specific lactation education is an IBCLC.

13/08/2026

"Hills I will d!e on": series.
It turns out, during my long career supporting families, I have developed some strong opinions on things.

These are the hills I will d!e on.

Today's hill: 4 hourly feeds should not be a goal for newborns.

Anyone who is educated in infant feeding will tell you that the biological norm is frequent feeding.
Breastmilk digests in around 90 minutes.
Babies feed for many reasons other than nutrition and hydration.
Babies have small stomachs and can only cope with small volumes.

Trying to stretch feeds means a higher feed volume, which stretches the stomach, leading baby to want more (often more than what is reasonable for the breast to produce) which puts breastfeeding goals into crisis. Many babies will not cope with these larger volumes- causing discomfort and even vomiting. Babies will often demand feeds earlier than the 4 hour "goal", leading to strategies to delay feeds such as pacifier/dummy use (again, detrimental to breastfeeding).

I experience a moral crisis when neonatologists/paediatricians rounding the nursery 'order' 4 hourly feed schedules for babies requiring feeding plans. I don't like scheduled feeds anyway (insert another hill here), but it has never sat right with me, to overload small/premature babies with large volumes and force them to wait so long for their next contact and nurturing.

I believe 4 hourly scheduled feeding for babies is unreasonable and not supportive of their biological needs. 4 hourly is not a sign of success and progress. It was never how our babies were designed to feed.

12/08/2026

"Hills I will d!e on": series.

It turns out, during my long career supporting families, I have developed some strong opinions on things.
These are the hills I will d!e on.

Today's hill: formula industry marketing is evil

I have been going down the rabbit hole of marketing psychology and strategies used by the formula industry to shape social norms, influence decision making and sell more product. In creating an education session on the WHO Code of Marketing, I am exposing these insidious strategies so that health care professionals might understand what families are up against.
I have come to the conclusion that formula marketing is evil.

Some marketing strategies include:
* targeting health care professionals to form brand loyalty
* offering biased education sessions
* sponsoring major education seminars, like Health-ed
* partnerships with social media influencers
* ready to feed bottle volumes in excessive amounts
* using manipulative language and sweet, emotional graphics
* convincing customers they have their best interest at heart
* promoting infant-parent separations
* making convincing but untrue claims
* forming alliances with people of power- politicians and policy makers
* sponsoring and being involved in infant feeding research, which guides procedures and recommendations
* appealing to any person or movement that promotes practices that are detrimental to biological feeding (like sleep training)
* using catch-phrases like "scientifically proven"
* Targeted AI social media algorithms
* brand familiarity and cross marketing
* making up variations to meet perceived needs, offering to "fix" biologically normal behaviours
* targeting vulnerabilities and weak spots
* sponsorship of national paediatric associations
* trials and samples to get you hooked
* consumer psychology and neuromarketing
* relationships with baby clubs and products
AND so much more....

This is not supporting informed decision making. This is pure manipulation.

Formula companies invest 5-10% of annual sales into marketing, that's US $3.5 BILLION per year. That's double the annual WHO operating budget (BMJ, 2019). Breastfeeding and lactation cannot compete with that from a financial perspective.

We are all susceptible to marketing.
But now you know how they get to you, you can apply a critical thinking lens. Not everything is as it seems.

04/08/2026

I teach reflex-based attachment and I explain the reflexes used by babies when they latch on to the breast. I also explain what positions best support these natural reflexes.

When I explain this to parents, it is usually the first time they have heard this, whether they have been feeding their baby for hours, days or weeks. No one has ever explained the concept of biological nurturing.

Why is this not standard information? In my opinion, reflex-based attachment is one of the greatest strategies for breastfeeding/chestfeeding establishment and ongoing success. Every midwife should be supporting and teaching this information. Providing only information on "mother-led attachment" is a system failure. World Breastfeeding Week aims to reduce such system failures to improve breastfeeding/chestfeeding outcomes.

The reflexes used for breast-seeking include:
- stepping reflex (feet)
- crawl reflex (body)
- rooting reflex (cheeks)
- babkin reflex (hands)
- gape reflex (chin)

You can use these to help your baby latch more effectively.

Find out more about reflex-based attachment here:

Babies are born with natural feeding behaviours and reflexes that h...