The Breast Room

24/06/2026

Come along to celebrate our 15 year anniversary with us. Pop it in your calendar now so you don't forget 🙂
Weds 5 August, between 1030am and 1230pm at The Breast Room.
RSVP for catering numbers: [email protected]

Come along to celebrate our 15 year anniversary with us. Pop it in your calendar now so you don't forget :-)
Weds 5 August, between 1030am and 1230pm at The Breast Room.
RSVP for catering numbers: [email protected]

22/06/2026

Our baby feeding drop-in is open as usual this week. Come along for a cuppa and have your questions answered.

We are open from 1030am. Arrive anytime between 1030am and 1145am so we can see you before we close. Find us at Te Whānau Arohanui, 137 Victoria Rd, St Clair.
Your friendly faces this week are Denise, Sam and Tessah, along with a new team member, Philippa.

16/06/2026

Some of you have talked to us about bottles and teats, here’s some more info.

As a speech therapist, I started my career bottle feeding babies in the NICU. In my private practice, I’ve researched and studied bottles and their impact on infant feeding. Here’s what every new parent need to know when bottle feeding their baby:
1. Don’t fall for the marketing. There are a lot of bottles that are designed to look like a breast. They don’t work like one. You want to pick your bottle based on the shape or the ni**le. A tapered ni**le like the Pigeon, Lansinoh, Gulicola, or Evenflo Balance promote and optimal latch. Dr Brown’s narrow is decent for some, but the long ni**le can gag many babies. Evenflo Classic and Life Factory are alternatives to Dr Brown’s narrow. Straw like bottles like Como Tomo, Tommee Tippee, Avent and Boon promote a shallow, narrow latch. While some babies can function on these, they’re not optimal
2. Offer your first bottle between 3-6 weeks if you have to go back to work. Babies rely on reflexes for the first few months to practice sucking. This reflex integrates and shifts to chewing around 3-4 months. If you need to give a bottle for returning to work, offer it early and keep offering it routinely. The muscles for breast and bottle feeding are different and it can be difficult for older babies to learn the new skill. Offering too close to going back to work can be really stressful for both parents and baby
3. Offer the slowest ni**le your baby tolerates. Bottle feeding should take 15-20 minutes to take a 2-4oz bottle until baby is 4+ months. It takes 20 minutes for the stomach to tell the brain it’s full. Feeding a baby too fast increases the likelihood baby will be over fed
4. If baby is struggling to take a bottle, get help sooner rather than later

16/06/2026

Come along to celebrate our 15 year anniversary with us. Pop it in your calendar now so you don't forget :-)
Weds 5 August, between 1030am and 1230pm at The Breast Room.
RSVP for catering numbers: [email protected]

15/06/2026

Our baby feeding drop-in is open as usual this week. Come along for a cuppa and have your questions answered.

We are open from 1030am. Arrive anytime between 1030am and 1145am so we can see you before we close. Find us at Te Whānau Arohanui, 137 Victoria Rd, St Clair.
Your friendly faces this week are Denise, Sam and Angela

14/06/2026

It's National Volunteer week, so why not give a shout out to the amazing volunteers you've seen at The Breast Room. They all do such a good job and we're really lucky to have them

09/06/2026

09/06/2026

Our baby feeding drop-in is open as usual this week. Come along for a cuppa and have your questions answered.

We are open from 1030am. Arrive anytime between 1030am and 1145am so we can see you before we close. Find us at Te Whānau Arohanui, 137 Victoria Rd, St Clair.
Your friendly faces this week are Denise and Sam.

08/06/2026

Can you help a local mama who is unable to produce enough milk for her baby?

She is due in August and is looking for donors:
-no covid vax for woman
-no alcohol
-no medication

If you an help please PM the page with your name and cell phone number; we will pass this on to her midwife. Thank you

07/06/2026

In 2013, Scientists discovered that a Neanderthal's tooth shows that they stopped breastfeeding at 14 months old. Some media at the time used this to claim Neanderthals weaned at a little over a year - ignoring that this baby stopped breastfeeding suddenly. Why do babies at 14 months old suddenly stop breastfeeding? A nursing strike? Possibly. But with a Neanderthal nursling its more likely this little one was separated from Mum.

We don’t know why - but it does seem that a different lactating female didn’t step in to provide milk. I find this really interesting, because milk sharing and cross nursing does become commonplace by the time we have a written record. (Wetnurse contracts have been found across the ancient world.)

More recent analysis of teeth shows us that weaning in Neanderthals and ancient humans was probably gradual, with the individuals scientists have looked at appearing to wean completely at around 2-3yrs - so our little one from 2013 is more likely to be an outlier.

(Sources: Perkins, 2013. Limmer et al, 2024)