Making breastfeeding simpler
10 June 2015
By Geraldine Miskin
When I first set out on my journey to become a breastfeeding helper, my primary aim was to make breastfeeding simpler. I had no idea how I was going to do that but I really wanted to find answers to questions nobody seemed able to answer.
At the time (and to a large degree now), the idea that breastfeeding was a science was shunned and instead it was portrayed as a womanly art, something you could only understand and help others with, if you had done it (successfully) yourself.
Having been born into a medical family, this approach didn’t make sense to me. My father delivered babies often but was clearly never going to have one himself. He needed to know how to respond to individual cases to provide the correct support for positive outcomes.
Considering that birth is as natural and unique an experience for mums as breastfeeding, I felt that if one could apply science to the birth process to understand it and support an individual labouring mum better, the same should be done, even more so, for breastfeeding as two individuals were involved.
I found myself going against the flow, looking for answers, learning about how the scientific breastfeeding relationship between a mum and her baby differed or changed depending on their individual characteristics.
Nearly 20 years down the line from when I first became interested in helping mums and babies breastfeed, I have a clear understanding of what the key puzzle pieces are and how they fit together to make breastfeeding work. The guidance I give mums is based on their ‘mum and baby combo’ that takes their unique physical make-up, birth and medical history into account.
You won’t find bias, judgement or agenda in any of my answers so if you have a breastfeeding question, come and say hello. You’ll find that I’m practical, not preachy as that is the only way that I’ve found to make breastfeeding simple.
Geraldine 
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