Cooper County WIC

10/07/2026

10/07/2026

10/06/2026

When I was pregnant with my first baby, an older co-worker gave me some interesting breastfeeding advice: take a washcloth and rough up your ni***es to “prepare” them for breastfeeding. 😳

As a 20-year-old first-time mom, my reaction was basically, “Excuse me… DO WHAT?!” 😂

Thankfully, my WIC breastfeeding consultant was there to talk me down from that scared young ledge and help me separate fact from fiction. 💗

There are SO many old wives’ tales, myths, and “someone told me…” stories surrounding breastfeeding. And honestly, some of them can sound pretty scary when you’re a new or expecting parent!

That’s one of the things about being a WIC Breastfeeding Peer Counselor. We’re here to listen, talk through those scary stories, answer questions, share evidence-based information, and help you feel more confident in your breastfeeding journey. 🍼💕

You don’t have to navigate all the advice alone! If you’ve heard something about breastfeeding and thought, “Wait… is that really true?!”—come talk to us. No judgment, just support. ❤️

10/02/2026

When mothers compare their feeding rhythms to those of friends or family members, anxiety almost inevitably creeps in. One mother might nurse her baby 5-7 times a day with hours of peaceful sleep between sessions, while another finds her infant requesting the breast every hour and a half to two hours throughout the day and night. The immediate assumption in our culture is that the more frequent feeder is struggling with an inadequate milk supply or something must be wrong, but biological reality tells a much more nuanced story. The research on this certainly isn’t new. It’s decades old. It’s just not talked about as the caption of “pump and pour” social media posts by influencers. Research led by Dr. Peter Hartmann at the University of Western Australia demonstrated that breast size, perceived fullness, and feeding frequency have remarkably little to do with whether a parent is producing enough milk over a 24 hour period.

To understand why two completely healthy nursing dyads can look so vastly different, we have to discuss the differences between breast storage capacity and total daily milk production from woman to woman. Dr. Hartmann and his research team tracked lactating mothers and discovered that human breast storage capacity (the maximum volume of milk the glandular tissue can hold between removals) ranges anywhere from approximately one ounce up to more than ten ounces per breast. Crucially, storage capacity is determined by internal glandular anatomy rather than overall breast cup size, which is most just (fat) adipose tissue. A mom with a smaller storage capacity can produce the exact same total daily volume of milk, often around twenty-five to thirty ounces, as one with a larger storage capacity when the milk is frequently and efficiently removed to her own storage capacity needs. The difference lies solely in how that daily volume is moved throughout a full 24 hour day.

Think of it not like a bottle that must be poured to a predetermined ounce line at each feeding, but rather like two different cups placed under a continuously running faucet. A mother with a smaller biological reservoir will fill their glandular storage relatively quickly, signaling the body to slow down milk making via a localized chemical feedback loop until that milk is cleared. Their baby must drink smaller portions more frequently across the day to meet their total caloric requirements. Conversely, a mother with a larger biological reservoir can accumulate eight ounces of milk across an extended stretch without triggering the internal brakes on production, allowing their baby to take larger volumes less often. Both babies can consume the identical nutritional total, grow along healthy percentiles, and thrive, yet their daily feeding charts can look very different.

If your baby is gaining weight appropriately, transferring milk efficiently, and producing ample wet and dirty diapers, nursing 10-12 times a day is normal and reasonable. But so is 5-8 times or 12-16 times. Each set of breasts feeds its own baby in its own way. And that’s ok. This is unique maternal anatomy and infant physiology working together as it was designed to. Letting your baby dictate how many times they want to eat ensures your breasts receive the signals required to keep YOUR production robust. Honor your own body’s storage capacity rather than forcing yourself or your baby onto someone else’s schedule.

Daly, S. E., Owens, R. A., & Hartmann, P. E. (1993). The short-term synthesis and infant-regulated removal of milk in lactating women. Experimental Physiology, 78(2), 209–220. https://doi.org/10.1113/expphysiol.1993.sp003681

Kent, J. C., Mitoulas, L. R., Cregan, M. D., Dickson, D. A., Larsson, M., & Hartmann, P. E. (2006). Volume and frequency of breastfeedings and fat content of breast milk throughout the day. Pediatrics, 117(3), e387–e395. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2005-1417

10/02/2026

A breastfeeding aversion to feeding means screaming or crying when offered the breast, refusing to eat, or needing to be breastfed while moving or drowsy/asleep. This is not a temporary nursing strike where baby refuses the breast for a few days because of periods returning, mom going back to work, teething, or illness, etc. The behaviors seen in baby are much more extreme for a true aversions. Most common causes:

👅Tongue tie: One of my biggest red flags for tongue tie is reflux and shutting down during breastfeeding (sleepy on the breast, popping on and off, refusing the breast and preferring the bottle but then shutting down on the bottle). Some babies with tongue or lip tie do fine for the first few months by compensating on a full milk supply. The comes around 3-4 months when supply regulates. Address the ties and do oral motor exercises to strengthen the system and the refusal can go away

🥛Intolerances/Allergy: This looks similar to reflux, but often with bowel issues as well (constipation, diarrhea, or mucousy/foamy poops). Babies who’s digestive tracts are uncomfortable don’t want to eat. They learn quickly to associate feeding with pain, so they shut down on feeding

🤮Reflux: Easiest culprit to blame and mask with medication. The medication may mask the pain but won’t actually take the reflux away. Reflux is usually caused by food allergy/intolerance, gut issues, or tongue tie

🥵Aspiration: Milk going into the lungs instead of to the stomach (rare but happens)

🤯Behavioral: The number one concern of parents is feeding the baby. When feeding isn’t going well, it causes extreme stress, which can causes parents to do extreme things to try to fix the problem. It’s easy to spiral out when you’ve tried everything and it’s not working out of stress and desperation. Occasionally the reason for the refusal is no longer there, but it was so stressful in the moment, the panic that it could happen again sets in and perpetuates the problem. Some times the root issue is still there, but you’ve compensated and it’s causing a behavioral manifestation in both you and the baby

If your baby is refusing to feed, set up your private consultation today. Link in bio

10/02/2026

There is this lingering fear for many new breastfeeding moms that you have to sit in one hyper-specific, textbook posture or the latch will be lost. You pile up six pillows, freeze your shoulders, hold your breath, and end up with a stiff neck ten minutes in. If your baby loses the latch that easily, they were never well latched to begin with.

So slouch into the couch cushions, kick your feet up, or lay flat on your side. Your body is the best pillow for your baby, so set yourself up in whatever way keeps you from aching tomorrow. Your position doesn’t matter. Get comfortable.

The piece that actually makes or breaks a feed is how your baby’s body is lined up. Trying to swallow with your chin jammed into your chest or your neck cranked sideways is miserable, and babies run into that exact struggle when they are slightly twisted. If their tummy is turned up toward the ceiling while their mouth is turned toward you, their swallow gets awkward, the latch goes shallow, and you feel every bit of that friction.

Instead of obsessing over your own angle, take a second to look at theirs. Bring their whole body close so their tummy rests against you, keeping their ear, shoulder, and hip so it makes one straight line. When their chin presses softly into the breast first, their head tilts back naturally with the nose free, which frees up their jaw to drop wide and pull in a deep, painless mouthful. Their position matters. Having trouble figuring it out? Just stand up. You have to have them in the correct position when standing or you’ll drop them when trying to latch. Try it.

10/02/2026

Few moments in early motherhood cause as much distress as sitting in an exam room while the pediatrician pulls up a growth chart, points to a dip in the weight percentile, and immediately suggests formula supplementation. For a mom who has poured weeks of round-the-clock physical and emotional labor into breastfeeding, hearing that her baby is dropping percentiles feels like a devastating reflection of her parenting.

The growth chart is supposed to be an objective clinical tool meant to help us track general trends over time, not a test your baby has to pass. We don’t want every baby in the 99th percentile. We need babies at every percentile because that’s how varied human babies are. The concern comes when a baby is following a growth curve and then starts to trend down in percentiles across time.

When looking at the growth chart for concerns, we want to make sure the doctor's office is even using the right chart. Breastfed babies grow differently than formula-fed babies, which is why the American Academy of Pediatrics says doctors should always use the World Health Organization (WHO) chart for babies under two, not the older CDC chart. If your baby was born early under 35 weeks, they belong on a preemie chart (Fenton), not the standard one.

Then we want to make sure we are interpreting the chart correctly. Things like baby’s birth weight can throw the chart off. If you had a lot of IV fluids during labor, your newborn might have been carrying extra fluid weight on day one. If you had gestational diabetes, your baby might have started out extra big and is simply settling into their actual curve. Genetics matter tremendously. If you and your partner are on the petite side, your baby isn't meant to be in the 90th percentile, and trying to force them there could cause unnecessary stress.

When a breastfed baby genuinely dips on the chart, we need to get to the root of why. There are so many everyday reasons and each one would lead to a different fix. Sometimes our milk supply accidentally takes a hit simply because we didn't realize how the biology works. Sticking to a rigid feeding schedule on an app, stretching out feeds, or heavy pacifier use can unintentionally tell your breasts to slow down production. Skipping pump sessions when baby gets a bottle of stashed milk or formula denies your body the signal that you still want that milk. Teething pain might make nursing uncomfortable, leading to fussy feeds and quick snacks. An illness or ear infection can knock out an infant's appetite for a week and they may just need time to cluster feed the next week to recover. Other times, things like food sensitivities, allergies, or subtle latch mechanics mean baby is working harder to get milk. Periods, hormone-based birth control, returning to work, using a poor quality pump, or using the wrong size flanges can all decrease milk supply. A missed tongue tie where a baby was riding on a robust supply could all of a sudden become apparent as supply regulates with a downward trending curve.

This is why we have to step back and look at the whole picture. The curve is a piece of the growth puzzle. By asking about the rest of the pieces, we can figure out what intervention may be needed. Is your baby making 5–6 wet diapers a day? Pooping daily or every other day? Are they alert, bright-eyed, and meeting their developmental milestones? Are they growing longer and outgrowing their sleepers? A temporary slowdown during a growth spurt, a cold, or a sleep transition deserves a thoughtful pause, not immediate panic. Could we just let the baby do more cluster feeding? Does the baby just need to feed on demand? Maybe a tongue tie needs to be released. Or we could add in some extra pumping or targeted support for mom.

If your pediatrician red-flags your baby’s weight and brings up supplementing, it should come with a discussion of why they think the percentiles are dropping. In addition, if supplementing is being recommended, that should always come with a referral to an IBCLC (lactation consultant) to figure out the why. Handing you a can of formula treats the symptom without finding the root cause. An IBCLC will sit with you, evaluate both you and your baby together, do a weighted feed to see how much milk is actually transferring, and check oral function and supply. From there, you get a personalized game plan that protects your milk supply, solves the real issue, and helps your baby gain weight while keeping your feeding goals intact.

Grummer-Strawn, L. M., Reinold, C., & Krebs, N. F. (2010). Use of World Health Organization and CDC growth charts for children aged 0–59 months in the United States. MMWR Recommendations and Reports, 59(RR-9), 1–15. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5909a1.htm

American Academy of Pediatrics. (2022). Policy Statement: Breastfeeding and the use of human milk. Pediatrics, 150(1), e2022057988. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2022-057988

Fenton, T. R., & Kim, J. H. (2013). A systematic review and meta-analysis to revise the Fenton growth chart for preterm infants. BMC Pediatrics, 13(1), 59. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2431-13-59

10/02/2026

37 weeks is “term”… but that doesn’t mean it’s the same as 40 weeks.

In obstetrics, 37 weeks is considered early term. That means baby is developed enough to safely be born. But development doesn’t stop there. Those last few weeks of pregnancy are still a critical time for growth, neurological development, fat storage, and coordination

Babies born at 37 weeks often don’t behave like 40-week babies when it comes to feeding

Many of them:
• tire more quickly at the breast
• have less coordinated suck–swallow–breathe patterns
• fall asleep mid-feed
• struggle to transfer milk efficiently
• need more time to build stamina

That’s because the systems that support feeding (brain maturity, muscle tone, endurance, and reflex coordination) are still finishing their work during those final weeks in the womb and need time to mature

Think of a 37-week baby as a baby who is ready to be born, but not finished developing.

For many of these babies, it takes about 3–6 weeks after birth for their feeding skills, stamina, and wakefulness to catch up to what we typically see in babies born closer to or even after 40 weeks

This is why families with 37-week babies may be told to:
• wake baby to feed
• do extra breast compressions
• monitor weight closely
• sometimes use temporary supplementation
• protect milk supply with pumping if baby isn’t transferring well yet

Not because something is wrong, but because your baby is finishing the development they expected to do in the womb on the outside. Where the expectations are much higher

And with a little support and time, most of these babies catch up beautifully. But you need to be warned that this may look like lots of extra pumping and bottle feeding until their development catches up

09/22/2026

💙Help spread the word!💙

We wanted to share this upcoming Cooper County DD Resource Fair with our community because you never know who in your circle may be looking for exactly these kinds of resources. ❤️

This FREE event is a great opportunity for individuals with developmental disabilities, families, caregivers, educators, and community members to connect with local organizations, learn about available services, ask questions, and discover resources all in one place.

📅 October 22, 2026
⏰ 6:00–7:30 PM
📍 Boonslick Heartland YMCA Gym

There will be information about disability and community services, employment and career resources, education and transition support, recreation opportunities, family and caregiver resources, and more.

Whether you're looking for support right now or simply want to learn what's available in our community for the future, this is a wonderful opportunity to make connections. 🫶

Please share this post or the flyer! A simple share could help connect a local family with a resource they’ve been searching for. 💙

For questions or to register:
📧 [email protected]