Nurtured: Behind the Scenes Podcast

24/10/2025

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CqZDrAxVV/

👶 Skin-to-skin contact involves placing the naked newborn on the mother’s uncovered chest immediately after birth. This simple practice helps babies adapt to life outside the womb, keeping them warm, reducing stress and crying, and supporting vital functions such as breathing and heart rate.

New Cochrane evidence confirms what many already practice: immediate skin-to-skin contact between newborns and their mothers gives babies a better start in life.

Babies held skin-to-skin within the first hour after birth are more likely to:

🩵 Breastfeed exclusively
🩵 Maintain healthy body temperature and blood sugar
🩵 Breathe and adapt better outside the womb

Importantly, the evidence is now so strong that researchers argue it’s no longer ethical to conduct studies that separate mothers and babies after birth.

“Withholding skin-to-skin contact would now be considered unethical, as there is enough evidence to show that the practice improves newborn health and survival,” says Karin Cadwell, senior author and Executive Director and Lead Faculty of
Healthy Children Project Center for Breastfeeding.

Read more on our website: https://www.cochrane.org/about-us/news/strong-evidence-supports-skin-skin-contact-after-birth-standard-care

18/08/2025

Something we've been working on with a group of amazing dedicated doctors. 💪🏻😎🤱🏻

Our inaugural Breastfeeding Medicine workshop is coming up soon, Saturday November 8th, at North Shore Hospital.

Early bird rate $205 (until 15th September)
Limited spaces available, breastfeeding babies (and carers) of course are welcome, just let us know when you register.

Aimed at all doctors who care for breastfeeding parents and babies, as well as those who wish to explore further specialising in Breastfeeding Medicine, content will include:

- Why breastfeeding matters
- Breastfeeding anatomy and physiology
- Mastitis management
- Painful breastfeeding
- Assessing and managing faltering weight gain
- Physiological infant care
- Tongue tie assessment
- Breast imaging in pregnancy and lactation
- Infant feeding in emergencies
Plus interactive myth-busting of common breastfeeding questions!

Register and secure your spot at our earlybird price today
https://forms.gle/GCyuyRdMJcRtEzA9A

09/08/2025

This is how we do 😎😎

Breastfeeding Essentials Online Workshop 2025

Dr Whitney Davis not only presented an extensive and gem filled presentation on “normal breastfeeding” today but breastfed her youngest whilst doing so.

🤱 Theory in action! Go Dr Whit!

21/05/2025

🤱🏻😴❤️

09/04/2025

The Little Things - Pictured from “Poems of Parenting”

08/04/2025

The natural term for us humans to breastfeed is anywhere between 2 and 7+ years. Some babies stop earlier, some children carry on for longer. It’s thought that the eruption of the permanent set of teeth (losing your milk teeth) influences this timescale.

Many cultures around the world breastfeed until natural term, including many women in the Western world. This age range is only surprising in cultures that interrupt breastfeeding, often without realising it or knowing which norms are biological and which are cultural.

The concentration of fats and proteins increase as the baby grows into a toddler, along with increased levels of antibacterial and antiviral components such as lysozyme, which is an anti-inflammatory, and destroys bacteria.

Lysozyme increases in concentration from about 6 months old, when babies become more independently mobile and everything (toys, sand, twigs, the cats biscuits?) goes straight in the mouth, and keeps increasing after the first year.

The concentration of Lactoferrin also increases over time. Lactoferrin inhibits the growth of some cancerous cells. It also helps our babies to absorb their own iron stores, whilst binding to the iron in our baby’s body which prevents it from being available to harmful microorganisms that need iron to survive. Lactoferrin also kills the bacteria strep mutans, which causes tooth decay and cavities.

Our body’s immune system takes around 6 years to become fully mature, so the support of the protective factors in human milk until our immune system can fully function on its own seems play a part in the timescale of natural term weaning too.

Longer term breastfeeding is also associated with reduced risk of diseases for the mother, including breast cancer.

We acknowledge that many mothers find it difficult to establish breastfeeding in the first place, that breastfeeding is a multi-layered investment on the part of a mother and that natural term feeding might not feel like - or be - a possibility for many.

Or you might simply not want to. We're not here to tell anyone what to do.

We also acknowledge that lack of information about our biology contributes to the lack of support for mothers when they want to establish - or continue - breastfeeding, but cannot find the help they need from people who understand why it matters so much, or what is normal.

Let's continue to turn that around.

More information and references about how remarkable you are at https://human-milk.com/pages/science-of-breastmilk

06/04/2025

🤱💪🏈

A message from Annette Bevan of based in Reading, Berkshire, United Kingdom. Annette and some of her teammates are advocates for letting fellow athletes both Grassroots & Professional that the game is not over for them at Motherhood. It’s only just beginning :

“Playing rugby doesn’t end when motherhood begins - if anything, it’s made me more resilient, more determined and more educated about the changes to my body and how I need to adapt my training. I’ve learnt to maximise my training time and have become the master of a superset. I’ve learnt to not be too proud to ask for help from my ‘village’ of family, friends, rugby club and teammates, who are legends for the support they provide on match days, on training nights and everything in between. And I’ve learnt you can literally push your body to do anything even if at one day postpartum you think you’ll never even be able to walk normally ever again.“

Featured are | | and at | please consider giving these ladies a follow and keeping up with their journey as they navigate rugby times and motherhood.

17/10/2024

In 1929 Ge**er began an advertising campaign to convince dieticians and pediatricians that canned baby food was just as nutritious as homemade food, and even better because it was scientifically prepared.
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As part of the campaign, doctors received free Ge**er products for patients. Ge**er also funded research touting the health benefits of their food. That research—vaguely worded and devoid of peer review—was published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, positioning it as scientific fact.
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Alongside these efforts, Ge**er stated that women who prepared their own baby food were neglecting their husbands—and babies. One 1933 ad read, “For Baby’s Sake, Stay Out of the Kitchen!”
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Alongside these efforts, Ge**er advocated for starting solids at 3 months old. And by the 1950’s—after 20 years of advertising—the average age of introducing solids fell to just 6 weeks old.💔
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Since then the medical community realized that too-early introduction of solids displaced valuable nutrition from breast milk/formula. The consensus among medical institutions today (AAP, U.S. National Institutes for Health, and World Health Organization) is that it’s best to introduce solids at 6 months old. It is at this time that most babies are developmentally ready to eat and need more iron. Conveniently, 6 months is also when babies are capable of feeding themselves.
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Baby food was invented. Mom guilt was marketed.
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There is no perfect order of introducing solids. No no need for “stages” of thickness. These were all constructs in the name of profit.
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Convenience has its place. I love a good yogurt pouch and rely on Cheerios when traveling. But the idea that real food has to be hard isn’t good for anyone. Babies don’t need banana pudding or pricey pouches—a banana is fine!
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There is a reason feeding feels complicated. Corporations spent the last century telling your grandmothers and great-grandmothers that they would be bad moms and wives if they didn’t buy pre-prepared baby food. So the next time you feel a twinge of guilt for feeding your baby YOUR way, remember that it’s not you. It’s history.

13/09/2024

We do love Bluey in our household. 🥰

let’s normalize children who need that extra comfort at night.

the hand holders to go to sleep, the midnight jump into your bed, the children that have to sleep next to you.

you are doing nothing wrong. whether your child sleeps independently or not, is not a reflection of your parenting. 🤍

08/08/2024

This! 👇👇👇

I present to you: a rant.

What does "overfeeding a baby" even mean?

Like, can the people who tell parents that they're overfeeding actually justify what this means and why it would be a problem?

Responsive feeding is normal, healthy, and good. It helps with appetite and metabolic regulation, relational health (which is the basis of good mental health later in life), sleep, pain, etc.

Breastfed babies feed AT LEAST 8-12 times a day, which is every 2-3 hours, and often will feed more often than that.

Feeding to sleep is a normal physiological process - there are hormones such as cholecystokinin that actually facilitate it, which is why it works so well.
the
Breastfeeding reduces the risk of adult obesity, diabetes, and metabolic dysfunction - including those babies who gain heaps of weight breastfeeding. So it's not like someone can say that "overfeeding" a directly breastfed baby is going to lead to health issues later.

Can some babies get stomach pain if the amount of lactose they're ingesting overwhelms their natural lactase enzymes? Yes. Is this the same as "overfeeding"? No.

Answer me this: how can someone look at a chonky baby, with chubby thighs and wrist rolls, and not sigh in contentment?

04/08/2024

It's World Breastfeeding Week! TLC Theresa Lactation Consultant and I discuss the origins of ⁠World Breastfeeding Week⁠, which takes place 1-7 August each year, what it's about and why we still need this global event.

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nurtureddoctors/episodes/30--Welcome-to-World-Breastfeeding-Week--with-TLC-Theresa-Lactation-Consultant-e2mpubf

21/07/2024

Slightly late to the party and slightly longer than 50 minutes 😅 : Our 50 for 50 contribution for Birth Trauma Awareness week, thanks to Birth Trauma Aotearoa.

TLC Theresa Lactation Consultant and I share our experiences and thoughts on the impacts of birth trauma and the spillover effects on the rest of our life journey as parents.

Slightly late to the party and slightly longer than 50 minutes : our 50 for 50 contribution for Birth Trauma Awareness week, thanks to Birth Trauma Aotearoa. Theresa and I share our experiences and thoughts on the impact of birth trauma. Podcast recommendations: The Midwives' Cauldron Kathleen Kenda...