Hi, I’m Natalie.
Mom of three. Researcher by nature. Always asking one more question.
I’ve always been passionate about breastfeeding. But my own experiences with pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, and postpartum showed me just how connected every part of motherhood really is.
I’m not a lactation consultant or medical professional. I’m a mom who reads deeply, checks sources carefully, and believes mothers deserve information that is evidence-based, honest, practical, and free from shame.
Boobs for Babies is where I bring those things together — with support for the whole mother, not just one part of her experience.
Motherhood does not happen in separate pieces.
Motherhood is often divided into neat categories: pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, postpartum recovery, emotional health.
The woman living through it does not experience those things separately.
A difficult birth can affect recovery and feeding. Feeding challenges can affect sleep, confidence, relationships, and emotional health. Hormonal changes, physical healing, exhaustion, expectations, and the mental work of caring for a baby can all overlap at once.
That is the bigger picture Boobs for Babies is built around.
This site brings together evidence-based information, practical resources, and honest personal experience because mothers deserve support that recognizes the whole experience – not just one piece of it.
The goal is not to make motherhood simple. It is to make it easier to understand.
Breastfeeding matters.
So does the mother.
I believe breast milk is extraordinary.
I also believe mothers deserve better than being made to feel that every feeding decision is a test of whether they are good enough.
Sometimes breastfeeding works beautifully. Sometimes it is difficult. Sometimes a mother needs help increasing her milk supply, improving a latch, understanding normal newborn behavior, or finding qualified breastfeeding support.
Sometimes supplementation or formula becomes necessary. Sometimes feeding looks completely different from what a mother imagined during pregnancy.
Good support should make room for all of that.
The goal here is not to tell mothers that breastfeeding must work at any cost. It is to make sure women who want to breastfeed have access to the information, support, and resources that give them the best chance to do so – while still recognizing that the health and well-being of both mother and baby matter.
One experience flows into the next.
Understanding one part of motherhood often means understanding what is happening around it.
Pregnancy
Pregnancy begins changing a woman physically, hormonally, emotionally, and practically long before the baby arrives.
Birth
Birth can shape recovery, feeding, confidence, and the earliest days of caring for a new baby.
Postpartum
Recovery is physical, hormonal, emotional, and practical – often while a mother is also learning to care for someone else around the clock.
Feeding
Breastfeeding and feeding can affect sleep, confidence, relationships, routines, hormones, and emotional well-being.
Emotional Health
Identity, expectations, relationships, mental load, exhaustion, and enormous responsibility all exist alongside the physical experience of motherhood.
The whole mother.
Boobs for Babies looks at those experiences together because that is how mothers actually live them.
What you’ll find here.
Some pages answer a very specific question. Others explore something much bigger. Everything is built around the same goal: clear information, useful support, and no unnecessary shame.
Breastfeeding & Feeding
Evidence-based information about milk supply, newborn feeding, breastfeeding challenges, pumping, supplementation, and getting support.
Pregnancy & Birth
Information about the changes leading up to motherhood and how pregnancy and birth can shape what comes afterward.
Postpartum Recovery
Straightforward guidance about healing, hormones, physical changes, recovery, and what the postpartum body is actually doing.
Emotional Health
Research and resources about the emotional transition into motherhood, overwhelm, identity, mental load, and maternal well-being.
Practical Resources
Guides, support directories, printables, trackers, checklists, and tools designed to make information easier to use in real life.
The Mother Side
Personal writing about the parts of motherhood that cannot always be explained by a study, statistic, or clinical guideline.
Carefully Researched. Clearly Sourced. Within My Lane.
I take the information on Boobs for Babies seriously. That means reading deeply, checking reputable sources, separating evidence from personal experience, and being honest about what I am – and am not – qualified to do.
Evidence comes first.
Educational articles are built around established guidance, research, and trusted medical, public health, and breastfeeding organizations rather than trends, fear, or internet folklore.
Sources matter.
I check claims carefully and include sources so you can see where the information comes from, understand what supports it, and read further if you want to.
I know my role.
I am not a doctor, nurse, midwife, or lactation consultant. When a question needs individualized assessment or care, Boobs for Babies should help you understand the issue – not replace the qualified professional who can care for you or your baby.
BEYOND THE RESEARCH
The Mother Side
Some parts of motherhood belong outside the research.
The Mother Side is where I write about them.
These pieces are more personal: reflections on identity, guilt, expectations, relationships, emotional change, grief, pressure, and the parts of motherhood that are difficult to capture in a clinical guideline or research paper.
They are intentionally separate from the evidence-based educational articles on the site because personal experience and scientific evidence are not the same thing.
Both can still be valuable.
BEYOND THE RESEARCH
The Father Side
Fatherhood has its own story to tell.
Becoming a father changes a life, too. There are new responsibilities, shifting priorities, unexpected emotions, and questions that do not always have easy answers. Yet much of that experience goes unspoken.
The Father Side is a space for my husband, Bret, to explore those experiences in his own words. The expectations, the uncertainties, the moments of connection, the challenges, and the ways fatherhood can change how a man sees himself and the world around him.
Like The Mother Side, these reflections are intentionally separate from the evidence-based educational articles on Boobs for Babies. They are personal experiences, not universal truths or scientific conclusions.
Because fathers have stories worth telling, too.
I’m Natalie.
I have always been fascinated by breastfeeding and by the biology behind pregnancy, birth, breast milk, and the relationship between a mother and her baby.
Motherhood made that interest much more personal.
With three children and three very different experiences, I came to understand just how much mothers are expected to navigate at once – often while pieces of information are scattered across different appointments, websites, books, social media posts, and late-night searches.
I wanted to build something that connected those pieces.
A place where a mother could learn about breastfeeding without pretending the rest of her postpartum experience did not exist.
A place where pregnancy and birth could be discussed with an understanding of what comes afterward.
A place where emotional health was treated as part of maternal health rather than an afterthought.
And a place where research and lived experience could sit beside one another without being confused for the same thing.
I am not here to pretend there is one perfect way to become a mother, feed a baby, recover from birth, or find your footing in a life that may suddenly look very different from the one you had before.
I am here to keep learning, keep researching, and make useful information easier to find and understand.
And sometimes, I am simply here to say the things mothers do not hear often enough.
Three babies. Three very different journeys.
I have always been passionate about breastfeeding. But breastfeeding my own children taught me that feeding never happens in isolation.
Birth matters. Recovery matters. Pain matters. Sleep matters. Mental health matters. The support a mother receives – and when she receives it – matters.
I learned those lessons differently with each of my children.
The journey that ended before I was ready.
With my first daughter, breastfeeding began in the middle of a birth experience that did not go the way I expected.
I hemorrhaged after delivery. Instead of spending that first hour together, my husband held our daughter while I was being cared for.
She did latch, and at first breastfeeding seemed like it was going well. But I developed a forceful oversupply, and she would choke and struggle with the flow. Feeding became stressful instead of instinctive, and when I felt like I could not feed my own baby effectively, it affected me emotionally in ways I was not prepared for.
Later, I became very sick and was hospitalized with an infection and sepsis. Between the illness, IV antibiotics, pain medication, being separated from normal feeding routines, and not having enough pumping or lactation support, my milk supply dropped.
Eventually, breastfeeding ended much earlier than I wanted it to.
Looking back, I can see how many things were connected: birth, separation, feeding difficulties, physical illness, inadequate support, and my emotional well-being. At the time, I did not even know I could ask for a lactation consultant.
The journey I almost gave up on.
With my second baby, the problem was completely different.
She had a severe tongue tie, and breastfeeding hurt. My nipples cracked and bled. I cried through feeds. There were moments when I was convinced I could not keep doing it.
This time, though, I had more information.
We worked on her latch every day. Slowly, feeding became easier. The pain improved. What had felt impossible at the beginning became something we were eventually able to continue for two years.
The difference between those first desperate weeks and the breastfeeding relationship we eventually had was not willpower. It was information, time, support, and understanding what was actually going wrong.
The journey that looked fine – until it wasn’t.
By my third baby, I knew enough to understand that even experience does not guarantee an easy breastfeeding journey.
She would nurse and fall asleep at the breast, and I did not realize at first that she was not transferring enough milk. By three weeks, she had barely regained her birth weight.
With medical guidance, I began pumping so we could know how much she was getting at feeds. Because my supply had already dropped while she was not feeding effectively, we sometimes needed to supplement while I worked to bring it back up.
For a while, that meant feeding, pumping, watching intake closely, and pumping overnight to protect and rebuild my milk supply.
That experience taught me how easily a feeding problem can hide behind a baby who appears to be nursing normally. It also reinforced something I had already begun to understand: breastfeeding success does not always look like simply putting a baby to the breast and having everything work. Sometimes it means recognizing a problem, changing the plan, pumping, supplementing when needed, and protecting both the baby’s growth and the mother’s ability to continue breastfeeding.
Breastfeeding was never the only thing happening.
With my first baby, birth affected the beginning of feeding. Feeding difficulties affected my emotional health. Illness and postpartum recovery affected my milk supply.
With my second, pain and an anatomical feeding problem nearly ended breastfeeding before we had the information and support to make it manageable.
With my third, protecting milk supply required work that affected sleep, energy, and everyday life.
Those experiences are a big part of why Boobs for Babies has grown beyond breastfeeding alone.
Pregnancy, birth, postpartum recovery, emotional health, and breastfeeding are not separate experiences when you are the woman living through them. The information and support we offer mothers should reflect that.
Helping More Mothers Reach Their Breastfeeding Goals
Boobs for Babies exists to help mothers who want to breastfeed have the information, practical tools, and support they need to give breastfeeding the best chance to work – whether their goal is six months, a year, beyond, or simply the next feed.
That means looking beyond breastfeeding alone. Birth, postpartum recovery, milk supply, feeding challenges, sleep, hormones, emotional health, relationships, and access to qualified support can all affect whether a mother is able to continue.
Boobs for Babies brings those pieces together in one place so mothers can better understand what is happening, find practical help when they need it, and make informed decisions without shame or pressure.