I'm back!! (online anyway!)

The amount of effort (both physical and emotional) required to move countries can never be underestimated! Now having settled into our "life elsewhere", I have returned to my Babycafe Japan blog to let you know where you can find me and how you can continue to access resources useful to all expectant mothers in Japan (and elsewhere!)

First, Little Angels, the mother and baby group I established in 2001, continues to run in my home in Tokyo on the first and third Fridays of the month. The group is staffed by fab volunteer mums who know JUST how much other mums with little babies need support....and somewhere to just hang out together and chat. Click the link above for more details.

Some of the teensy babes-in-arms that I left in Tokyo are now WALKING...I can't believe how fast time flies...so Blue Sky is going to offer a special Go Baby Go! group from mid-October to mid-December, where these tots can enjoy music and movement and fun activities in the playroom at Blue Sky, with their mums of course. My favourite assistant teacher is returning to Tokyo from Canada, and she can't wait to get back to Blue Sky and run Go Baby Go! again! Email me here to register your interest.

Since late 2009, I have been providing online lactation consultations, via skype/webcam/email, which means mothers in Tokyo and various other corners of the globe have been able to continue getting support for breastfeeding.

This means personal breastfeeding and infant sleep assistance wherever you are - and wherever I am! Mums in Tokyo have already been putting the service to good use through the Blue Sky online consultations page.

You might believe that what you really need is someone in the room with you to help you attach your baby better, or just to show you what to do. In fact, recent research is suggesting that there is way too much interference by medical staff. Mothers and babies can often get breastfeeding sorted out much better if staff are more "hands off", and mother and babies themselves are more "hands on". So the simple fact I can not be there in the room with you can actually be a great advantage! (Of course, I would love to be there in person, but I would still be "hands off" :-)

I hear too many stories about babies who could only breastfeed in the hospital when the midwife latched them on. What's with that? Shouldn't the midwife be making sure YOU can do it, so that breastfeeding can continue successfully when you get home? Using skype and a webcam, I can see what you and your baby are doing and make suggestions, and ultimately, breastfeeding is not about ME getting baby to latch correctly, it is about YOU being able to do it.

Last but not least, I want to introduce my NEW venture:
FEED BABY SLEEP™
Yep, that is a little ™ mark, because this is actually now a trade mark! Very exciting!

The web site is still under construction, but we also have a facebook page:
Iona's new venture:
FEED BABY SLEEP



and a Twitter page (see the big pink and lime green widget on the right of this page!)

You are welcome to get in touch with me through any of these means...just don't sit in your house in Japan (or anywhere else) and feel like nobody is out there to help you or support you as you try to sort through the tangle of those early sleep-deprived weeks of new motherhood.

I am here, and I can't wait to help!!

Expressing milk: how to maximise output

This video is reproduced from Stanford School of Medicine web site:
Click on the video to start it.



This material was developed by Jane Morton, MD Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at Stanford University,and produced for educational purposes only. Copies of the full video "Making Enough Milk, The Key to Successful Breastfeeding. . . Planning for Day One " may be purchased. Please visit www.breastmilksolutions.com for more information.

WONDERFUL breastfeeding video...MUST SEE!!

Click here
For some unknown reason this video has been flagged by Youtube as unsuitable for minors!
It is a video used in breastfeeding education classes. How can breastfeeding a baby be considered unsuitable for minors to view???

Tokyo Pregnancy group

I am speaking at TPG tomorrow about my work as a Lactation Consultant, my breastfeeding workshops, and I am taking some baby slings to show/sell.I will have all the different colours there, and the free instructional DVDs.

Slings are currently on sale: 6,300 yen including free regular postage. At TPG I will be selling the slings for 6000 yen.

Next breastfeeding workshop is Feb 15th, followed by either March 1st or March 8th.

20% off workshops!

Blue Sky is offering a new week-day breastfeeding workshop from 2009. This is in addition to the Sunday workshop for couples, which continues to be available each month.

Host a workshop at your home for you and 3 friends or more between January 15th and March 1st 2009 and receive 20% off the registration fee for you AND your friends.

Choice of workshops:
Wednesday afternoons 1pm - 4pm
Thursday mornings 10am - 1pm

Research shows that women who receive prenatal education, postpartum hospital and home visits, and telephone calls from a lactation consultant are more likely to breastfeed through week 20 and at a higher breastfeeding intensity than women who do not receive assistance from a lactation consultant.*

If you would like to get breastfeeding off to a great start, this is the workshop for you!

# Workshop requires the use of a DVD player
# Discount can also be applied to couples' Sunday workshops if you arrange a group of 4 couples or more at your home.
# Full payment for all your group's attendees (minimum 4 people) must be completed 7 days before workshop.

For more details of the workshops see Blue Sky's web site.

* Bonuck, K., et al. 2005. Randomized controlled trial of a prenatal and postnatal lactation consultant intervention on duration and intensity of breastfeeding up to 12 months. Pediatrics. 116:6, 1413-26.

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Mention TPG to take advantage of this special discount!

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World Breastfeeding Week, 1-7 August 2008

This year’s theme established by the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Advocacy (WABA) is: “Mother Support: Going for the Gold.” ILCA has added the tag, “Every­one Wins When Babies Breastfeed” as a reminder that we ALL play a role in providing the support new mothers need to meet their breastfeeding goals.



In conjunction with the Olympics in August 2008, WBW 2008 calls for greater support for mothers in achieving the gold standard of infant feeding: breastfeeding exclusively for six months, and providing appropriate complementary foods with continued breastfeeding for up to two years or beyond. La Leche League International, a founding member and Core Partner of the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA), is celebrating World Breastfeeding Week (WBW) through its La Leche League (LLL) Leaders and LLL Groups around the world. LLLI has a current presence in 68 countries.

See more at

Tokyo Spin shell TV interview!

Information on having babies in Tokyo, with a 3 minute cameo starting at 2:42 by yours truly...they spliced the interview so that the second half of what I said comes before the first... I was joking around a lot at the end of the interview, but the way they spliced it, looks like I was not taking my subject seriously right from the start!!

Enjoy!



Or youtube here.
The full article accompanying this is also online here

Part One of the Expecting in Tokyo video is here:

Breastfeeding Workshops for early 2008

Breastfeeding workshops for 2008 will be held on

Sunday January 20th
Sunday February 17th
Sunday March 16th

I am always happy to arrange other dates for private groups of 3 or more couples. The workshop runs from 1.30 - 5.30pm. Details can be found here.

Private consultations in your home or during your hospital stay are also possible by arrangement.

Tokyo Pregnancy group

What a nice bunch of ladies I spoke to today at TPG! Thankyou for having me, as you can tell I always enjoy chatting about breastfeeding!

You might be interested in the results of my small survey. I received 16 completed forms back.
100% said you wanted to breastfeed
The expected duration ranged from 3m to "as long as I can", with more 50% saying 6 months or more.
100% of you had spoken to your partners about breastfeeding
94% had spoken to your mothers about breastfeeding.
75% of you were breastfed

You all had experience seeing other mothers feed

Nobody said their breasts had been checked during pregnancy, but because of the way that question was worded, it also looked like nobody had discussed breastfeeding with you. (i.e. 0%)

What worries you most about breastfeeding (multiple answers given by some people):
43% worried about not being successful
25% worried about poor latch
only 18% of you worried about pain.
6% each for:
worries about your own patience level,
not enough milk,
tiredness,
engorgement,
combining breastfeeding with medications,
baby being too demanding.

93% of you had heard of La Leche League, and almost all of you knew it was a breastfeeding support group with resources for mothers. This is particularly pleasing, as a major survey was carried out by LLL to see what the recognition level was for their name and purpose, and we did better than them!

Self diagnosing your breastfeeding problem

Living here in Japan without much support in our own language, and with so much information freely available on the internet, self-diagnosing your own breastfeeding problems seems easy and economical.

The trouble is that there is a lot of dubious information out there, and it can be hard to sift through it all to get to the good stuff when you have a crying or hungry baby on your knee, and you need a few more hours sleep yourself.

Getting qualified expert help may be crucial to the success of your breastfeeding relationship, so I encourage you to make contact with a real live person if you can, rather than to rely on articles from the internet alone. Years of experience helping real live mothers and babies with their specific breastfeeding situations counts for a lot when it comes to helping you and your baby. Having someone listen to exactly what is happening in your life with baby can help zoom in on the real problem, and following up with some well-referenced internet reading can be a good way of confirming your options.

La Leche League's network of trained volunteer Leaders all over the world helps mothers by phone or email, and discussion meetings are held in many different countries. Here in Japan we have English speaking Leaders in Tokyo, Sendai and Wakkanai, and occasionally there are Leaders on the US military bases. See here for contact details.

There are more international Board certified Lactation Consultants (with the intials IBCLC after their name) around the world now than ever before, and this past year alone, Japan has almost doubled the number of IBCLCs, to 270. As the qualification becomes more and more recognised as the gold standard in breastfeeding management and care, then we will hopefully see more and more staff in hospitals and clinics getting certified. It is a rapidly growing profession and it is very exciting to see improvements in the level of skill and care provided. For IBCLCs in Japan go here or here.

In the meantime, I continue to hear stories every week of parents who were given wrong advice or misinformation and the breastfeeding relationship has suffered as a result, maybe even ended prematurely. Parents are understandably disappointed (sometimes angry) when they hear that there may have been other options.

One example that comes to mind is the common advice by doctors in Japan to wean for 3 days while taking antibiotics. This is usually just wrong. There are many antibiotics which are perfectly safe to take while breastfeeding, and anyway, weaning is not something that can be done "cold turkey" for 3 days...then you would end up being very engorged and possibly even with mastitis from milk stasis, and a severely depleted supply when breastfeeding resumes. Telling the mother to wean for 3 days can have devastating consequences . And what about the baby? What will the baby drink for those 3 days? We know formula changes the way your baby's body works, and why would you do that unnecessarily for antibiotics? A tiny little bit of antibiotics in the milk has far less impact on your baby's health than 3 days of formula. Dr Thomas Hale has written an excellent book called Medications and Mother's Milk to which your doctor can refer to ascertain the safety of medications while nursing.

Another example is when a mother who is concerned about low milk supply is told by her doctor to "pump her milk to see how much she has". A mother expressing her breast, by hand or machine, is nothing like a baby drinking breastmilk directly! For a mother already worrying, being able to express only a few drops just confirms her fears, and is not productive to the ongoing breastfeeding relationship. Expressing milk does not give an accurate picture of the available milk. It would be more constructive for the doctor to educate the mother about ways of knowing her baby is getting enough. (We can judge if baby is getting enough milk by checking the urine and stool output, and by ensuring baby is breastfeeding frequently enough, not by measuring the mother's ability to efficiently express her milk, which is a learned skill in itself.)

It is incredible how much is misunderstood about fully breastfed babies and the way women's breasts work. Perhaps it is because the doctors and nurses have so little experience with successfully breastfed babies that they don't really have the faith or the belief that it is possible to fully nurture a child with breastmilk alone. Or perhaps it is just a general reflection of our society that doesn't value breastfeeding and the special relationship between a mother and baby. But if any of us can read articles on the internet and be informed about current breastfeeding topics and developments, you would hope that a health professional working with mothers and babies would also be keeping up-to-date too.

If you are breastfeeding and you are worried about anything in relation to your baby, as well as your doctor, get in touch with LLL or an IBCLC, and go over your concerns with them. Use them as a sounding board, for an instinct check. Sometimes what looks at first glance like a possible medical problem may just require a minor breastfeeding "tweak". Sometimes your baby may be doing something like refusing solid foods, or suddenly waking more at night or being very gassy. Check in with your LLL Leader or local IBCLC about these, as sometimes even if it doesn't look breastfeeding-related it might be! And sometimes, just talking to an experienced mother can help you decide if you should get a qualified opinion on things.

There is no substitute for your human resources who specialise in breastfeeding...we will do everything we can to support you and get you heading in the right direction, to reach your own breastfeeding goals. Providing you with the best information, the most up-to-date and reliable resources is what we do. Yes, this is a shameless plug...we LOVE what we do!!