The First 100 Hours: Why the Earliest Window Decides Everything

Lactation Practice Notes

Evolve Lactation Media is an independent platform for lactation knowledge — rigorous, accessible, and free of commercial influence. We publish, we teach, and we examine the forces that shape lactation care — for clinicians, public health professionals, and families.

We connect breastfeeding to its full context — scientific, cultural, political — because the conditions that determine whether an individual breastfeeds are never purely clinical.

{This article was previously published and is being presented to you in honor of World Breastfeeding Week. The links are current.}

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Cultural messaging around breastfeeding is confusing, polarizing, and intertwined with myths, disinformation, and misinformation.

So many members of the healthcare community say that they “support” breastfeeding, but it turns out they actually have their doubts about it, and many mistrust the process of breastfeeding.

They offer new mothers formula and a breast pump in the blink of an eye with no regard for the future of an individual’s breastfeeding journey.

Both the parents you serve directly and the health care community in which you practice are heavily exposed to poor information and commercial marketing messages* that say “breastfeeding doesn't work” or is too hard.

Commercial interests should have NO role in educating or influencing patients OR health care workers.

Ultimately, mothers and babies lose because when they repeatedly encounter messages and people who doubt that breastfeeding can work, their confidence is eroded.

They lack the necessary information or skills to make it work for them.

That’s why they need you, and it’s why you need this book and this link⬇️

The Breastfeeding Literacy Project lays out all of the concepts of The First 100 Hours in video form, for free on YouTube.

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Today, we have so much evidence about best practices for initiating and maintaining breastfeeding and lactation. Yet, I am surprised daily by how this information is ignored or misapplied, leading to iatrogenic low milk production, early weaning, and unnecessary use of infant formula.

Today, new mothers and parents have access to a wealth of information about breastfeeding and lactation at their fingertips online (and no, it’s not ALL incorrect information!).

Yet, too many struggle to understand HOW to use the information they find - or even which information applies to their situation.

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There’s a simple way to cut through all of this. We’ve got to start narrowing our gaze to understand how critical the first 4 days of lactation genuinely are. We have to look at the whole of the lactation journey through the lens of those first 100 hours of life. We need to streamline the support & information we give to new mothers so that they can navigate that timeframe and come out still breastfeeding at the end.

The First 100 Hours concept is my career’s work. It’s been 12 years since the day I sat at my backyard patio table and sketched the outline of the strategy, a course, and a way of thinking that could revolutionize- while also streamlining - how we practice early lactation care.

Now, it’s a book!

It’s a plan anyone can follow, not only for IBCLCs. It’s for breastfeeding peer supporters, birth workers, lactation educators and counselors, physicians, nurses - anyone who is honored to be invited into the new family’s space before or in the most immediate hours after birth. It allows you to take your knowledge about human lactation and adjust how you talk about it depending on who you are teaching.

It’s a whole attitude and style. It’s a way of thinking that can shift everyone’s focus from formula being the first answer to every early breastfeeding question to knowing that human milk CAN be expressed by hand, without a breast pump, and fed to a baby without needing to worry about using a bottle or artificial nipple.

Most importantly, it’s a way of teaching these concepts to parents and the rest of the healthcare world. By having the right words to say and intentional points to make, we can focus on meeting our audience where they are and taking them where they need to be regarding breastfeeding and lactation knowledge and techniques.

I believe this lactation teaching strategy can be effective for anyone who needs to communicate with someone else about human lactation. Let’s be honest: sometimes you’re talking to a 16-year-old young woman who has just given birth, while in the next few minutes, you might be speaking with an experienced nurse who needs your patient report and justification for the lactation care plan you just made. Or you might be working with a lactation client who is educated and experienced in livestock management right after you have finished teaching a prenatal breastfeeding class.

Our beautifully diverse and ever-changing clientele and audience present unique opportunities to communicate fundamental concepts in radically different ways throughout the day.

The First 100 Hours concept can take your lactation teaching and communication skills to the next level.

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Here are some ways you can continue to learn and connect with me:

• A book - Evolving the Modern Breastfeeding Experience: Holistic Lactation Care in the First 100 Hours, which you can buy here.

• The Evolve Lactation Podcast - you can listen here for free.

  The Breastfeeding Literacy Project lays out all of the concepts of The First 100 Hours in video form, for free on YouTube.