Birth Savvy Bub Savvy

20/08/2026

This is such an important and long-overdue step. Thank you, Senator Marielle Smith, for sharing your own experience and for successfully establishing this inquiry.

Although this Senate Select Committee will examine women’s health much more broadly, including fertility and women’s pain, it’s particularly exciting to see Senator Smith placing postpartum care firmly in the spotlight.

Far too many women fall through enormous gaps after giving birth.

I am particularly hopeful this inquiry will lead to properly funded, accessible and evidence-based breastfeeding and infant sleep support. Families deserve care grounded in normal infant biology, not advice that leaves women feeling their bodies have failed or that their perfectly normal babies need fixing.

Good postpartum care should help parents feel informed, supported and able to trust their instincts. It should never be an optional extra.

If you have a lived or professional perspective that the committee needs to hear, please follow along. I will share more information about how to make a submission as soon as it becomes available.

17/08/2026

What if rising birth interventions and caesarean rates aren’t mainly because women are older or asking for more caesareans?

A new Australian study looked at more than 1.3 million births in NSW between 2004 and 2018, then focused closely on low-risk first-time mothers who entered labour without an obvious clinical indication or preference for intervention.

The researchers found something important.

The growing use of a cascade of interventions (labour induction/augmentation → epidural → instrumental birth or unplanned caesarean) was not well explained by changes in women’s characteristics over this time frame, or by women increasingly choosing more interventionist hospitals.

Instead, much of the increase was explained by hospital practice style.

In other words, the culture and clinical norms of the hospital mattered.

And the induction data are particularly striking.

Among these low-risk first-time mothers:

• Induction increased from 28% to 46%
• Induction at 37–38 weeks increased from 20.7% to 49.2%
• “Prolonged pregnancy”, defined in the paper as 41–42 weeks, became less common as a reason for induction
• Induction without a recorded medical reason increased substantially

And when the researchers compared hospitals, they found considerable variation in intervention rates even after accounting for differences between the women giving birth.

This challenges the very common explanation that intervention rates are rising mainly because women are older, higher risk or simply asking for more caesareans.

For this group of women, that explanation just doesn’t stack up.

The bigger message for me is this:

Where a woman gives birth, and the culture of care she encounters there, can profoundly influence what happens to her even when her underlying level of risk is essentially the same.

Same risk.
Different hospital.
Potentially very different birth.

Knowing the culture of the hospital you are birthing in matters.

📖 Fiebig, D. G., Homer, C., Scarf, V., Viney, R., & Yu, S. (2026). Why Are Cascade Birth Interventions Rising? Health Economics and Policy, 1(1), 2. https://doi.org/10.3390/hep1010002

07/08/2026

🌍 World Breastfeeding Week 2026

Day 7 of 7

Kinda chic to…

…feed your baby to sleep.

…understand normal infant sleep before blaming low milk supply.

…trust soft breasts to keep making milk.

…remember the dummy is an artificial breast, not the other way around.

…watch your baby, not the clock.

…remember that finishing a bottle does not prove your baby needed all of it.

For the past six days, we have looked at some of the most common pieces of advice that can undermine breastfeeding confidence.

Advice that tells parents to delay feeds, limit feeds, replace the breast, distrust their bodies or interpret normal baby behaviour as evidence that something has gone wrong.

But babies are not machines, and breastfeeding is not a measurable transaction that must follow a timetable.

Breastfeeding is nutrition, but it is also comfort, regulation, communication, connection and sleep support.

Babies wake frequently. They sometimes want to feed again soon. They suck for reasons other than hunger. Breasts continue making milk even when they feel soft. A baby swallowing milk that is flowing does not automatically mean the breastfeed was not enough.

My final slide says:

Kinda chic to trust your baby more than social media.

Social media can be a wonderful place to find information and support, but it cannot see, assess or know your individual baby.

It cannot know your breast milk storage capacity or your baby's temperament, feeding pattern, or need for closeness. And it certainly cannot reduce every baby to the same feeding schedule, wake window or set of rules.

Your baby is not a trend.

Generic advice should never drown out the baby in front of you or make you feel that normal breastfeeding and infant behaviour need to be fixed.

Perhaps the most useful question is not:

“How do I stop my baby doing this?”

Perhaps it is:

“Why is my baby doing this?”

Because when we understand normal breastfeeding and normal infant behaviour, particularly sleep, so much of what parents are told to do no longer makes sense.

🤱 Sometimes the best way to support breastfeeding isn’t to change the baby. It’s to understand the baby.

07/08/2026

🌍 World Breastfeeding Week 2026
7 Things You've Probably Heard About Breastfeeding
Day 6 (sorry it's a day late)

"If your baby drinks a bottle after breastfeeding, they must still be hungry."

It can feel like convincing proof that the breastfeed wasn't enough.

But an empty bottle only tells us that your baby swallowed the milk that was offered. It doesn't tell us whether they needed the entire amount.

Babies suck for many reasons, not just hunger. Sucking is comforting, regulating and deeply instinctive. Once milk is flowing into a baby's mouth, swallowing also becomes part of keeping their airway safe.

When milk reaches the back of the mouth, babies automatically swallow to move it safely away from the airway. This is an important protective reflex. It means that continuing to suck and swallow isn't always the same as needing more milk.

This doesn't mean babies never need additional milk. Sometimes they absolutely do.

However, if your baby does need a "top-up", it is usually best to top them up at the breast first, rather than reaching straight for a bottle. Offering the breast again gives your baby another opportunity to transfer milk while providing your breasts with the stimulation that helps maintain your milk supply.

If additional milk is still needed after that, offering it by paced bottle feeding allows your baby more time to recognise and respond to their own feelings of fullness, rather than simply continuing to drink because milk keeps flowing.

Whether a baby needs extra milk should always be based on the whole picture, including:

🤍 effective milk transfer
🤍 wet and dirty nappies
🤍 growth over time
🤍 your baby's overall health and wellbeing
..not simply whether they will finish a bottle.

Using a bottle as a test of milk supply can unintentionally undermine breastfeeding confidence. When top-ups replace time and milk removal at the breast without protecting breast stimulation, they can gradually contribute to the very supply concerns everyone was trying to avoid.

A baby swallowing milk that is flowing from a bottle is not proof that they needed it.

🤱 Sometimes the best way to support breastfeeding isn't to change the baby. It's to understand the baby.

05/08/2026

05/08/2026

Day 5 Facebook post

“Don’t let your baby breastfeed for more than 10 minutes or they’ll get too tired.”

This is still surprisingly common advice, but it was never meant for healthy, full-term babies.

The concern came from neonatal care, where clinicians were understandably thinking about preterm and medically compromised babies. The theory was that a vulnerable baby might use more energy breastfeeding than they received from the breastmilk.

But when researchers compared breastfeeding and bottle-feeding in stable preterm babies, that is not what they found.

Even though the breastfeeds lasted longer, there was no significant difference in energy expenditure after the two types of feed.

A longer feed was not a more exhausting feed. And breastfeeding didn't use more energy than bottlefeeding.

Other studies have found that breastfeeding may actually be more physiologically stable for preterm babies.

During breastfeeding, babies have been found to have:

🤍 higher oxygen saturation
🤍 fewer episodes of oxygen desaturation
🤍 fewer signs of physiological stress
🤍 more favourable heart rate responses
🤍 more efficient milk transfer

A 2026 randomised controlled study of 90 preterm infants found that oxygen saturation increased and heart rate decreased during breastfeeding. The babies also transferred more milk and fed more efficiently than those receiving their first oral feed from a bottle.

During bottle-feeding, oxygen saturation decreased, and heart rate increased.

The bottle was not the physiologically easier option.

Of course, some babies really are too unwell or immature to safely feed by mouth. But these babies need to be fed milk through a nasogastric tube while they develop the stability and skills needed for oral feeding.

The answer is not to replace the breast with a bottle.

And for a healthy term baby who is feeding effectively:

If they have enough energy to feed from a bottle, they have enough energy to feed from the breast.

There is no reason to stop a breastfeed at ten minutes because of the fear that your baby will become too tired.

Let your baby take the time they need.

Watch your baby, not the clock.

🤱 Sometimes the best way to support breastfeeding isn’t to change the baby. It’s to understand the baby.

Tomorrow's post: “If your baby takes a bottle after breastfeeding, they must still have been hungry.”

References

Berger I, Weintraub V, Kopolovitz R, Dollberg S. Energy expenditure in breastfed and bottle-fed preterm infants. Archives of Disease in Childhood. 2009.

Chen CH, Wang TM, Chang HM, Chi CS. The effect of breast- and bottle-feeding on oxygen saturation and body temperature in preterm infants. Journal of Human Lactation. 2000;16(1):21–27.

Sabaz N, Gözen D, Taştekin A. Effects of breastfeeding and bottle feeding as the initial oral feeding on physiological parameters and feeding performance in preterm infants: a randomised controlled study. Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition. 2026.

Simpson C, Schanler RJ, Lau C. Early introduction of oral feeding in preterm infants. Pediatrics. 2002.

El-Kassas O, Amer A, Abdel-Hady H, et al. The transition from tube feeding to oral feeding algorithm in preterm infants: a case-control study. BMC Pediatrics. 2024.

02/08/2026

🤱World Breastfeeding Week 2026 – Day 2

“Your baby is waking because you haven’t got enough milk for them.”

It’s one of the most common reasons mothers begin to doubt their breastfeeding.

Sometimes concerns about milk supply are real and deserve careful assessment. But for many families, frequent waking is simply part of normal infant biology, not a sign that something is wrong.

Human babies are designed to wake frequently.

They wake to feed, but they also wake because they are not designed to spend long periods alone. They seek warmth, safety, regulation and the reassurance of being close to the adult who cares for them.

For many babies, waking every two hours to feed is completely normal.

Breastfeeding and infant sleep evolved together. Frequent waking brings babies back to the breast, where they receive far more than milk. They receive nutrition, comfort, warmth, regulation and connection, all of which are important for healthy development.

Frequent feeding also makes sense from a breastfeeding perspective. Every mother has a different milk storage capacity, so some babies naturally feed little and often, while others take larger feeds less frequently. Neither pattern is more “normal” than the other. What matters most is that babies receive enough milk over 24 hours.

Unfortunately, when frequent waking is automatically interpreted as “low milk supply”, women can begin to lose confidence in their bodies. They may introduce unnecessary top-ups, start stretching feeds or worry that breastfeeding is failing, when their baby may simply be behaving exactly as human babies are designed to behave.

If you have concerns about your baby’s milk intake, it’s important to look at the whole picture, including effective milk transfer, weight gain, wet and dirty nappies, and your baby’s overall health and wellbeing.

But frequent waking, on its own, is not evidence that you don’t have enough milk.

Frequent waking to feed isn’t a flaw in the system. For many babies, it’s part of the design.

Sometimes the best way to support breastfeeding isn’t to change the baby. It’s to understand the baby.

02/08/2026

World Breastfeeding Week 2026 – Day 1 (a day late!)

I'm a day late with my first World Breastfeeding Week post!

That's because yesterday was spent doing exactly what World Breastfeeding Week is all about: supporting breastfeeding families. My day included a Zoom consultation with a family in the Eastern States, followed by an evening hospital visit to help establish breastfeeding.

So, here is Day 1...

"You shouldn't feed your baby to sleep."

It's one of the most common pieces of advice new parents receive, usually because feeding to sleep is seen as a habit babies will later need to break.

But what if falling asleep while feeding isn't interfering with sleep development?

What if it's part of it?

After feeding, babies experience a coordinated series of biological changes that support satiety, relaxation and sleepiness. One of these is the release of cholecystokinin (CCK), a hormone involved in digestion, satiety and sleepiness. Researchers found that CCK levels increased during and after breastfeeding, helping explain why babies so often become drowsy during and after a feed.

Of course, breastfeeding is much more than milk. It also provides warmth, close physical contact, sucking, familiar smell and the release of calming hormones, creating the perfect conditions for babies to drift naturally into sleep.

Every time a baby breastfeeds into sleep, they experience a simple sequence:

"I feel sleepy."

followed by

"I go to sleep."

Like every other aspect of development, babies learn through repeated experiences.

Yet parents are often encouraged to wake babies just as they begin drifting off, in the hope that they'll learn to fall asleep another way.

Could repeatedly interrupting that transition also interrupt an important piece of learning?

For me, this is why understanding normal infant sleep is such an important part of supporting breastfeeding. When we understand that babies are biologically designed to become sleepy while feeding, we stop seeing feeding to sleep as a problem that needs fixing.

Perhaps feeding to sleep isn't something babies need to unlearn.

Perhaps it's one of the first ways they learn to recognise and respond to their own internal sleep cues.

So if someone advises you not to let your baby fall asleep at the breast so you can put them down "drowsy but awake", it's reasonable to ask:

What do you know about the physiology of breastfeeding and infant sleep and the neurobiology of interrupting a baby's natural transition into sleep?

📚 Reference

Uvnäs-Moberg K, Marchini G, Winberg J. Plasma cholecystokinin concentrations after breastfeeding in healthy 4 day old infants. Archives of Disease in Childhood. 1993;68(1 Spec No):46-48.

24/07/2026

This 👇👇👇👇👇

23/07/2026

My breastfeeding tips guide has had a refresh.

I’ve updated and expanded the guide I share with my clients, with practical information about common breastfeeding concerns, including:

signs your baby is getting enough milk
sleepy newborns
frequent and cluster feeding
slow weight gain and low milk transfer
jaundice, mastitis and vasospasm
expressed milk storage
ni**le shields, bottles and returning to the breast
gentle weaning and night weaning

I’ve also updated the expressed milk storage page to reflect newer research about safely reoffering milk left after a feed.

This guide is for the personal use of my clients. If you have previously worked with me and would like the updated version, please send me a message or email, and I’ll happily send it through.

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