Breastfeeding can be hard and lonely. These women are trying to change that

By Danielle Wiener-Bronner, CNN

New York (CNN) — In the hours after her daughter was born, Andrea Ippolito already felt like she was falling short as a mother.

“Here I was, just like many women, trying to recover after this insane medical procedure of giving birth, and I just felt like a failure,” she told CNN. Ippolito was struggling to breastfeed because of her low milk supply. Even now, about six years later, the memory makes her emotional.

“My daughter was dropping weight,” she recalled. “It was just incredibly stressful.” Ippolito ended up feeding her daughter a combination of breast milk and baby formula until she was three months old, when Ippolito weaned her off breast milk altogether. “It was a struggle the entire time,” she said.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that infants consume only breast milk — no formula — until they are about 6 months old. But at that age, just 56% of US babies consume any breast milk, according the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And only a quarter of 6-month-olds are exclusively breast fed.

But for some women or birthing parents, exclusive breastfeeding or chestfeeding is simply not possible because of inadequate supply. Many stop because they lack much-needed structural and emotional support and wean before they had planned to.

Ippolito thinks that more help in those early days would have improved her experience, both practically and emotionally. So in 2019 she started SimpliFed, a virtual platform that partners with health plans and doctors to get patients insurance-covered breastfeeding support from International Board-Certified Lactation Consultants, or IBCLCs, among other things. “Our posture as an organization is whatever your goals are, we’ll support you,” she said.

Hers is one of a number of young tech companies connecting new parents to a network of support. It’s a growing area: In 2024 postpartum services, including lactation consulting, amounted to a $13.74 billion industry, according to the market research company Mordor Intelligence. The postpartum services market, which may include apps, virtual platforms and other technological solutions, will hit $22.6 billion by 2029, Mordor predicts.

“Over the last decade, there’s finally been this recognition … that women’s health has been dramatically underserved,” said Ippolito, noting that there remains room for improvement. Investors are “looking at what’s next and where there’s going to be continued market opportunity. And that’s where they’re looking at postpartum care services like ours.”

Still, it’s an uphill battle.

Why breastfeeding is so hard

Even when everything goes well, breastfeeding is taxing. In the very beginning, newborns typically get hungry every one to three hours. That means multiple feedings a day, including overnight. In the months that follow, babies often nurse 8 to 12 times a day — a slower pace, but not by much. Then there are the potential problems, like oversupply, undersupply and a nasty infection called mastitis, which can exacerbate the normal difficulties. Parents who are still breastfeeding when they return to work need regular breaks and a clean, suitable place to pump and store breast milk during the day.

So it’s not surprising that breastfeeding rates fall off, especially when parents can’t access help. But breastfeeding offers great benefits to both children and parents, according to experts.

Breast milk is “like the baby’s first vaccine and protection against infection” because mothers pass antibodies to children through their milk, explained Ann Kellams, a pediatrician who is the founder and director of the University of Virginia’s Breastfeeding and Lactation Medicine program. It’s also a dynamic substance. “The content of the breast milk changes with the environment, with the time of year in which infections are going around, and also with each developmental stage of the baby,” she said. “It is personalized.” Studies suggest that breastfed babies have lower risks of illness and chronic health problems, and that breastfeeding parents have lower risks of maternal diabetes and hypertension. And it’s not all or nothing, noted Kellams. “Any breastfeeding, any drop, is important and meaningful.”

To help increase rates of breastfeeding in the US, the 2010 Affordable Care Act required some employers to give nursing parents a private space and enough time to pump breast milk during the day. It also stated that health insurance plans must cover lactation support services and products, like pumps.

The mandate, however, didn’t do much at first. So entrepreneurs stepped in.

The business of breastfeeding support

When it came to lactation care “the ACA was kind of shouting into the void,” said Sarah Kellogg Neff, CEO of the Lactation Network. Lactation consultants hadn’t at that point worked with insurance, she said. And many parents didn’t even know what lactation consultants were.

In 2016, “we were among the first people anywhere to get reimbursed at all for this care, and that was four years into ACA implementation,” said Neff. The Lactation Network, which has its roots as a breast pump seller, now has the largest network of IBCLCs in the United States, according to the company.

While SimpliFed and the Lactation Network focus on connecting parents with insurance-covered lactation consultations and other healthcare, Pumpspotting is mostly about helping parents find each other. For Amy VanHaren, who founded the app in 2015 and serves as its CEO, breastfeeding was an isolating experience.

“Every day I was either nursing or pumping, or thinking about the next nursing and pumping session, and just constantly feeling inadequate and alone and really uncertain,” she said. For VanHaren, community was crucial. “I was missing the connection point to other women who were in this phase of life, who were dealing with the same emotional struggles.”

In the Pumpspotting app, users share stories, ask questions and raise concerns. People respond to each other, and lactation consultants jump in to weigh in on specific queries. This year Pumpspotting also sent out Barb, its Breast Express Bus, on a national tour. The brightly-painted vehicle opened its doors to curious parents across the country, giving them a cheery place to nurse and browse through breastfeeding accessories.

A breastfeeding seal of approval

Pumpspotting has a few revenue streams. There is a premium version of the app for $9.99 a month that VanHaren hopes will be covered by employers. And Pumpspotting has brand partners whose ads might appear in the app.

It also serves as a consultant for companies that need help complying with legislation like the recent PUMP Act, which builds on the ACA’s requirement of lactation rooms at work. Consulting could be big business for the company, said Matt Douglas, founder and CEO of Sincere Corporation, which includes virtual brands like the photo app Timehop and ecard platform Punchbowl. Sincere announced an investment in Pumpspotting last year. “Every single company in this country should have a Pumpspotting seal of approval,” Douglas said. “Not only is it the right thing to do as an employer, but it’s also a risk mitigation,” he added. “I think it’s a huge opportunity.”

Not everyone sees it that way. “Being a solo female founder of a breastfeeding technology company … it’s always been a complex journey to get the funds,” said VanHaren. “We have a long way to go.”

The Lactation Network is privately held and doesn’t have external investment, Neff said. But she pays attention to how investors are approaching women’s health — and some are all talk. “There’s a lot of conversation, but there’s not a whole lot of skin in the game yet.”

Some healthcare professionals have their own concerns. Gayle Shipp, an assistant professor at Michigan State University’s public health department and a board member of the Michigan Breastfeeding Network, said it’s important to consider the mission of groups providing lactation care. “Who’s on the board… and then beyond that, is there diversity?” There are racial and socioeconomic disparities in breastfeeding rates, she noted, so “how are those companies considering that?” Ultimately, she said “transparency is probably key for all of them.”

Kellams fears that for-profit companies could end up with conflicts of interest and said she would prefer that solutions stay in the public sector. But she acknowledges that “there’s a gap in what the traditional care is providing,” and that something has to change.

“As a society we put so much pressure on new families to do everything perfectly, and we don’t talk about what it’s really like to be postpartum and how much that really stinks and how hard it is,” Kellams said. “There’s just so many things that we can help with. But it’s going to take changing the way we give care.”

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