Baby Café Bakersfield: Who We Are

Video Series

As we gear up to celebrate 10 whole years of providing free, high-quality lactation care in Bakersfield, please enjoy this video series all about what we do and how human lactation works!

Hi, I'm Christine with Baby Café Bakersfield. I'm here to talk a little bit about what our organization does for our community. We provide free breastfeeding help to any family in Kern County who needs it. No family ever pays for our services and parents can connect with us by phone, text, email virtual consultation, with one of our lactation consultants, and in group sessions that are held every Wednesday.

Breastfeeding help beyond the hospital is what we provide. Many families are under the assumption that they'll get all the help that they need and all the information that they need when their baby is born in the hospital. But in reality, that can be a very brief time, a brief window, and many families need more help after they've gone home from the hospital.

Many need even more than they can get at their pediatrician's office. As you may know, pediatrician office visits can be short and sometimes they're taken up with other information and other cares that the baby might need. Lactation support is a really specific service that we can provide where we focus on lactation and we focus on the baby's overall growth and development so that we can make sure that families have all the information and techniques that they need to keep their baby safe and healthy, fed and growing.

It's always better to get personalized breastfeeding help than to simply rely on information that one can find on the internet because on the internet, there's a lot of general information as well as information that might have applied to someone else, but may not apply to that person in that specific situation. Clinical assistance at Baby Café is provided by lactation professionals, many of whom hold additional credentials outside of their lactation credentials.

We help mothers to breastfeed longer and to meet or exceed their own breastfeeding goals. We assisted more than 350 new mothers in 2021 alone. We began our service in 2014, so we've been providing these services for more than eight years now. We have had more than 3,200 website visits in 2021. Our social media presence is used to educate and inform the community (like we're doing right here) about the importance and the logistics of breastfeeding and human milk expression.

There are videos that we have created, which are housed on our website, which families can access at any time that can help to answer some of the questions that they may have about how breastfeeding works and how to get help. IBCLC care is appropriate for any baby who's been discharged from the NICU, for any baby who's been discharged from the hospital,for any baby who was born anywhere.

All of our staff are experienced with hospital lactation care and familiar with the practices that happen in the hospital, which we can help families to transition as they go home and are discharged into the community. We are specially trained to be able to help manage all lactation issues. We are skilled clinical lactation care providers and evidence has shown repeatedly that skilled clinical lactation care from IBCLCs improves health outcomes for mothers and babies.

You can self-refer. If you are a healthcare provider yourself, you can encourage your patients to self-refer to our service. And it is free. People do not have to provide a lot of personal information in order to get care from us. They do not have to provide identification or any sort of certifications or insurance or anything like that. They can use the Connect form to get in touch with us,

and that's located on our website, www.babycafebakersfield.org. They can also call or text us at (661) 228-0230. They can register to attend our weekly virtual live Q&A sessions on Wednesday mornings from nine to 10:30 AM {Pacific time}. Those are drop-in sessions where they can come in whenever they need to. They're held on Zoom and attendees can stay as long as they need.

Once their questions are answered, they're welcome to remain and continue in the conversation or move on with their morning. They can register for that from our website as well. We also offer PDF flyers that you can download and print so that you can hang them anywhere where mothers and parents and families might see them if you have an office or a location that might be able to share the news about our service,

We appreciate your time and we appreciate our community's support.