Top 10 Qualities of a Breastfeeding-Friendly Birth Team
Breastfeeding is a natural process, but it doesn’t always come easily. Many things help boost your success, like watching another mother breastfeed, taking a breastfeeding class, and having the support of your spouse or partner.
One of the most powerful strategies, though, is to labor and give birth with as few interventions as possible, since your baby's breastfeeding reflexes are naturally stimulated by a normal birth process. It's also common for one intervention to lead to another — an unplanned epidural, for example, to cope with the sharper contractions brought on by a Pitocin induction. Together, these interventions can disrupt breastfeeding in real ways: the lingering effects of medication, more pain from an instrumental delivery or surgery, and separation between you and your baby.
That's why one of the best ways to protect your breastfeeding success is to seek out a breastfeeding-friendly birth team — providers who are skilled and genuinely enthusiastic about low-intervention, low-tech birth. Their expertise in natural birth helps you both come through the experience feeling empowered and at your best, without needing extra recovery from being "done to." That protects your connection with your baby, along with their instinct and ability to breastfeed skillfully.
As you interview (or get to know) your potential midwife or obstetrical care provider, check in with them on these priorities — they'll help you and your baby have the smoothest possible breastfeeding beginning and journey. Here's what to look for:
1. Focus on empowerment and education
Care providers who specialize in normal birth don't have to be cajoled into "letting" you birth with fewer routine interventions — they're passionate about supporting it, and about educating families on the benefits of minimal interventions and how that support serves your breastfeeding journey. Look for providers who:
Welcome and encourage questions
Demonstrate their commitment to informed consent by volunteering lots of balanced information
Trust and respect parents' decisions about their own and their baby's care
Proactively help mothers navigate hospital routines that might disrupt their breastfeeding goals
2. Encourage natural comfort measures
The integration of low-tech support techniques in labor — such as hydrotherapy for pain relief (using showers and tubs), encouraging (not restricting) movement in labor, supporting a mother to birth in her position of choice, and the hands-on support of doulas — all result in:
Fewer requests for pain medication
Fewer interventions such as instrument deliveries (vacuum extraction, forceps)
Reduced perineal tears during birth
50% fewer cesarean births
Quicker recoveries
Higher Apgar scores at birth for baby, meaning a healthier and more medically stable newborn
Improved breastfeeding outcomes — more women start breastfeeding, and more mothers continue for longer
3. Promotion of gentle birth practices to protect mother and baby
Your birth team actively encourages natural birth (not just "allowing" it) by using low-tech approaches to labor and birth first, and by carefully avoiding the overuse of routine technology or invasive procedures whenever possible. This approach:
Substantially reduces your risk of unnecessary medication, instruments to help deliver your baby, or an unplanned surgical birth.
Results in far fewer of the problems that typically follow those interventions — less pain, less fever (some birth medications list fever as a side effect), less antibiotic use, jaundice, separation, and other related complications — all of which are known to increase difficulties with latching and nursing.
Protects your baby's natural reflexes by keeping their own biological rhythm undisturbed, so they know exactly how to feed.
4. Commitment to minimizing the routine use of birth medications
The less medication used during labor and birth, the more awake and vigorous your baby will be afterward — which safeguards their normal breastfeeding behavior. While medications such as Pitocin and epidurals are sometimes welcome or necessary, they do cross the placenta to your baby and can affect their reflexes, alertness, sucking, and motivation to nurse. When babies are affected by medication, they are more likely to:
Have a weaker suck
Be less alert
Be less engaged in bonding
Be less able to focus on learning their new task of nursing
When your birth team emphasizes non-pharmaceutical ways to support and enhance your labor whenever possible, they are also protecting your baby's nursing reflexes and instinctual motivation at the breast — while minimizing your risk of being separated from your baby at birth due to complications.
5. Help baby get close and stay close with skin-to-skin contact
Your first hour together is called "The Golden Hour" because of the incredibly positive benefits this physical contact brings to both of you. Skin-to-skin contact boosts the release of oxytocin, often called the "love hormone," which helps you:
Reduce postpartum bleeding
Increase bonding with your baby
Bring in milk faster
For your baby, that same oxytocin release helps them:
Maintain their body temperature
Regulate their breathing and heart rate
Be eager to bond and connect
Have a vigorous, instinctive drive to nurse
The Golden Hour begins as soon as you and your baby are together after birth. While it's ideal to protect this early window from being casually disturbed by hospital routines, don't despair if needed medical care takes priority — bonding is not lost to you. Whenever you're both ready and able, take the time for a fresh start: slow down, settle into some skin-to-skin time, and get to know each other.
6. Honor the baby’s natural feeding instincts
Respecting the first "Golden Hour" goes beyond simply keeping mother and baby physically together — it also means protecting their connection from unnecessary disruption.
It's essential to delay non-essential interruptions or medical assessments that could interfere with the newborn's instinctive feeding reflexes and their first efforts to nurse.
In the home births I attend, where there are no external time protocols, parents usually choose to delay cutting the cord and the newborn exam (including measurements and weighing the baby) for 1 to 2 hours. In the meantime, routine checks of the baby's heart rate and breathing are quietly completed without disturbing the baby on their mama.
7. Provide gentle, respectful handling
Both mothers and babies are able to relax and smoothly begin their breastfeeding relationship when their care is respectful and sensitive, and avoids:
Unnecessary suctioning
A loud, bright environment in the immediate postpartum period
Jarring or careless handling of mother and baby
Interruptions based on routine rather than individual need
Overzealous procedures, such as rough, prolonged abdominal massage performed on every mother regardless of whether it's actually needed
8. Advocate for keeping moms and babies together 24/7
When care providers work to prevent unnecessary separation, and ideally are willing to support safe bed-sharing* if desired, this:
Reduces stress for mother and baby
Encourages feeding on demand
Keeps baby warmer and more stable
Builds mothers' confidence
Helps mothers and babies learn each other's cues
All of which lead to better immediate breastfeeding, as well as longer, more successful breastfeeding overall, with fewer problems along the way.
*See my breastfeeding course, Navigating Breastfeeding for safe sleep resources, or my Navigating Birth course for an detailed discussion of this hot topic.
9. Limit unnecessary supplementation and use of artificial nipples
Breastfeeding-friendly birth teams strongly discourage the unnecessary use of:
Bottles
Supplementation of any kind
Pacifiers
...unless genuinely medically necessary, especially in the first few days and weeks. Beyond that, these care providers:
Advocate for early and frequent breastfeeding to help mothers establish a good milk supply
Proceed thoughtfully with any interventions, to help prevent oral aversions or nipple confusion
10. Help connect moms to resources
Knowing where to turn for support when it's needed helps diffuse issues before they become crises. It's incredibly helpful when your birth team supports your transition to comfortable breastfeeding by offering additional resources, such as:
Their office's lending library
The phone number of a recommended lactation consultant
A list of community resources that host breastfeeding support groups
I know that if you've been looking for this kind of informed, low-intervention care, you may have found it challenging to find providers or facilities who truly fit that description.
And of course, things can come up even under the best of circumstances — birth always asks for some flexibility and adaptability. But understanding what helps you and your baby begin breastfeeding well means you'll be better equipped to navigate your birth and support your baby's efforts, whatever comes your way. And missing out on these ideals is not a deal-breaker. If interventions do become part of your birth story, as they sometimes do, it simply means you may need a little more patience in the early days of breastfeeding, or some extra help to get through a slower or bumpier start.
If you need to optimize your birth and breastfeeding priorities, consider changing birth locations or providers (free download here), hiring a doula, becoming more informed through natural birth and breastfeeding education, insisting that your birth plan be honored, and advocating intensely for yourself and your baby.
Whether your birth unfolds smoothly or includes some of these interventions, choosing your team with these priorities in mind gives your breastfeeding journey every chance to start off strong, connected, and full of confidence.
