Help Us Help Families

Imagine that you and your partner have just had a baby. Now you’re at home with a baby who isn’t breastfeeding well, or pumping isn’t going as well as expected, and you’re not sure what to do next. You thought you would have more time to get help in the hospital, or you got really good help but your problems started after you already brought the baby home. Or maybe you’ve been to the pediatrician’s office and assumed they could help you, but your appointment was brief and they didn’t really have anything helpful to tell you. They didn’t watch you try to latch the baby, watch the baby feed, or see what it looks like when you’re pumping. You’re frustrated, sad, and feeling a bit disconnected from your goals of breastfeeding your baby.

Unfortunately, this is the reality for many new families in Bakersfield and Kern County. It’s why we created Baby Café Bakersfield nearly 8 years ago: we knew there was a gap in lactation care that was preventing people from breastfeeding. Since 2014 we have been making breastfeeding support and clinical lactation care available to anyone who needs it for free. That’s right: FREE. Families DO NOT pay for the care they receive at Baby Café.

Over the years, we’ve provided care in a group setting, one to one, and now virtually as well. We text with new moms and dads, we email them, we meet with them virtually and in person. We offer whatever they need, and we do it promptly. Time is of the essence when you’re trying to solve a breastfeeding problem.

The staff who provide lactation care at Baby Café Bakersfield are highly trained and very experienced - our IBCLC staff have been doing this work for decades, our nurses have decades of experience in the field of nursing, and our lactation counselors are educated and thoroughly supervised and guided as they gain experience toward becoming IBCLCs themselves.

This work is meaningful. Receiving effective and caring breastfeeding support is an experience which lives on in the memories parents carry of their early parenting years. Families come back to us with each child, regardless of how long they breastfed the first time, because they understand that each baby is different and breastfeeding can look different each time. We are humbled to be invited into their lives every few years, and many families have used our services for 2, 3, and 4 babies each.

Providing this service contributes to the overall health of our community, and we do it with pride as neighbors and community members.The services we provide are free to families, but they are not free for us to provide. We minimize our costs as much as possible, but they continue to rise each year. We rely on the kindness and generosity of members of our community - like you - to donate to us to keep our services going.

We are committed to keeping our costs low, and many of our staff have been offering their professional lactation and nursing services as volunteers for years now. But the fact remains: there are overhead costs for us which we cannot avoid, and we need your support more than ever. Families report receiving less and less lactation support during their hospital stay and pediatrician’s office visits since the COVID pandemic began, and more and more families are relying solely on Baby Café Bakersfield for all the breastfeeding care and support they need.

We are thrilled to have the privilege of continuing to serve the lactation needs of our community, and with your generous support, we can. Please donate what you can to help us keep the milk flowing for local families!