Most breastfeeding complications
begin in the first 72 hours.
The research shows they don't have to.
For midwives ยท IBCLCs ยท Doulas ยท Allied health professionals
working with women during pregnancy and in the early postnatal period
breastfeeding
breastfeeding at 6 months
in the 2023 study
For most breastfeeding women, the complications that end their breastfeeding journey early began in the early postnatal period.
Not because of anything they did. Not because of anything the practitioners caring for them failed to do. But because of a gap between what the evidence shows and what current training has historically provided.
Dr Robyn Thompson spent 50 years as a midwife asking why breastfeeding complications were so common in hospital settings, and so rare in the homebirth women she cared for. Her peer-reviewed research identified the specific practices causing preventable harm.
In 2023, Dr Jyai Allen and colleagues published the results of a facility-wide implementation of the Thompson Method at an Australian tertiary maternity hospital. Across 13,667 mother-baby pairs, the decade-long declining trend in breastfeeding at hospital discharge was significantly reversed.
This document summarises that research. It is free. It takes approximately 15 minutes to read.
If it surfaces a gap you recognise, there is a next step available when you are ready.
The four publications this summary draws on
