Her Story.

Her Bio:

Kimberly Seals Allers is an award-winning journalist, author and a nationally recognized advocate for breastfeeding and infant health. A former senior editor at ESSENCE and writer at FORTUNE magazine, Kimberly’s fifth book, The Big Let Down—How Medicine, Big Business and Feminism Undermine Breastfeeding , an Amazon best-seller, was published by St. Martin’s Press in January 2017. A frequent contributor to The New York Times , Washington Post, and her own HuffPost blog, Kimberly is also a popular international public speaker, who has presented at Congressional hearings on infant health and is a regular speaker at national health-related conferences, including the Partnership for Healthier America, the March of Dimes, and the National Collaborative for Health Equity. She has spoken at Yale and the University of California at Berkeley and has also hosted private events for Google and other companies. Kimberly is a former Food and Community Fellow with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) where she worked on reframing breastfeeding disparities as a food systems issue. She currently leads nationwide workshops for health care professionals on cultural competency and developing community-based strategies to reduce the racial disparities in breastfeeding and infant mortality rates. Kimberly has appeared on Good Morning America, CNN, Anderson Cooper, the Tom Joyner Morning Show, Fox News and has been featured in various international and national media outlets, including The Guardian (U.K.), U.S. News & World Report and Essence. Kimberly is a graduate of New York University and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. A divorced mother of two, Kimberly lives in Queens, NY with her children.

Her Background:

Kimberly grew up in Queens, NY, where she now lives with her 2 children. She is happy to have family and friends close to be there to support her in her parenting.Welcome to AAB, etc.

Opening:

I had the pleasure of spending time with Kimberly Seals Allers who is an award winning writer, journalist, activist and the author of her fifth book – The Big Letdown, How medicine, big business, and feminism undermine breastfeeding. Kimberly is A frequent contributor to The New York Times , Washington Post, and her own HuffPost blog. She is nationally recognized advocate for breastfeeding and infant health.

In her book, Kimberly discuss how unsavory alliances between the medical and scientific fields combined with federal policies and major forces of structural gaps relentlessly undermine woman in their decision making when it comes to how they feed their babies. As mothers, we have many barriers to breastfeeding that we face on a regular basis. Some mothers that I meet with talk about how they feel they failed with breastfeeding the first time around, or feel they are failing with this new baby. Mothers are not failing. The Big Letdown is about how mothers should not think of their breastfeeding struggles as a personal failure. The system is letting us down. The system is failing us. Science, Medicine, Big Business, feminist ideals and the breastfeeding movement itself have all failed around us. You are going to love this interview as we get into some excellent topics surround this issue.

I do have to begin by saying that There were technical issues for the first 5 minutes of our interview. During these few minutes, Kimberly talked to us about her first birth and her beautiful baby girl. She weighed in at 8 lbs 6 oz and was born by cesarean section. Kimberly describes the rough start she had with breastfeeding. In her book, she shares a story about what happened when her baby was 6 weeks old and she was home suffering with a baby who would not breastfeed and was crying for hours on end. She tells us how she raced to the hospital, desperate for help only to find the doors to the breastfeeding mothers group room locked. Defeated and desperate, as she considers opening up a bottle of free formula she was given “just in case.” a hospital volunteer finds her and manages to connect her with the lactation consultant who helps her turn the situation around and help her latch her baby latch on and begin breastfeeding. As she and her baby calm down and settle into a comfortable breastfeeding, she wonders how come breastfeeding is such a struggle for some of us.

We are going to jump right into our interview where she is telling us how determined she was to make breastfeeding work and how grateful she is that, while she initially needed to pump, how glad she was for the support she received from breastfeeding mothers group at the hospital.

The group exposed her to see how other women were caring for their baby. She learned about babywearing, extended breastfeeding and answered a lot of her questions about newborn mothering. She begins by telling us how determined she was to make breastfeeding work.

Nursing in Public:

It took a while for her to become comfortable nursing in public. At first, she use to work feedings around her public outings. As her comfort level increased with breastfeeding, she ventured out into public without being so concerned about needing to feed her baby in public. She had scarves and a few good nursing tops which helped her nurse discreetly. She was able to take a break from work, which helped her to continue to breastfeed as she is not quite sure how she could have managed pumping and working. Kimberly was never asked to leave a public place when breastfeeding her baby.

Breastfeeding behind closed doors:

The private rooms are nice to be able to feed our babies. They serve an excellent purpose for parents who want or need privacy when breastfeeding. However, we need to have the ability to breastfeed wherever and whenever we want without the fear of being shamed. The answer is not to put breastfeeding moms away in rooms and lock women away from sight. What we don’t want is women to be told they have to go in that room. The more we have woman breastfeeding in public, the more normalized it will become.

Formula companies and marketing:

As technology has improved, companies have changed the way they market to us. Kimberly tells us her experience of buying baby wipes which she wanted to use just for her car. This led to her getting a coupon for formula at the register. This targeting is happening all over.

Hospitals and free formula:

Most hospitals give out free formula to their patients. They are placed in pretty back packs with lots of coupons and other freebies such as a measuring tape and ice packs and pumping bags. There is a strong movement to “ban the bags” in which hospitals like ones in NYC hospitals don’t give out any more free formula. The more hospitals that take on the “ban the bag” project, the more insidious the formula marketers become to do their best to get t heir product into the hands of healthcare workers who have access to new parents.

Hospitals are ground zero.. still trying to target nurses and physicians. Now they are using social media to reach nurses directly. They receive message via social media inviting them to dinners. Not much has changed, but how they are marketing has changed.

What projects is Kimberly working on now.

In October she did her first community summit. She will be releasing a series of videos related to how we can improve our community engagement how we can improve our community knowledge.

Speaking at different conferences and sign up for her newsletter at:
KimberlySealsAllers.com