Rachel O'Brien, IBCLC

Rachel O'Brien, IBCLC Lactation consultant in Wayland MA
I help you feed your baby (IRL or virtual)
No guilt, no shame!
(2)

Rachel O’Brien is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) who earned her Master of Arts degree in human lactation in 2015. Rachel prides herself on providing real-life, guilt-free breastfeeding help and specializes in low milk supply, latch difficulty, bottle refusal, tongue tie and lip tie, and LGBTQIA+ lactation. When she isn’t doing office or virtual visits for breastfeedi

ng help Rachel is often blogging about lactation or mentoring other private practice IBCLCs. She uses her expertise, warmth, and sense of humor to help families to meet their breastfeeding and chestfeeding goals. When she’s not working you can find Rachel at home in Sudbury where she is always either playing with her three children, knitting, or watching drag queens.

08/16/2026

When everyone seems to be telling you how to spend your money, I’ll tell you how to save it. This is the list of popular baby products that I DO NOT think are worth the money, here’s why…

1. Bottle sterilizer

Yes, you do need to wash bottles after every feed. No, you do not need a $200 machine. Sanitizing is an extra step, and it’s not needed for the vast majority of babies.

1. Bottle warmer

First of all, you do NOT need a machine to make the milk warm. Second of all, babies don’t actually need warm milk, room temperature is just fine, and for most babies- cold is fine too! If your baby will only take a bottle at a very specific temperature, ok, then maybe consider buying a warmer; but for most babies it’s just another gadget that wastes your time AND your money.

1. Babylist Bottle Box

I would rather you to know what you’re looking for when choosing a bottle from your baby than randomly trying out whatever bottles the companies are paying to have sent to you in a bottle box. Comment BOTTLE BLOG and I’ll send you my blog where I break down exactly how to choose the right bottle.

1. Owlet monitor/ sock

An Owlet isn’t a scam but for most healthy babies it’s going to either 1) give you too much information that can make you more anxious, or 2) false alarm randomly which will scare the daylights out of you!

1. Baby clothing detergent

Putting the word “baby” in front of a product’s name is an incredible way to raise it’s price. use your family’s regular clothing detergent, and if baby seems to be having skin issues, then look for fragrance-free and dye-free. You can get that in a regular detergent for a fraction of the cost.

If you bought any of these, you didn’t do anything wrong!

This stuff is designed to be sold to exhausted, worried and overwhelmed parents.

Share this with a parent and help them save their 💸

08/14/2026

This is one of the biggest myths and I am physically unable to stay silent when I hear it.

Bottle 👏🏻 refusal 👏🏻 in 👏🏻 babies 👏🏻 under 👏🏻 six 👏🏻 months 👏🏻 is 👏🏻 not 👏🏻 behavioral 👏🏻

What is it then? It’s an oral function issue! It’s your baby not understanding how to get the milk out of it.

Babies are not manipulative, stubborn or “testing you”. They don’t understand cause & effect yet, so they can’t just “wait it out” until you “give in”. They actually need your help!

If you’re going through bottle refusal with your baby right now, I wrote a whole blog series that can help you. Comment BOTTLE REFUSAL and I’ll send it your way.

If you’re a lactation expert struggling to support families going through bottle refusal, I know EXACTLY how you feel because I felt the same…

Repeating the same old three pieces of advice we learned in our training like a broken record, even though they don’t even work.

That’s why I took a deep deep dive into understanding bottle refusal and made a course I could’ve only dreamt of as a young IBCLC.

Here are the details 👇🏼:

🍼 22 CERPs

🍼 Self-paced course, lifetime access

🍼 Hours of video instruction, professional & client handouts

🍼 Modules covering the complete methodology from assessment to care plan

🍼 Video resource library

🍼 Feedback from yours truly 💁‍♀️

🍼 Exclusive footage of actual bottle refusal consultations

💗 If you’re a lactation professional and want to help parents move BEYOND bottle refusal, this is the course for you! This course is for lactation professionals of all certifications.

📝 Comment EXPERT down below ⬇️ and I’ll send you all the details! 🫶🏼

If one more person tells a new mom to “wait longer between feeds so your breasts can fill up” I will scream into a burp ...
08/13/2026

If one more person tells a new mom to “wait longer between feeds so your breasts can fill up” I will scream into a burp cloth. Swipe for the milk supply myths I hear every single week… and what’s actually true.
Comment MILK SUPPLY if you’d like me to send you my three-part blog series.

08/11/2026

Some of the books I often recommend to parents when they ask me about breastfeeding. Save this post for your next book haul! I have more to recommend, especially for lactation consultants and IBCLCs - comment BOOKS and I will send you some more 📖🍼

08/05/2026

I know that lactation professionals teach parents to do “paced bottle feeding” by holding the bottle horizontally and filling the ni**le/teat tip halfway with milk- and I’m gonna catch heat for saying this, but I hate it.

The thought is that it makes the milk flow through the bottle slower, and that might be true, but it ALSO causes babies to suck both air and milk through the ni**le at the same time.

If you suck in just liquid, you swallow liquid. No air.
If you suck in just air, you breathe it back out. No swallowing air.

If you suck in liquid AND air, that’s when you get a belly full of gas. Think about drinking carbonated beverages, or using a straw that has a hole in it. Burp city.

So when bottle feeding, I ALWAYS recommend that the tip of the ni**le/teat is full of milk. The *entire* ni**le doesn’t need to be just milk- it’s ok if there’s some air at the top near the bottle collar- but the hole(s) at the ends of the ni**le tip need to be allowing just milk into baby’s mouth.

If baby starts to chug and you need to slow them down, keep the ni**le/teat in their mouth and drop the bottle down so that the ni**le is now ONLY AIR. Let them keep sucking to catch their breath. No need to take it out of their mouth. Sucking ONLY AIR won’t make them swallow air, it’ll just help them to stop chugging.

If you’d like to learn more about choosing a bottle and introducing a bottle to your breastfed/ chestfed baby, comment BOTTLE REFUSAL and I’ll send you a link to my three part blog series where I break it down step-by-step.

08/03/2026

It’s all marketing, guys. If your breastfeed baby is struggling to feed from a bottle, you don’t need to solve “ni**le confusion”.

Choosing the right bottle matters, but some marketing claims take it too far. Comment BOTTLE BLOG if you want my blog post where I talk about how to choose the right bottle for your baby.

07/29/2026

I have a very soft spot for struggling parents 😫 Trust me, I KNOW how it feels to be in the thick of it.

If you’re dealing with bottle refusal right now, comment BOTTLE REFUSAL and I’ll send you my blog post where I go over the exact steps to overcoming it.

And if you’re a lactation consultant who wants to feel more confident in supporting bottle refusal families, I got you.

📚 I created a 22-CERP course that will teach you my exact methodology from from assessment to care plan.

Comment EXPERT and I’ll send you all the details.

Address

260 Boston Post Road, Ste 2
Wayland, MA
01778

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 12pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm
Saturday 10am - 12pm

Telephone

+16172319089

Website

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