About The Lactation College on Substack

A crazy idea

This Substack site started in January 2021 with an idea that came up during COVID lockdown times. While reading the NY Times in my study at home, I came across an article about Substack. Substack appeared to be a new (?) platform for writers. Well, it was new to me.

The idea was that I could write about breastfeeding on Substack - that is, all the things I taught myself about breastfeeding. Mind you, I didn’t learn anything about breastfeeding during my zillion years of training to become a physician. So this would be to write about breastfeeding - a topic which most had no interest in, and post it on Substack - a platform no one had heard of.

I am not sure why I decided to give it a try. Maybe it was because we were in a lockdown so the times were unusual, and there were these things that bothered me and continue to bug me:

Many doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals receive minimal to no education on breastfeeding in their training. (Yet these are the people new mothers turn to for help.)
AND becoming a lactation consultant is so expensive that it limits who can make that journey.

I thought I might be able to take important lactation topics, make them understandable, and figure out a way to help the learner remember important points.

And what if the learning could be for free?

Amazing news

I thought a success would be if 250 people looked at the site in the first year. Well, at the end of year one the site had 2,500 subscribers. It grew by word of mouth I guess because I had and continue to have a marketing budget of zero dollars.

The growth continued each year. At the start of this new Semester in October 2024, this site now has over 10,000 subscribers. That’s 10,000 people interested in learning about LACTATION!

How this works

This site runs in a Semester format. A Semester runs for about five months. The classes in the Semester, in the form of newsletters that come to you as emails, are posted every Monday, Wednesday and Friday in both English and Spanish.
Once a Semester starts, all posts stay up and can be found by clicking on “See All” or “Archive”. If you join mid-Semester, no worries, all the posts are there.
To start, you can go to The Lactation College on Substack and read it first, or you can subscribe and then read the post. Subscribing means providing your email information so that as soon as a topic is posted it will go directly to your email box. Obviously, the free option is free to all. Emails are not shared.
In an effort to keep the free site going and cover some of my time, I also created a paywall of $5 a month or $50 a year. When you join the paid option you receive: 1) Research Thursday - a weekly post about a research article in the field of lactation and 2) What’s the Diagnosis on Tuesdays and 3) Access to older Pediatric Pearls posts.
If you jump over the paywall and are paying a monthly or yearly fee, and then decided you have had enough and wish to cancel - you need to go to Substack and search for “how do I cancel”. Instructions there will guide you through the process. I can’t do it for you, you need to do it through your account on Substack. Any support is truly appreciated and please stay on for the free info!

Who I am

My name is Barbara L. Philipp, MD. I am a Professor of Pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine, a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and a Fellow of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine. I’m a practicing pediatrician and I love to write, teach, and talk about lactation - hoping to help as many breastfeeding mothers and teach as many health professionals as possible.

I never in a million years thought this Substack site on breastfeeding would be so popular and am dedicated to keeping it going.

Thanks so much for your interest, support, and for ALL YOU DO for breastfeeding moms and babies. It takes a village for sure.

I can be reached at babydoctor53@gmail.com.

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People

Barbara L. Philipp, MD

@thelactationcollege

Pediatrician, Professor of Pediatrics, Educator, Writer - with first hand experience as a wife, mother of 3, and grandmother of 4. Breastfeeding is important, but it can be hard - I hope this helps.