Breastfeeding can be hard and lonely. These women are trying to change that

Breastfeeding is hard. These companies are trying to help.

In the hours after her daughter was born, Andrea Ippolito already felt like she was falling short as a mother. “Here I was, just like many women, trying to recover after this insane medical procedure of giving birth, and I just felt like a failure,” she told CNN. Ippolito was struggling to breastfeed because of her low milk supply. Even now, about six years later, the memory makes her emotional. “My daughter was dropping weight,” she recalled. “It was just incredibly stressful.” Ippolito ended up feeding her daughter a combination of breast milk and baby formula until she was three months old, when Ippolito weaned her off breast milk altogether. “It was a struggle the entire time,” she said. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that infants consume only breast milk — no formula — until they are about 6 months old. But at that age, just 56% of US babies consume any breast milk, according the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And only a quarter of 6-month-olds are exclusively breast fed. But for some women or birthing parents, exclusive breastfeeding or chestfeeding is simply not possible because of inadequate supply. Many stop because they lack much-needed structural and emotional support and wean before they had planned to. Ippolito thinks that more help in those early days would have improved her experience, both practically and emotionally. So in 2019 she started SimpliFed, a virtual platform that partners with health plans and doctors to get patients insurance-covered breastfeeding support from International Board-Certified Lactation Consultants, or IBCLCs, among other things. “Our posture as an organization is whatever your goals are, we’ll support you,” she said.