From Jenn:

"As a mother of five children, with over 17 years in the field of Maternal/Child Health & Lactation Studies I was faced with the most difficult situation in my life in November of 2018.

At 36 weeks gestation, we lost our son Nolan due to stillbirth on November 2, 2018. We as parents were blindsided by our worst nightmare. It was devastating.

Though I was never going to be able to nurse Nolan at breast, I didn't want his precious milk to go to waste.

On November 4, 2018 I started to pump Nolan's milk and continued to pump until shortly after his first "(still)birthday". As a promise to Nolan, his legacy was donating hundreds of ounces of his milk to families/babies in need. Even his two year old brother, Lincoln drank his breastmilk until he was three years old.

While faced with this life altering time, I found little information or resources for mothers who chose to pump after a loss. There was little information, support groups were non-existent and I, myself as an IBCLC and Doula for nearly 17 years had no idea how to approach or deal with the topic.

I began to approach the experience as my way to grieve and connect with our son who was no longer with us physically. I blogged my experience during the year pumping journey and developed an educational presentation on Nolan's story.

It is now a new passion of mine to ensure that there is more knowledge, evidence-based information, support and application for mothers/families who chose to pump and donate their breastmilk after a loss.

Stillbirth is still an issue in our nation. The national average is 5.6 infant deaths per 1,000 births."

Jenn M. Foster, MA, CD, IBCLC, RLC holds her Bachelor's in Maternal/Child Health & Lactation Consulting. Her Master's is in Health & Wellness: Lactation Studies.

She has been working with mother/baby days for over 17 years! She has had the joy of working in all types of environments from WIC Peer Counseling - Health Department (2004-2013) to Homebirth practice (2005-2006), Birth Center (2006-2007) and private practice - Home (2004-2021). Throughout her varied work environments, she has been exposed to many diversified clientele and ultimately, healthcare situations that wouldn't be exposed to an IBCLC in just one work environment. This aids in providing not only evidence-based care to all clients; but, also, ensures compassion, empathy and active listening with the mother/baby dyad, along with the family member(s) that are there to support the dyad.

As a Certified Doula, she has been privileged enough to attend homebirths, birth center births, hospital births and encountered many circumstances that most professionals only read about in their textbooks. There were countless times where I was supporting the birthing mother and served as a temporary midwife, until the midwife arrived to catch the infant expelling into this world!

Jenn spent the last three years teaching undergraduate students in Maternal/Child Health & Lactation Consulting. The three classes taught by Jenn were core classes, meaning that every student had to take her class(es) to graduate from the program.