A Look Back: Empowering Motherhood: A Lactation Consultant's Journey, with Moriah Thompson

In December 2023, I sat down with Moriah Thompson, a New Orleans native, registered nurse, mother, poet, African dancer, runner, garden lover, and lactation consultant. She began the conversation by trying to name all the things she was. It was a generous list, but it did not feel like a résumé. It felt more like someone making sure no important part of herself got left outside the room.

Moriah had been a nurse since 2011. She had moved to Japan with her husband, an active-duty Marine, and worked through the changes that come with raising a family and building a career across different places. By the time we recorded the episode, lactation consulting was the role that made her light up.

When she journaled about what each part of her life gave her, she wrote “purpose” beside lactation consultant. Then she said, “And I do feel purpose when I do that.”

That sentence has stayed with me.

Support is not persuasion

The conversation was not really about producing a perfect breastfeeding story. It was about how much pressure can gather around a new mother before anyone has asked what she needs. Moriah spoke from personal experience: each pregnancy had been different, even when she entered it feeling more prepared. Knowledge did not make the experience identical. Preparation did not remove uncertainty.

Her work begins there—not with an ideal outcome, but with attention. She described the nurse and nurturer in herself as someone who notices what a person needs, meets them where they are, and helps them get where they want to go. The distinction matters. Help is not the same thing as persuasion.

“I’m not only gonna sit here and try to persuade you,” she said. If a mother had questions, Moriah wanted to answer them. If she needed time, she could take it. If she wanted another plan, that conversation still deserved respect.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists likewise describes breastfeeding support as part of obstetric practice while supporting each woman’s right to breastfeed (ACOG guidance). The principle is simple, even when the circumstances are not: care should make room for the person receiving it.

That is the idea from this episode that still holds up. Expertise is most useful when it widens someone’s options instead of narrowing them. A lactation consultant can bring training, experience, and another set of eyes. She can also bring humility: this mother is the authority on what her life feels like today.

What a patient should take away

If feeding is painful, confusing, or not going as expected, you do not have to sort it out alone. Tell your nurse, midwife, obstetric clinician, pediatric clinician, or lactation consultant what is happening. Ask what support is available, what your options are, and what would make the next few hours easier. You do not have to make a final decision in the middle of a difficult moment.

And if you are supporting a new parent, try replacing advice with a question. What are you hoping for? What feels hard? What kind of help would be useful? Sometimes the most respectful care is not a speech. It is a calm person who stays close enough to help and far enough away to let the decision remain yours.

Moriah’s garden offers a fitting image. Nurturing is not forcing a plant to grow on your schedule. It is paying attention to the conditions, tending what you can, and accepting that living things do not all unfold in the same way.

If this episode stays with you, reply and tell me about a time someone helped you without trying to take the decision away from you. I read every response.

Dum spiro, spero. — Ugo