ABOUT
Caitlin O'Neill
"I am convinced that breastfeeding and holistic postpartum care are powerful means for the prevention of a myriad of problems than can arise in the family structure, and thus contribute significantly to the well-being our greater society."
WHO I am & some things I believe
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​I am a Registered Nurse and International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC), a Registered Nurse in California, and a mother of two boys. I am also a Certified Innate Postpartum Care© Provider. I myself live in Sebastopol, CA and have provided in-person breastfeeding support and education to mothers and families in Sonoma County, CA. I am also a Public School Nurse in Sebastopol and Santa Rosa, CA.
I have a BA from the University of Vermont, and was trained and certified as an RN at University of California San Francisco. I have attended births in and out of the hospital, and have studied and worked in the fields of women's health, community health and education, and breastfeeding support for 15+ years in the North Bay Area of San Francisco. I myself have struggled and had to overcome obstacles with breastfeeding after giving birth to my sons in 2011 and 2013. I tend to approach my work from a holistic, family-centered perspective, and I am dedicated to healing birth trauma and nurturing families through the challenges of early parenting.
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More than anything, I am passionate about caring for the mother-baby dyad—a simple yet hugely powerful relationship that is truly more than the sum of its parts. I believe that my calling in life is to “nurture the nurturer” in order to benefit both the short and long-term lens of mothering.
FROM MY EXPERIENCE,
breastfeeding and holistic postpartum care are unifiers that effectively embody all of my values—economic, holistic, healing, political, emotional, psycho-social, feminist, ecological and biological.
Unfortunately, in our modern times, with disjointed communities and following a systematic and deliberate effort in the middle part of last century to disempower a woman’s ability to breastfeed, there are not consistent models for this basic biological behavior. Many of us do not grow up around those who demonstrate breastfeeding for us from a young age. Additionally, the fast pace of our society is largely not conducive to the slower pace of early motherhood and the acquisition of breastfeeding skills. Parents and healthcare providers are often looking for a quick fix to the early hurdles of newborn care and breastfeeding. Particularly for first-time parents, those first days, weeks and months are just the beginning of the learning process and the discovery that, truly, the more we learn, the more we realize we don’t know. My goal is to help you maneuver these dense physical and emotional hurdles by providing compassionate, individualized care, resourcing, and skill-sharing.
In my role, I approach each case with a clinical eye, yet my goal is to harness your own truth and power, however that may individually manifest.
HELPING YOU
meet your breastfeeding goals without judgement:
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I have been grateful to function as a holistic professional and IBCLC outside of the hospital paradigm. This allows me to “say it like it is” without the constraints of corporate structures or management. At the same time, I have plenty of experience working within those structures, I can see them for their value, and I can comfortably coordinate care with various providers.
I have seen health care from many perspectives, both personal and professional, and I have compassion for each individual’s experience and point of view.
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I am guided by a holistic philosophy, but also respect and honor the role that allopathic care plays in higher-risk situations, or simply if that is what feels right.
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Social change and uplift cannot progress without greater value for this work. Healing of our culture, I believe, must begin with valuing children and that cannot be successful without properly tending to the care, nurture and empowerment of mothers and parents, particularly in the postpartum period and first years of a new baby's life. ​
© 2022 Caitlin O'Neill / Pacific Moon Lactation