Preparing for Your Visit

How to Prepare for Our Lactation Visit

Thank you for reaching out for breastfeeding support. Breastfeeding is natural, but it doesn’t always come naturally! Most women and parents need various kinds of assistance along the way. It can be hard to reach out, but you and your baby deserve all the support that you can get.

Intake Forms

To prepare for our visit, please fill out the Intake Form on the Hearts’ Work website as fully as possible. This usually takes less than 15 minutes, and will allow us to focus all of our time at our visit on talking together and working with you and your baby to help you to breastfeed.

Eating Schedule

Ideally your baby will be ready to eat 15 to 30 min or so after the start of our scheduled visit, so that we can work through a full feeding together. Of course, babies are not programmable ;-), so we just do our best, and work around as needed. But please aim to feed your baby fully around an hour and a half or so before our visit, or your best guess of an interval that will prepare them to be hungry a short time after the start of the scheduled visit. Close to visit time please try to refrain from a full feeding. This is especially important if you are supplementing, or if your baby tends to eat a large amount at a time and then sleep for a long time. If you are directly breastfeeding and your baby tends to eat frequently in smaller amounts, it is less of a concern. In any case, if baby is very unhappily hungry as visit time nears, please give a small snack rather than a full feeding. But do give a small snack so baby is not desperately hungry either when we begin!

Supplementation / Equipment

If you have been supplementing your baby, please keep track of the amounts that you are giving in the 24 hrs before your visit. If you are using bottles or breast pumps or other related equipment, please have them near at hand for the visit. If baby has been receiving regular supplementation, have a bottle or other supplement prepared for feeding available.

Siblings and Pets

If possible, it’s helpful to arrange for someone to entertain any older children or pets during the visit, so we can focus on the task at hand. Dogs in the home during a home visit need to be confined in advance of the visit and kept out of the area where the visit will take place and the access way to it.

Support People

For Home Visits: Due to the ongoing Covid public health situation, Mother / nursing parent and partner OR 1 non parent supporting adult, but no additional adults can be present in the room where the consult takes place. Of course we value the involvement of anyone else who is supporting you, but must limit our contact to them, besides exchanging socially distanced greetings, to outdoors, where we would be happy to talk with them.

For Telehealth sessions: Feel free to have any support people who are helping you join us at the visit-- partners, grandmothers, whomever YOU want to have there is fine. If they are part of your team, their involvement is welcome, in any way that you and they find comfortable.

No Tidying, No Worries!

Please don’t worry about tidying your house, showering or dressing, or, for in person visits, acting as a host in any way. I know you have a young baby, and I’d rather see you tucked in bed with your baby amidst a cheerful mess and a sink full of dishes, then running about cleaning.

For Live Video Telehealth Lactation Visits

Make sure there is good lighting in the room you are in. If at all possible, have another adult with you who can hold / aim camera so I can observe you nursing more easily. If that is not possible, give some advance thought to ways to prop up your device to give a hands free view while you are nursing. If possible have a flashlight or other portable light available.

A Square Invoice will be e-mailed to you after the conclusion of the visit (except Aetna and pre-approved Lactation Network participants). Payment is due on receipt.

Note on Payments

Self Pay: I can accept cash or check at home visits, or if you prefer to use an HSA / FSA card or standard credit card I can email you a Square Invoice at the end of the visit. Invoices are due upon receipt. I will email an insurance coded "super bill" after I receive payment that you can use to apply to your insurance company for Out of Network reimbursement.

The Lactation Network: If your visit is pre approved for coverage via the Lactation Network, you will not pay a visit fee, or any other charges (unless you have a home visit beyond my travel radius of 30 minutes drive from Chatham, NY, in which case a self pay travel fee may apply). You may receive an EOB from your insurance company implying a patient responsibility for charges from The Lactation Network. This is NOT a bill, and you will not be billed for any of it by either me or The Lactation Network. Regardless of the negotiation between TLN and your insurance company, I will receive my standard fee from TLN (which will not be anything near what you see on your EOB!), you will not be billed, and the two corporate entities will play their games with one another while we focus on getting babies fed :-) .

Look forward to meeting you!