For advocates
Caring for the next generation of Ontarians.
Breastfeeding advocates are everywhere in Ontario. They are the midwives, nurses, nurse practitioners, physicians and peer supporters who care for families every day. They are the leaders and boards of Ontario Health Teams, hospitals, community health centres, Indigenous primary health care organizations, Ontario Health atHome and public health units, and the medical officers of health who guide them. They are MPPs, MPs and their constituency staff, mayors and councillors, ministry leaders, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, and the funders who decide where health care dollars go. Every one of you helps an Ontario family get a healthier start, and we are grateful for the work you do.
Whatever our politics, the safety of pregnant and birthing mothers and their babies is common ground. Our vision is a fully funded safety net of community IBCLC care, preconception through weaning, for every Ontario family who needs it.
What is an IBCLC
The gold standard in lactation care.
An International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) holds the leading international credential in lactation care, shared by more than 39,000 professionals in 137 countries. It’s the credential hospitals, birthing centres and private practices look for when they want the highest standard of care for families.
What it takes
- Health science education. The same foundation other health professionals build on.
- Lactation-specific education. Focused study of feeding, from prenatal through weaning.
- Supervised clinical practice. Hours spent working directly with families, through one of three IBLCE pathways.
- A rigorous international exam. One standard, whether the IBCLC practises in Hamilton or Hong Kong.
- A code of professional conduct. Every IBCLC agrees to it and is accountable to it.
- Recertification every five years. Continuing education keeps every IBCLC’s knowledge current.
What IBCLC care does
IBCLCs provide the gold standard of care for medically complex lactation, and research has shown that IBCLC support:
- across 40 randomized trials, families supported by lactation consultants were less likely to stop breastfeeding and breastfed about 3.6 weeks longer, and more visits brought bigger results 1
- when lactation consultants support families both around birth and after, babies are about twice as likely to be exclusively breastfed at six months 2
- helps families breastfeed for longer, and fewer stop early 3 4
- when an Italian hospital added an IBCLC to its maternity ward, mothers who said they got real breastfeeding help rose from 60% to 93%, and sore or cracked nipples dropped from 42% to 25% 5 6
- only 4% of Canadian paediatric residents feel very comfortable helping with latch, positioning and feeding questions, and more than a quarter have never watched a baby breastfeed. When residents are trained, babies at their hospitals are about four times more likely to be exclusively breastfed at six months 7 8 9
The IBCLC program is accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA), and it’s one of very few certifications that has consistently met independent, third-party credentialing standards. Anyone can confirm an IBCLC’s certification on IBLCE’s public registry, and every IBCLC on our register has been checked.
Why community IBCLCs matter
IBCLC care doesn’t end at hospital discharge. Community IBCLCs see families at home, in office and virtually, from pregnancy through the weeks and months after birth, when most feeding challenges actually show up. They work alongside midwives, nurses, public health teams and family doctors, so families get expert help early and stay connected to the rest of their care team.
1. D’Hollander and colleagues, Breastfeeding Support Provided by Lactation Consultants: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, JAMA Pediatrics, 2025. Forty randomised trials in high-income countries.
2. Chiurco, Montico, Brovedani, Monasta and Davanzo, An IBCLC in the Maternity Ward of a Mother and Child Hospital: A Pre- and Post-Intervention Study, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2015;12(8):9938–51. Mothers reporting real help with breastfeeding rose from 60% to 93%, and sore or cracked nipples fell from 41.5% to 24.6%. The same study found no difference in exclusive breastfeeding at discharge or at two weeks.
3. Educating Pediatric Residents about Breastfeeding: Evaluation of 3 Time-Efficient Teaching Strategies, Journal of Human Lactation, 2014. First-year paediatric residents who shadowed an IBCLC for an hour gained more knowledge than those given a DVD or a prenatal class, and rated the teaching higher.
Every source this site uses is on one page.
17,000⁺
consults and counting across Ontario
From the Ontario Breastfeeding Clinic’s own records.
The care adds up
Real families, real numbers.
Every consult on this count was given by an IBCLC in Ontario. As more IBCLCs join the register and share their numbers, the picture of community lactation care in Ontario grows clearer, and so does the case for funding it.
Preconception through weaning
Lactation care is every stage.
More than 140,000 babies are born in Ontario each year, and nearly every one of their mothers will begin to make milk, whether or not she breastfeeds. Lactation concerns can arise at every stage, from preconception through weaning, with babies at two years of age and beyond, and they often carry over from one pregnancy to the next.
Most feeding difficulties resolve in about three IBCLC consults, based on the Ontario Breastfeeding Clinic’s records from a period when care was fully funded. Complex concerns, such as a NICU stay or a tongue tie, often need more.
Every one of those births also ends in weaning, at six days or at two years, with help or without it. It is a physical process and not only a decision: done gradually it passes quietly, and done abruptly it may bring painful engorgement, blocked ducts, mastitis and even abscesses.10 This type of painful medical history can impact a mother’s future breastfeeding goals with subsequent babies.
4. Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine, Clinical Protocol #4: Mastitis, revised 2014. Rapid weaning is among the predisposing factors it names.
That is why continuity matters. An IBCLC who knows a family’s history can help faster, and help again with the next baby.
Where families slip through
Everyone is pulling their weight.
Ontario has skilled, dedicated people supporting families at every turn. Each service also has a boundary, and a feeding problem does not always stay inside one. Families tell us they lose support when:
- Time runs out. Free options often end at a set point, such as 14 days or six weeks after birth.
- They are not on the list. Some clinics can only see families rostered to that practice.
- They live outside the catchment. Local programs serve their own area.
- They move. Records from earlier babies do not always follow them.
- Appointments are short. A brief visit leaves little time to watch a full feed and build a plan that works at home.
- Their IBCLC is needed elsewhere. A hospital IBCLC may be called to another unit, or a family’s community IBCLC may have retired.
- They cannot tell who is certified. Anyone may use the words “lactation consultant”, and families may not know whether they are seeing an IBCLC.
- There is no easy path to refer. A helper who sees a problem may have no simple way to send the family on.
Community IBCLCs are the safety net that helps all families, regardless if they qualify for funded support or not.
Every family deserves the best start
The bill is the barrier.
The IBCLCs of the Ontario Breastfeeding Clinic have given more than 17,000 consults. Many were fully funded, many carried an OHIP copay, and some were paid entirely by families. That experience shows the care works, and shows where the funding stops.
In 2026, Ontario’s Schedule of Benefits has no fee code for lactation medicine, and IBCLCs are not eligible for OHIP funding. That leaves hospitals, public health units and family medicine clinics without a clear budget line to hire IBCLCs for their families. When community IBCLC care costs the family a copay, warm hand-offs by referral become harder, and many families who need help never reach it.
What Ontario already spends
The larger half of the bill is a woman’s health, and Ontario has not costed it.
For babies born in Ontario in 2019, suboptimal breastfeeding cost the health system US$72.2 million a year to treat four childhood illnesses, and US$61.0 million more in long-term conditions. Better support would save US$32 to 63 million a year in treatment, and US$23.6 to 51.6 million in long-term costs.
Those figures count children only. The authors say so in their own limitations: the study “does not capture healthcare system costs associated with other diseases linked to a lack of human milk, such as maternal cancers, diabetes, sudden infant death syndrome.” They then cite Bartick, who found that 79% of the medical costs of suboptimal breastfeeding are maternal. They call their own result “a conservative estimate”.
So the number Ontario has is the smaller share. Bartick costed the maternal side in the United States and found it in breast and ovarian cancer, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and heart attack. None of that is in the Ontario figure. A province deciding what lactation care is worth is reading a bill with the women left off it.
Onah, Hoy and Slofstra, International Breastfeeding Journal, 2025
Financial circumstances do not make a parent less capable, less deserving or less worthy of IBCLC support. Every family deserves the same respect, the same options and the same gold standard of care.
IBCLC support is not a luxury. It is a critical health intervention.
A profession in its own right
The IBCLC is its own credential.
Many IBCLCs also hold another health credential, as nurses, midwives, physicians, dietitians, pharmacists and more, and that breadth is a strength. The IBCLC itself is a distinct credential, with its own education, examination, code of professional conduct and scope of practice.
IBCLCs stand alongside every provider who cares for a family. Lactation care is their professional jurisdiction, a recognized scope of practice held with professional autonomy. Their care deserves to be recognized as its own, funded as its own, and kept in the hands of those certified to give it.
Growing the profession
The next IBCLCs learn best from experienced mentors.
Many new IBCLCs earn their clinical hours through mentorship, working alongside an experienced IBCLC with real families. Community IBCLCs want to mentor more students, so that coverage keeps pace as Ontario’s population grows.
Funding mentorship is one of the surest ways to bring IBCLC care to every community in the province.
Building healthy futures together
Every advocate makes a difference.
IBCLCs hope to work with every ally, including Ontario midwives, nurses, physicians, public health, dentists, bodyworkers, allied care providers and peer supporters, as champions of better, more accessible care for mothers and babies in Ontario.
Refer families with confidence
Send a family straight to it, or link it from your own feeding pages. It is free, nobody pays for a place in it, and every IBCLC on it has had her certification checked.
Tell us what you see
You know where families in your community run out of options. Your experience helps show where care is needed most, and we would love to hear about any project or study you are part of.
Fund IBCLC care as IBCLC care
A fully funded safety net of community IBCLC care, preconception through weaning, is within reach when partners work together. Funding IBCLC mentorship grows the profession where families need it most.
What else is happening
Work we’re watching.
Projects, programs and research on infant feeding in Ontario and beyond. Tell us about yours and we’ll pass it on.
Project · 2026 A favourite
Accessible Infant Feeding Support for All Families in Ontario
MPP Robin Lennox
A petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario asking for a province-wide infant-feeding support strategy, with accountability standards for equitable, timely, evidence-based care for every Ontario family. Anyone can sign it.
Study · 2020 A favourite
Out of Milk: Infant Food Insecurity in a Rich Nation
Dr Lesley Frank, Canada Research Chair, Acadia University
What happens to a baby when a family cannot afford to feed her. Frank shows that the constraints on breastfeeding are economic as well as clinical, and that formula is a household cost nobody budgets for.
Study · 2025 A favourite
The Costs of Suboptimal Breastfeeding in Ontario
Onah, Hoy and Slofstra, International Breastfeeding Journal
What Ontario spends treating illness that better breastfeeding support would have prevented: US$133 million a year for one birth cohort, and US$56 to 115 million of it avoidable. Children only, which the authors call a conservative estimate.
40 trials
Study · 2025 A favourite
Lactation consultants work
D’Hollander and colleagues, JAMA Pediatrics, 2025
A 2025 review led by Toronto researchers found lactation consultant support helps mothers breastfeed longer, by about three and a half weeks on average.
91% start, 38% reach six months
Study · 2024 A favourite
The first month
Health Canada, Canada’s breastfeeding dashboard, 2024
Most Canadian parents start breastfeeding. The steepest drop comes in the first month, when families are home and on their own.
17% lower
Study · 2022 A favourite
Her heart
Tschiderer and colleagues, Journal of the American Heart Association, 2022
Across more than a million women, those who breastfed had a lower risk of dying from heart disease than those who never did.
1 in 10
Study · 2012 A favourite
A human right
UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food · Laura Payton, CBC News
In 2012, the UN’s expert on the right to food reported that one in ten Canadian families with a child under six could not meet their daily food needs. In his words, the right to food is “a matter of principle and it’s a matter of political will.”
6 studies
Study · 2026
Care after you go home
Lugo and colleagues, Journal of Perinatology, 2026
IBCLC care given after discharge, in a practice or by telehealth, was linked to longer and more intensive breastfeeding. The authors say themselves that what is missing is policy and access. It is the closest published thing to what this register is for.
4 weeks to 8 months
Study · 2026
What mothers said made it good
Lugo and colleagues, Breastfeeding Medicine, 2026
Six studies of what mothers themselves said made a consultation good: enough time, encouragement, knowing her subject, and answering the thing actually worrying her. Mothers were asked between four weeks and eight months after birth.
417 residents
Study · 2010
Teaching the doctor reaches the family
Feldman-Winter and colleagues, Pediatrics, 2010
Residents in thirteen programmes, six of them teaching a breastfeeding curriculum. The ones who were taught came out ahead on knowledge, on what they then did in practice and on confidence, and exclusive breastfeeding rose among their own patients.
Study · 2020
The Cost and Affordability of Growing and Feeding a Baby in Nova Scotia
Dr Lesley Frank, Canadian Journal of Public Health
The costing work behind the book: what a year of feeding a baby actually costs a household, set against what income assistance provides.
Study · 2015
Breastfeeding Paradox: A Critique of Policy Related to Infant Food Insecurity
Dr Lesley Frank, Food, Culture & Society
Why telling a family to breastfeed is not the same as making it possible. Frank argues that promotion without material support moves the burden onto the mothers least able to carry it.
Study · 2018
Relation between Household Food Insecurity and Breastfeeding in Canada
Orr and colleagues, Canadian Medical Association Journal
National Canadian data on what happens to breastfeeding in households that cannot reliably afford food. One of the sources behind Out of Milk.
42% more likely
Study · 2025
Continuity matters
Pascual Tutusaus and colleagues, Breastfeeding Medicine, 2025
Mothers supported by a lactation consultant in hospital and after discharge were more likely to still be exclusively breastfeeding at six months.
30.8%
Study · 2025
Children and food
PROOF, University of Toronto, from Statistics Canada data
Nearly a third of children in Canada lived in a food-insecure household in 2025.
On behalf of families across Ontario
Thank you.
Thank you for the exceptional support and compassionate care you give the families we have the honour of serving together.
Listening, guiding and celebrating with families are some of the best parts of caring for them. Working alongside advocates like you is one of the best parts of being an IBCLC.
Who we are, plainly.
This register was started by the founders of the Ontario Breastfeeding Clinic, a private clinic where IBCLCs work alongside physicians specializing in breastfeeding medicine. Their IBCLCs are on the register, named as theirs, alongside every other IBCLC who joins, with no head start in the results.