Heather ONeal is a certified nurse-midwife and an internationally board-certified lactation consultant. As of the gran-opening on Monday, she can now add the owner of Morgantown’s first Breastfeeding Consult and Education Center to her list.
ONeal, who graduated midwifery school in 2018, said she had difficulty finding a position for a midwife in Morgantown. In addition to trying to find work, she was also pregnant.
“I found that as a midwife and a lactation consultant, I didn’t have a lot of places that I needed to go to and I didn’t even know what resources were available for me to use,” ONeal said. “So if a midwife and lactation consultant is having trouble getting an appointment and doesn’t know where to go to find the answers, I can’t even imagine how other people feel.”
ONeal said she started a breastfeeding support group on Facebook called Breastfeeding for Busy Moms, where moms can go for help and to find evidence-based information. The group now has over 16,000 members.
“From there it kind of grew. I did virtual consults and classes through the pandemic,” ONeal said. “Now I’m really excited to let people tell me what they want. We have never had a space before where we can let moms speak and ask what they want. We have just squeezed them into the system we currently have and are trying to make it work.”
According to ONeal, the center is mostly going to be for private lactation consults, where if a mother or family is having a breastfeeding issue they can schedule an appointment. She said she is able to take full hours with her patients compared to the 30 minutes you are scheduled at a lactation clinic.
Located in Morgantown’s Seneca Center, 709 Beechurst Ave., ONeal’s center is not just for people who are strictly breastfeeding. While that is part of it, ONeal said it’s mainly for postpartum moms who are busy. She is just helping people navigate that really complicated situation of how to feed your baby as a busy parent, including having partners come and be educated on how they can help feed the baby.
ONeal said she will also be holding in-person and virtual group classes at the center, including childbirth classes with a little bit of breastfeeding sprinkled in.
On the community level, the center will be available for workshops for new moms.
“I’ve actually received a lot of requests to do a breast feeding happy hour,” ONeal said. “People have been asking to hang out in groups down there and we did it once and it was fun.”
According to ONeal, people will just come and sit on the couch and breast feed and hang out and commune with each other.
“Which is really something neat that new moms need,” she said. “You can be around people that have similar ideals and values and are at a similar place in their life. We don’t really have anywhere like that in Morgantown right now.”
The goal was to create a space that is warm and cozy and comfortable, where babies and moms can neurologically calm down to problem-solve and that is what ONeal hopes she has created. She believes that everyone deserves to have a good postpartum experience.
“The biggest message that I want people to hear loud and clear is that you should be treated special because you are special when you just had a baby,” ONeal said. “Women have stepped up to the plate like no one else during this pandemic and we’re still crushing it. We are leaning on each other more than ever and this is a space where people can come and chill and relax and get their problems solved by someone who is very passionate about it.”
ONeal said that a lot of women truly feel like they need to be able to do it all – work, maintain their house, maintain their relationship, look good and feel good.
“I feel that when people have a baby they’re like, ‘Well, I signed up for this, this is what it’s going to be like if I want to have a family’ and I want them to know it doesn’t have to be that way.”
ONeal wants new mothers to know they can have a good postpartum experience, they can set healthy boundaries for themselves, they can outsource and have someone help fix their issues — they don’t have to just grin and bear it.
Overall, ONeal is ready to give the busy moms of Morgantown whatever they need from her.
“I’m really excited to let people tell me what they want,” she said. “I went into this with an open mind and I didn’t really have a solid cement blueprint. I was just hoping the people of Morgantown would tell me what they want it to be and they have been talking loud and clear.”
If you are interested in a consultation with ONeal, or for more information about her breastfeeding consult and education center, visit breastfeedingforbusymoms.com or check out her Facebook group page Breast Feeding for Busy Moms.
TWEET @DominionPostWV
