Where Do You Get Your Information?
By Ali Weatherford in consultation with Jimi Francis, MS, PhD, IBCLC, RDN, LD
Where Do You Get Your Information?
This question might seem like it has a simple answer, but it does not. When you’re pregnant or new to parenting, good information can be hard to come by. Do you ask friends and family, your doctor or midwife, parent groups, the internet, AI? It really just depends on what the question is, and how you filter the information you might find when you ask. It’s really important to recognize good vs bad information.
You need to be able to recognize whether the good information you find will be good for your family. You and your family are the ones who will experience the consequences of any advice you take. Advice that might be great for one family, might be useless or even harmful for another. And always be sure to follow the money. Any article or source can be biased based on who funded the research.
Family and Friends
You’ll probably get a lot of well-meaning advice. Some of it will be very good and appropriate for you, but sometimes it’s biased or not quite right for you. If your personal parenting choices and style naturally flow into the rhythm of your family dynamics, that’s great. You might be very comfortable doing things the way you’ve seen your mother, siblings, and other family members do. In other cases, you might not. It’s important to tune in to your intuition as a parent and be able to filter the information you’re getting. They might be the perfect role models for you, or they might not. It also doesn’t have to be black or white. You might accept some of the advice, and reject others. If you choose to do things differently, remember that it’s not a rejection of your family or friends as people. It’s just an understanding that you can love them dearly, AND not agree about everything.
Health Care Providers
When you’re pregnant, your obstetrician, family practice doctor, maternal fetal medicine specialist, or midwife can be great resources. Your OB can tell you a lot about how to care for yourself during pregnancy and provide monitoring and medical advice. But if you start having a lot of issues with pelvic girdle pain in your pregnancy, you might need to consult with a pelvic floor physical therapist or other specialist to help. Once your baby comes, your pediatrician, midwife, lactation consultant, or family practice doctor will be good sources of information for many things. It’s important to remember though, that these care providers have limitations. Your pediatrician may not be the best resource for lactation information, so it can be best to visit with a lactation consultant (IBCLC). But then your IBCLC may not be the best resource for nutrition information once your baby is ready to start solids. It might be better to consult with a registered dietician for more comprehensive advice at that point. Hopefully, your primary care providers will offer referrals in situations where they have limited expertise. Many of them will, but you will need to be your own advocate and look for other sources when you’re not getting good answers. Find the right kind of specialist for the issue you’re having. If you’re struggling with breastfeeding, come see us.
How to Question Online Research
When doing an internet search, you’ll be confronted with a lot of different sources. You’ll probably notice that the same sources come up at the top of your searches over and over. Some can be really helpful, but others might be old, outdated, not for you, or just plain wrong. They might have paid for those top spots because their main goal is to sell a product or service. They might have robust digital marketing departments so they are able to manipulate the algorithm. But how do you filter out the bad so you can get information that’s actually helpful? At the bottom of this article you’ll see a recorded interview I did with a professional researcher. She has multiple advanced degrees and has published research of her own. She shares some ways to help you find better sources of information when you’re online You might start by going directly to legitimate sources of information. If you’re looking for health care information, you might go directly to PubMed Central and search for good articles there. You can try using Google Scholar as a search engine. It will be more likely to give you well-researched articles and sources rather than the more mainstream and pop culture sources you’ll get doing a general internet search. It’s also important to know how to read information. For example, if you’re struggling with sleep, you might find articles talking about the percentage of babies who are “sleeping through the night” by 3 months, 6 months, one year. You might take this information and use it to compare your baby to what’s “normal”. But be sure to look carefully and question. These might be very good articles, but are they all talking about the same thing? The definition of “sleeping through the night” varies from source to source. Do they mean 12 hours, 8 hours, 4 hours? All of those numbers are actual and different definitions of sleeping through the night.
Our Favorite Breastfeeding and Birth Sources
In addition to using PubMed Central and Google Scholar, we love to recommend some websites related to what we do that we believe are reliable sources for information.
- Breastfeeding Success – We meticulously research every article, post, and How-to Guide we publish so you can get plenty of great information on our website, following us on social media, or on our You Tube channel! And some of our favorite sources are listed here.
- WIC Breastfeeding Support
- First Droplets
- La Leche League
- UC Davis Human Lactation Research Center
- Human Milk Institute
- International Breastfeeding Journal
- Infant Risk Center
- Journal of Clinical Lactation
- American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
- Childbirth Connection – National Partnership for Women & Families
- Healthy Children – American Academy of Pediatrics
- American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists – Patient Site
- EatRight.org – Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics
Research using AI
For many of us, when doing an internet search, the first response you get is from AI. The answer to your question is probably right at the top, and it can be hard to understand where that answer came from. You can see links to what are supposed to be the sources, and I encourage you to follow those links. But really look for the answer in the linked sources. You may or may not actually find the information that AI provided you. AI is improving, but it still mostly offers the most popular information and not necessarily the most recent or correct. It can hallucinates fake information, or provide quotes from deliberately malicious sources. It can sometimes even link to sources that don’t seem to contain the answer you’re getting at all.
Why Does This Matter?
Your mental health is a top priority. When you are feeling unsure, insecure, or even just completely wrong about any of your parenting choices, it will affect you negatively. Maybe all of your friends have been using intense sleep training methods for their babies, so you’re trying it but it feels wrong. Maybe your mom and all of your many sisters breastfed their babies for years, but breastfeeding is a big struggle for you and you want to look into other options. There will be a lot of choices to make as a parent. And the essence of the issue is in that word, “choices,” You do have options, and there are many “right” ways to parent. You can feel most content and confident in your parenting choices when you take a little time to gather information and let yourself decide the best options for you and your family. Once you make an informed choice that feels right for you, feel confident in telling your family and friends, “Thank you for all of your help and great advice, but we have made a different decision that feels right for our family.” Then allow yourself to mute the voices that are resisting or trying to persuade you. When you can find some peace with your decision-making, your mental health will likely improve, and that can only mean great things for your whole family.
