The Authors
Christie del Castillo-Hegyi, MD, is a board-certified emergency physician and studies newborn brain injury and developmental disabilities caused by insufficient feeding. She cofounded the Fed Is Best Foundation when her own first-born son was harmed by unsafe advice on exclusive breastfeeding from breastfeeding books, breastfeeding classes, and health professionals. When she learned that these complications were happening on a daily basis to infants across the globe as a result of things commonly taught to parents, she and Jody Segrave-Daly launched the Foundation to raise awareness among parents and health professionals. She has advocated for safer breastfeeding practices at the NIH, the USDA, and to members of Congress, and, with Segrave-Daly, has met with the top officials of the World Health Organization breastfeeding guidelines program. She is a member of the Global Developmental Disabilities Research Collaborators and has coauthored papers documenting the rise in prevalence of multiple neurological and developmental disabilities among children across the globe.
Jody Segrave-Daly, RN, retired IBCLC, is a newborn nursery and newborn intensive care unit nurse and a staunch advocate for evidence-based feeding practices and perinatal mental health. Jody’s entire 30-year nursing career has been dedicated to caring for healthy and medically fragile babies in the nursery and NICU and has been providing community-based infant feeding support as a neonatal nurse and IBCLC for 12 years. She has comforted thousands of mothers all over the world that have contacted her for infant feeding consultations, who believed it was rare to under-produce breast milk and often felt betrayed by their healthcare teams, their own bodies, and the social pressure that insisted “Breast Is Best” for every family. Jody is the Fed is Best Foundation’s Clinical and Education Director, Director of Global Outreach, and Social Media Content Developer. In addition to writing evidence-based educational resources, she has implemented change by debunking infant feeding myths. Many of her resources have gone viral and have made a difference. She wrote the article “How to Breastfeed During the First 2 Weeks of Life” for the New York Times Parenting Edition.
Lynnette Hafken, MA, IBCLC is Director of Support Services of the Fed Is Best Foundation. As a former La Leche League leader and hospital and private practice lactation consultant, she has spent her over 20-year career helping families to breastfeed in a safe, enjoyable, and sustainable way; in some cases, supporting parents who need or choose to formula feed to ensure their baby and family thrive. She saw how low milk supply and insufficient feeding problems were causing unnecessary physical and emotional suffering in babies and their mothers, which led her to adopt the “fed is best” philosophy. Through her clinical and foundation work, she has sought to advance the core values of Fed Is Best by listening to parents, honoring their choices, and protecting their babies with empathy and scientific integrity.
