by Adria English, January 8, 2018
Dr. del Castillo-Hegyi has lived in Arkansas six years, working as an Emergency Room physician in Little Rock. After her newborn baby nearly starved, she began a blog to share her experience. Jody Segrave-Daly, a certified lactation consultant and registered nurse with nearly 30 years of experience, encountered her blog. Segrave-Daly operates her own private lactation and baby feeding practice in Harrisburg, PA, and reveals that her heart broke when she read del Castillo-Hegyi’s story as it was a familiar situation to her from years as an NICU nurse and from her private practice.
The two women began to work together. Initially, Segrave-Daly shares, “our goal was to begin writing a book based on the scientific literature [del Castillo-Hegyi] researched and my clinical expertise working with babies because we wanted to get our safe infant feeding plan available to the public as soon as possible.” It became apparent that the fastest way to share their information was by making it available on the internet, so they began the non-profit Fed Is Best Foundation. Operating on the platform that “babies should never go hungry and mothers should be supported in choosing clinically safe feeding options for their babies, whether breast milk, formula or a combination of both,” Fed Is Best provides information and assistance to parents about their options in feeding and nurturing their babies. The foundation took off—in just two and a half years, its following on Facebook has grown to over 450,000.
Read more at Only In Arkansas.