Tracy Corey has a remarkable job. She's a breastfeeding coach and the owner of Nurturing Expressions near the West Seattle Junction. Referring to herself as "The Boobie Coach", Corey who is a registered nurse and a certified board lactation consultant, began her business in 2004 and saw that the field of breastfeeding research was finding remarkable connections between breastfeeding and infant health and development.

She set up the business on a mobile basis so breast pump specialists could deliver equipment and supplies to new mothers in their homes or the hospital. There are now five lactation consultants in the business.

"For years I was a home care nurse. The hospital was never a place I wanted to practice medicine. I believed I could give the best care to my patients if I could see the environment that they lived in."

She realized in visiting new mothers that they needed breast pumps and other supplies, that they need to be fitted, and coached "So I decided we needed to start carrying breast pumps." At first she only carried the essentials like hydrogel dressings for nipple wounds, feeding tubes and syringes (used as a supplemental nursing system). For the first year it just her husband and herself providing coaching services and supplies.

A milestone in the business came when she was urged to begin accepting insurance. "I've always been a patient advocate," as far as getting breastfeeding supplies and services covered. Even some of the lower cost breast pumps can cost $350 to $400, with high end hospital grade pumps costing as much as $2500. Today, while insurance plans vary, breast pumps are most often covered by many insurance polices.

Corey is an acknowledged expert in this area and often offers advice to people across the entire State of Washington on breastfeeding and insurance coverage. Nurturing Expressions provides breast pumps and supplies to all the Seattle area hospitals.

Corey related a typical scenario she encounters: "A woman has a baby and is in the hospital. Something is not going right. The breastfeeding, the latch, there's problems. The baby was born prematurely and is in the Neo Natal Intensive Care Unit. They are rushed to Children's Hospital for some kind of congenital anomaly. The hospital then picks up the phone and calls us. They say 'We're going to need a breast pump delivered to this mom because her and her baby are going to be separated.' The reason they need that is they need the hospital grade breast pump in order to establish the milk supply. So they start pumping at the hospital but when mom is discharged she still needs that breast pump."

Corey's role as a coach means she encounters all the issues associated with breastfeeding ranging from inability to produce milk (new mothers first produce colostrum but it can sometimes take 3 or 4 days), to help with "latching" (getting the baby's mouth on the nipple), to the psychological issues associated with this. She also provides some nutritional guidance for mothers to increase and improve their milk supply but is teaming up with a local nutritionist in West Seattle. "We're going to come up with easy food guides for nursing moms," Corey said.

"This field of breastfeeding medicine has just grown by leaps and bounds," Corey said, "and we're not done yet."

"We're trying to learn how we can decrease nipple pain, why one mom has a great milk supply and another doesn't."

Nurturing Expressions offers breastfeeding classes which they recommend women take in the third trimester, and they offer a breastfeeding plan to help them meet their individual goals.

"I'm here to set up a breastfeeding plan," Corey said, "that's where we start," but her experience also gives her insight into the many psychological issues mothers can face if they have problems with it. "I teach them how to feed their baby."

Corey strongly believes that children should breastfeed for the first year before going to solid food. "We need to make it a norm for the mom to breastfeed for the first year," Corey said. She supports the practice by providing a lactation room in her own business open to nursing moms and will have a booth at the West Seattle Summerfest with a nursing area set aside.

She sits on the Board of the Washington State Breastfeeding Coalition and she has made the 'business case' for lactation rooms in businesses. It's a formal plan for how businesses can support nursing mothers.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Policy Statement on Breast-feeding, women who don't have health problems, like HIV, should exclusively breast-feed their infants for at least the first six months of life. AAP suggests that women try to breast-feed for the first 12 months to two years of life because of the benefits to both mother and baby.

Breastfeeding offers many benefits providing the right balance of nutrients to help an infant grow properly. Some of the nutrients in breast milk also help protect an infant against some common childhood illnesses and infections, such as diarrhea and certain lung infections.

Recent research also suggests that breast milk contains important amino acids, protein building blocks, that help an infant's brain develop. Researchers found that two amino acids present in breast milk may help infants to increase their cognitive skills.

Breast-feeding also has benefits for the mother. Nursing causes the mother's body to release a hormone that makes the uterus contract. Many mothers also reap emotional benefits from breastfeeding because of the interaction with the baby.