Baby Café Bakersfield 🤱🏼

Baby Café Bakersfield has been part of Bakersfield since 2014 for one simple reason: every family deserves a place to turn. No appointment. No cost. No judgment — just expert breastfeeding support in a warm, welcoming space where you belong.

We are free because this community chooses to make us free. This GiveBigKern, your gift keeps our doors open for the mom who is struggling at 2am, texts us at 7 the next morning, and shows up at our in-person drop-in because it's accessible. For the family who can't afford a private consultation. For every parent who just needs someone in their corner.

Help us make sure no family in Kern County goes without the breastfeeding support they deserve.

We have been building a healthier Bakersfield since 2014!

At Baby Cafe Bakersfield, our role is to help families build healthy foundations through smart infant feeding practices. We do that by educating pregnant, breastfeeding, and pumping women and their partners, providing hands-on lactation assistance and lactation counseling to parents and babies, and promoting healthy practices around infant and toddler feeding in the home and the community.

We have been providing free lactation care and counseling for more than 12 years now in Bakersfield, and we work to ensure that new parents can access the support they need to keep themselves healthy physically and emotionally as they navigate parenting. Supporting families with their lactation needs offers an excellent opportunity to educate about nutrition and to promote evidence-based infant and toddler feeding practices. We use a science-based approach to counseling and consulting.

Our services are free and open to the community. Our work is frequently used as a community observation site by aspiring nurses and nurses enrolled in continuing education or career advancement programs, offering them a no-cost opportunity for additional education.

Your financial contribution to Baby Cafe Bakersfield means that

• we can continue to provide safe, welcoming, family-oriented care to families at no cost to them
• we can offer families care via phone, text, email, and virtual (telehealth) consultation
• we can maintain the highest standards of education for each and every member of our all-volunteer staff
• we can produce educational publications and social media content which inform and educate the public in our community and beyond
• we can serve all families with full access to the highest level of clinical lactation care and counseling

Thousands of Bakersfield and Kern County families have received breastfeeding help from Baby Café Bakersfield over the past 12 years, some through multiple babies! These families continue to refer their friends, coworkers, and loved ones to our services because we care for our clients and treat them with respect and dignity at all times. 

Who We Are

Baby Cafe Bakersfield offers access to free, high-quality, comprehensive lactation and breastfeeding and care for all families in Kern County. Our phone and text line supports pregnant and breastfeeding mothers 7 days a week, offering answers to their questions and connection to trained and skilled lactation care providers. 

Our staff of highly-trained volunteers are IBCLCs who work with families to help them meet their own infant feeding goals, including exclusive breastfeeding, pumping milk, appropriate bottle feeding practices, getting a healthy start with solids, managing common and uncommon problems during the course of normal breastfeeding, and natural weaning.
We host drop-in sessions once per week at Beale Library. 

We also offer comprehensive lactation care via telehealth services. Virtual consultation offers families the opportunity to receive the education and care they need from the comfort and safety of their own home. Simple or quick questions are answered on our phone line by an IBCLC 24/7. 

All services provided by Baby Café Bakersfield are free for families, in alignment with the mission of our umbrella organization, Baby Café USA.