Baby Café Bakersfield

For the past 11 years we have been building a healthier Bakersfield!

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 lactation care and counseling for more than 10 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 11 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 high-quality, comprehensive lactation and breastfeeding and care for all families in Kern County. Our staff of highly-trained volunteers are IBCLCs and lactation counselors 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.
Traditionally, we have offered these services through drop-in sessions several times per week. Today, during our current pandemic and shelter-at-home time, we are offering comprehensive lactation care via telephone and 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. Once we get the all-clear to gather in groups, we'll resume our in-person drop-in sessions!