My logo is a woodcut print of a lactating siren from 1613. I call her The Original Barista since the logo for Starbucks was also based on an old seafaring print and looks very much like this one. Starbucks has not identified the exact original siren their logo was based on, but we do know that the original Starbucks logo included naked breasts. This turned out to be controversial, so the breasts were removed from later renditions.

The words, “birth, lactation, sleep” appear around the edges of the circle because I have found these three things to be connected. What happens with the birth impacts nursing, and nursing and sleep impact each other.

The original barista is a fun title for the image and she is a fitting logo for my business. I spent countless hours in a Hawaii Starbucks caffeinating my way through my doctoral dissertation on lactation, jogging to the beach when I needed a break. Also, it is fitting because human milk contains substances that cause infants to either feel sleepy or alert.

Newborns don’t yet have a sleep/wake cycle. The hormones in human milk change over 24 hours to develop a circadian rhythm in your baby. For example, you have melatonin in your night milk, which newborns’ own bodies don’t yet produce. Melatonin facilitates a state of sleep. You also have higher levels of cortisol in your morning milk, which makes infants alert.

Prolactin is your milk-making hormone, and it is highest in the middle of the night when many parents want to stretch out feeds to get more sleep and train their baby to sleep longer. Doing so might affect your milk supply, depending on your milk storage capacity. Nursing at night is helping your baby get back to sleep given the substances in milk that are aiding in that.

If you are feeling sleep deprived it may be reassuring to know that it is safe to consume caffeine in moderation while lactating. Very little of it will get into your milk, so a cup or two of coffee a day is usually fine. In fact, a much higher level of caffeine than you are likely consuming is sometimes given to premature babies as a treatment for breathing issues. Also, the idea that caffeine reduces milk supply is a myth. So go ahead and put a fancy coffee maker or tea kettle on your baby registry.