Celebrating National Breastfeeding Month: Meet Breanna Kuimi, IBCLC
Celebrating National Breastfeeding Month: Meet Breanna Kuimi, IBCLC
Every August, we pause to celebrate the parents, babies, and families navigating the beautiful, often complicated journey of breastfeeding and the dedicated professionals who walk alongside them. This National Breastfeeding Month, we continue our spotlight series introducing you to the lactation providers who make up the heart of California’s breastfeeding support community and many of which you will be able to find through our brand-new LATCH Directory.
Meet Breanna
Brianna is a board certified lactation consultant, registered nurse of 10 years, certified holistic nutritionist, and founder of Anew Life, a postpartum nonprofit based in Los Angeles.
Brianna didn’t always know if breastfeeding would be possible for her. In her early twenties, she developed multiple breast tumors on her right side, the last of which was precancerous. Even before she had children, she knew she someday wanted to breastfeed so going into surgery, she asked her doctor to do everything possible to protect that future. Years later, when she gave birth to her first child, she simply knew she wanted to nurse him. Early struggles with latch were met with hands-on support from WIC, which carried her through that first year, ultimately breastfeeding her son for about a year and a half, proof that her earlier surgery hadn’t taken that possibility away from her.
Brianna’s own experience with breastfeeding her babies is a testament to how every experience can be different. Having been through it once, she believed the second time would be easier. Instead, she faced a new set of challenges: a tongue tie, bottle refusal, and a much different feeding journey. That journey sparked her interest in becoming a lactation consultant herself. She started as a lactation educator first, picking up skills that helped her navigate her own breastfeeding journey. Six months into her second breastfeeding journey, she found a program willing to invest in her at UC San Diego. She completed the program in 2022 and passed her IBCLC exam on her first attempt in 2023.
Brianna went straight to work in her community, hosting breastfeeding empowerment events featuring mini prenatal breastfeeding classes and raffles for pumps, nursing bras, and other supplies, recognizing how financially out of reach basic breastfeeding supplies can be in underserved communities. Those events, which she still holds annually, eventually grew into something bigger: Anew Life, her postpartum nonprofit, founded in 2023 and now offering a full range of free services out of South Los Angeles. Anew Life offers postpartum meals designed to support healing and milk supply, house cleaning, laundry support, free in-home lactation consults, mental health and therapy support, in-home massage, and even prenatal and postpartum hair braiding. The idea grew directly out of her own experience as a first-time mother far from family, wishing someone could help with the meals, the laundry, the emotional load, and all the things that make postpartum recovery so much harder to do alone.
Brianna is candid that her hardest breastfeeding journey by far came with her twins. Even as a working IBCLC by that point, she found that the hospital had no lactation consultant trained specifically in multiples, and she had to troubleshoot latch techniques for two babies largely on her own. She leaned on the support of two fellow IBCLCs, Lydia Boyd (Los Angeles) and Brandi Burgess (Oakland), who encouraged her and helped her meet her goal of exclusively breastfeeding both twins for a full year without formula.
Her partner was just as essential to that milestone — helping position both babies for feeds, prepping bottles, and offering steady encouragement through countless 2 a.m. sessions. It’s a reminder of how much Black partners contribute to breastfeeding journeys, often in ways that go unrecognized. With that support, and her mother’s help along the way, she and her twins reached a full year of exclusive breastfeeding, a milestone she still marks as one of her proudest.
Now, Brianna is channeling her own experience into a new initiative: B.MOM (Black Moms of Multiples), a support community she founded for families navigating the unique demands of breastfeeding and raising multiples. B.MOM has chapters in Los Angeles and Atlanta, with stroller-stride meetups, a growing online community, and a specialized, culturally competent breastfeeding class for multiples launching soon — built specifically to raise breastfeeding rates among Black mothers of twins, triplets, and more, a population she knows firsthand is too often left without specialized guidance.
Brianna is also gearing up to launch a new podcast, Breastfeeding While Black, debuting during Black Breastfeeding Week 2026 to uplift Black voices and experiences in the breastfeeding community.
Through it all, Brianna’s throughline has stayed the same: making sure families, especially families of color, never feel like financial or informational barriers stand between them and their breastfeeding goals.
About LATCH Directory
Brianna is one of the many dedicated lactation providers you’ll be able to find through the LATCH Directory, a new statewide tool from the California Breastfeeding Coalition (CBC) designed to connect families with qualified lactation support — quickly, easily, and in the setting that works for them. Whether a family is looking for in-home support, care from a provider who specializes in multiples, or free and low-cost postpartum resources, LATCH Directory is built to make that search simple.
LATCH Directory is made possible through the CLASP-BC grant, and it’s just the first piece of a larger, statewide initiative CBC is building to strengthen breastfeeding support across California. Following the Directory’s launch, CBC will roll out a Warmline for real-time support, along with a Podcast to continue educating and connecting families and providers alike. This spotlight series is part of that same mission: helping families discover the incredible lactation providers already doing this work throughout the state.
Get Listed
If you’re a lactation provider and you’d like to be included in the LATCH Directory, we’d love to have you and you can submit your listing here.
Looking for Support?
Families can search LATCH Directory by location, language, and specialty to find the right lactation support for their needs.
You can learn more about Brianna Kuimi and Anew Life directly at www.a-new-life.org.