Certified Nursing Center - The Milky Way
Testimonial/About Us:
As our name, The Milky Way, implies, we are a store that specializes in servicing nursing mothers. Since we opened our store six years ago, we have used two main “tag” lines for our store:
1. The One Stop Shop for New & Nursing Mothers
2. Nursing Your Baby the Easy Way
The reason that we (owners Wooten and Adam Schmitz) opened The Milky Way was that we experienced quite a few difficulties breastfeeding our first child, Zeke. He was a c-section baby and was separated from Wooten for several hours. When mom and baby were finally joined, Wooten was engorged and he was quite confused and had lost some of his rooting instinct. After three weeks of hair pulling, countless trips to the pediatrician’s office, help from a very caring and knowledgeable baby nurse and a trip to a breastfeeding store to switch nursing pillows, we finally succeeded with our nursing. Not long after we packed our bags for Charlotte, NC with the mission of providing moms a place to not only get that great nursing pillow, but also be a shoulder to lean on and a support system for moms like Wooten, who feels that without all the help and helpful products that she had access to we would not have succeeded at breastfeeding Zeke.
Six years later we feel that we are accomplishing our mission of helping provide the necessary products and service to allow moms an enjoyable and successful breastfeeding experience… or to just to go one or two months longer than they might have without our help.
The Milky Way has a strong alliance with Carolinas Medical Center, the second largest public hospital system in the U.S., and we are their official breast pump rental station. We offer all the best in breast feeding products, give knowledgeable and caring customer service, and now offer a free monthly class on breastfeeding. The class is lead by nationally renowned Lactation Consultant Jan Ellen Brown who works out of Charlotte Pediatric Clinic which is Charlotte’s largest pediatrician’s office. She recently co-authored with Kathleen Huggins the book 25 Things Every Nursing Mother Needs to Know. At these classes we will also be on hand to offer breast pump help, check breast pumps with our handy Medela gauges, show them how to best operate their Medela pumps, tell them about the benefits of the pump exchange program and show them what parts they need to update their pumps.
Wooten, and her understudy Kathleen Levren, are known throughout the Charlotte area as the ones to see when you need a great, personalized nursing bra fitting. Wooten has been helping moms find just the right bra for six years now and moms come from 50+ miles to get a fitting from her. Prior to joining The Milky Way family, Kathleen spent three years fitting bras at the lingerie store IC London.
We have the privilege of marketing ourselves through all of the Carolinas Medical Center obstetrician offices with goody bags that contain quite a bit of very helpful literature and information about Medela products. Not only do the local OB offices refer patients here but we get referrals from Carolinas Medical Center’s OB education staff, local pediatricians and dozens of lactation consultants and nurse practitioners.
Our relationship with Medela has frankly been a great one for us. Medela is not only our number one product line by far, but it has been the tent pole that has held up The Milky Way. We exclusively carry Medela breast pumps and offer the full line of Medela breastfeeding and maternity/nursing bras.
We are very to be accepted as a Certified Nursing Center. This is another step in fulfilling our mission of doing everything we can in the Charlotte area -- and far beyond with the magic of the World Wide Web -- to promote breastfeeding and help as many mothers as we can reach to have the best breastfeeding experience possible.
Click here to visit The Milky Way
