Speaking on Modern Parenthood, Infant Feeding, and the Pressure to Get It Right
Heather helps audiences understand why early parenthood feels so impossible right now — and what it would take to build systems of care that actually support families.
Modern parents have access to more information, more tools, and more choices than ever before.
So why do so many feel more anxious, more scrutinized, and less supported?
Heather Eure, PhD, IBCLC, PMH-C, speaks on the cultural, clinical, and emotional forces shaping early parenthood. Her work explores how infant feeding, perinatal mental health, data, AI, neurodivergence, identity, and care systems collide during one of the most vulnerable transitions in family life.
Heather brings a rare combination of clinical lactation expertise, perinatal mental health training, academic depth, university teaching experience, and lived experience as a parent to conversations that are timely, nuanced, and deeply human.
Heather is available for…
Keynotes • Conference sessions • Professional trainings • Webinars • Panels • Podcasts • Interviews
Heather’s Speaking Platform
Early parenthood has become a site of constant measurement.
Parents are asked to track feeds, ounces, diapers, sleep, wake windows, weight gain, pumping output, milestones, schedules, symptoms, and more. They are surrounded by expert advice, social media messaging, AI-generated answers, nonstop marketing, and conflicting guidance from healthcare professionals, wellness brands, parenting platforms, and online communities.
For many families, the result is not confidence. It is hypervigilance and anxiety.
Heather’s speaking explores the pressure modern parents face to optimize everything, especially in the earliest months of family life. She connects the intimate realities of feeding, sleep, anxiety, parental identity, and postpartum recovery to the larger systems shaping family support — from healthcare and technology to parental leave policies and online advice.
Using infant feeding as a powerful entry point, Heather helps audiences understand larger questions about mental health, technology, identity, embodiment, neurodivergence, healthcare systems, and the future of family support.
Her talks resonate with audiences interested in parenting culture, maternal and family mental health, women’s health, healthcare, technology, neurodiversity, and the emotional realities of modern caregiving.
Speaking and Media Appearances
Signature Keynote
The Optimization Trap: Feeding, Data, AI, and the Pressure to Parent Perfectly
Today’s parents are surrounded by information, but information alone does not create support.
In this signature talk, Heather explores how tracking apps, social media, AI tools, feeding advice, wellness culture, medical anxiety, and perfectionism collide in the lives of new parents. Infant feeding becomes the perfect case study: deeply embodied, emotionally charged, medically significant, culturally judged, and impossible to reduce to one-size-fits-all advice.
The Optimization Trap asks what happens when parents are expected to make perfect decisions inside systems that often leave them under-supported, over-monitored, and alone with impossible expectations.
This keynote is ideal for conferences, summits, healthcare organizations, parenting platforms, women’s health events, mental health audiences, universities, workplace parent initiatives, and organizations interested in the future of parenting, care, technology, and support.
Audience takeaways include:
Why modern parents often feel more anxious despite having more information
When data supports families and when it increases vigilance and distress
How AI and online advice may intensify the pressure to find the “right” answer
Why evidence-based care must include emotional, relational, and systemic support
How professionals and organizations can reduce shame while supporting informed decision-making
Core Speaking Themes
Maternal Mental Health and the Emotional Reality of Early Parenthood
Heather speaks about the mental health realities that often underlie early parenting struggles. Feeding challenges, sleep deprivation, pain, medical concerns, isolation, intrusive thoughts, anxiety, OCD, and conflicting advice can all shape how parents experience pregnancy, postpartum, infant feeding, and early caregiving. Her talks help audiences understand why infant feeding and perinatal mental health cannot be treated as separate issues, and what more integrated, compassionate care can look like.
Featured Topics:
Bridging the Gap: Integrating Lactation and Perinatal Mental Health Support
Supporting the Mental Health of Parents of Preterm and Late Preterm Infants
Feeding Support Without the Spiral: Infant Feeding, Anxiety, and the Pressure to Get It Right
What Mental Health Professionals Need to Know About Lactation
What Lactation Professionals Need to Know About Perinatal Mental Health
Neurodivergent Parents, Sensory Overload, and the Hidden Demands of Caregiving
Neurodivergence includes natural variations in how people think, communicate, sense, and move through the world. For neurodivergent folks such as ADHDers and Autistic individuals, pregnancy, postpartum, infant feeding, and early parenting can place an enormous strain on executive functioning, sensory processing, identity, coping skills, and mental health.
The healthcare system and many parenting resources rely on expectations that can be especially difficult for neurodivergent parents to sustain, including managing appointments and instructions, tolerating constant sensory input, communicating needs clearly, and following complex plans under stress. Those assumptions can leave neurodivergent parents feeling misunderstood, ashamed, and unsupported.
Heather’s speaking helps audiences understand how ADHD, autism, sensory overwhelm, masking, demand overload, rejection sensitivity, and executive functioning challenges can shape the early parenting experience. She offers a neurodiversity-affirming framework for supporting parents without shame, assumptions, or one-size-fits-all advice.
Featured Topics:
Neurodivergent Parenthood: ADHD, Autism, and the Early Years
The Hidden Executive Function Demands of Early Parenthood
Building More Accessible Care for Neurodivergent Parents
Sensory Overload, Feeding, and the Postpartum Nervous System
Perinatal Mental Health, Neurodivergence, and the Role of the Lactation Consultant
Infant Feeding, Identity, and the Culture of Parental Worth
Heather speaks about why infant feeding is never just a routine task. Breastfeeding, pumping, bottle feeding, milk supply, weight gain, supplementation, and weaning often become tied to identity, shame, gender, embodiment, grief, autonomy, and social expectations. Her talks help audiences understand why “fed is best” and “breast is best” both fail to capture the complexity of what families are living — and how care can support informed decisions without turning feeding into a measure of parental worth.
Featured Topics:
When “Evidence-Based” Advice Isn’t Enough: Feeding, Shame, and America’s Missing Support System
Good Mothers, Bad Data, and the Emotional Weight of Infant Feeding
Feeding, Fear, and the Myth of Perfect Parenting
When Feeding Becomes a Measure of Parental Worth
Breastfeeding, Identity, and the Cultural Scripts of Motherhood
Watch Heather Speak
Heather has been interviewed by GOLD Lactation about her presentations on lactation, premature infants, and perinatal mental health as well as on AI and infant feeding. These conversations offer a glimpse into her speaking style, clinical perspective, and approach to complex topics in early parenthood.
Supporting the Mental Health of Parents of Preterm and Late Preterm Babies
How AI Influences Lactation Care & Infant Feeding Decisions
Speaking Formats
Heather is available for keynotes, conference sessions, professional trainings, webinars, panels, podcasts, and interviews.
Audiences
She speaks to conferences, universities, healthcare organizations, women’s and maternal health groups, workplace parenting initiatives, parenting platforms, mental health professionals, lactation and infant feeding professionals, and interdisciplinary perinatal teams.
About Heather Eure
Heather Eure, PhD, IBCLC, PMH-C, is an international speaker, lactation consultant, parent coach, certified postpartum doula, and educator based in Austin, Texas. She is the founder of The Lactation Expert, a concierge lactation and parent support practice, and has supported families across home, outpatient, hospital, community, and NICU settings for over a decade.
Before entering the lactation field, Heather earned a PhD in Comparative Literature with a certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies from The University of Texas at Austin. Her academic work examined performances of gender identity and their intersections with literature, culture, embodiment, and social meaning.
Today, Heather brings that interdisciplinary background to her work as a speaker. She analyzes the stories families are told about good parenting, the cultural scripts attached to infant feeding and motherhood, and the systems that shape how parents understand their choices, bodies, identities, and worth.
Her work is evidence-based, neurodiversity-affirming, LGBTQIA+ inclusive, and grounded in the belief that parents deserve care that is both clinically sound and deeply human.
Heather Eure
PhD, IBCLC, PMH-C · Speaker, Lactation Consultant & Educator
Austin, Texas
Speaking Style
Heather is known for bringing warmth, clarity, and intellectual depth to complex topics. Her presentations are evidence-informed without being cold, emotionally resonant without being simplistic, and practical without reducing families to checklists or scripts.
Audiences appreciate Heather’s ability to name what many parents feel but struggle to articulate: the pressure, vigilance, shame, uncertainty, and impossible expectations that often shape early family life. She connects those lived experiences to the clinical realities, cultural narratives, and care systems that influence how parents understand their bodies, babies, choices, and worth.
Her talks are especially well-suited for audiences ready to move into deeper conversations about what families are carrying, why support often falls short, and how care can become more human, more inclusive, and more effective.
Previous Speaking and Teaching
Heather has presented for professional audiences, parent groups, international lactation education platforms, and national and international conferences.
Her speaking and teaching experience includes presentations on lactation, perinatal mental health, neurodiversity-affirming care, AI and infant feeding, prenatal breastfeeding preparation, and the pressures facing modern parents.
She has spoken for organizations and events, including GOLD Lactation, iLactation, and Postpartum Support International. She also teaches Lactation Essentials for Birth Professionals, a professional education course for doulas, midwives, therapists, and other perinatal providers.
Before becoming an IBCLC, Heather taught college-level writing and French at The University of Texas at Austin and St. Edward’s University. Her teaching background continues to shape her speaking style: rigorous, engaging, accessible, and attentive to the cultural meanings underneath everyday experience.
Invite Heather to Speak
Heather is available for keynotes, conference sessions, professional trainings, organizational webinars, panels, podcasts, and interviews.
To inquire about availability, speaking topics, or a custom presentation for your event or organization, please complete the speaking inquiry form.
For questions, email: heather@thelactationexpert.com
Frequently Asked Questions
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Heather speaks about modern parenting pressure, infant feeding, lactation, perinatal mental health, neurodivergent parenting, postpartum care, data-driven parenting, AI, identity, and the cultural expectations shaping early family life.
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Yes. Heather is available for keynote presentations on modern parenthood, infant feeding, perinatal mental health, neurodivergence, data, AI, and the pressure to parent perfectly. Her signature keynote is The Optimization Trap: Feeding, Data, AI, and the Pressure to Parent Perfectly.
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Yes. Heather speaks to conferences, universities, healthcare teams, mental health professionals, lactation professionals, birth workers, perinatal organizations, workplace parenting initiatives, and interdisciplinary professional audiences.
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Yes. Heather offers professional trainings for organizations seeking deeper education on lactation, infant feeding, perinatal mental health, neurodivergent parenting, postpartum support, and collaborative care.
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Yes. Heather is available for virtual keynotes, webinars, professional trainings, panels, podcasts, and interviews.
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Yes. Heather can adapt talks based on the audience, event goals, format, length, and level of clinical depth requested.
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Yes. Once a speaking engagement is confirmed, Heather can provide a professional bio, headshot, session description, and promotional language for your event.
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Please complete the speaking inquiry form with information about your event, audience, format, topic goals, date, and speaker budget.