Pamula is willing to open up her heart to readers and share her truth with rawness and vulnerability that engages you from the first page. Her words are a salve to fellow mothers who have said early goodbyes and a reminder to all mothers to trust their instincts.

Pam describes the harrowing experience of a parent who witnesses the starvation and dehydration of a previously healthy baby, her son Chaz, while exclusively breastfeeding. Tragedies like these now occur commonly as a results of the current campaign to promote exclusive breastfeeding for all mothers and infants promoted by the World Heath Organization, UNICEF and multiple supporting organizations. Exclusive breastfeeding education commonly teaches parents that insufficient breast milk is rare, that signs of infant hunger are normal, and that all that is required to feed a hungry breastfed baby is to ‘just keep breastfeeding.’ For parents with true low milk supply who follow this advice, their infants can become jaundiced, dehydrated and hypoglycemic, which causes brain injury and permanent disability. Breastfeeding books commonly normalize and minimize the signs and serious consequences of insufficient feeding of breastfed infants in order to promote compliance with global exclusive breastfeeding targets, to the detriment of the least-fed infants. Chaz is one of millions of infants who have been harmed by the WHO/UNICEF Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative and the Tens Steps to Successful Breastfeeding. Lessons that Pam learns as a breastfeeding parent who becomes a special needs parent is vital information for every parent who wants to provide their infant safe and optimal infant feeding.

Mother Knows Best: A Memoir is a touching, brave story of a mother's love and her journey through a medical communication crisis that left her elder son dependent on a wheelchair. It will make you cry. It will make you laugh. It will help you understand the consequences of failure within the American medical system and the resilience of a family facing life's most painful challenges.

Pamula Floyd's memoir, Mother Knows Best, is a must-read for parents, educators, and medical professionals! Pamula tells her gripping story about a preventable medical trauma with honesty and integrity. Against all odds, Pamula fought and advocated for her son, Chaz, every step of the way. Mother did indeed know best.

Mother Knows Best: A Memoir is a heartbreaking story of unintended starvation-induced brain damage from insufficient milk intake while exclusively breastfeeding. Mothers like Pam and her son Chaz are the reason I co-founded the Fed Is Best Foundation—where we provide education to parents about how to recognize insufficient breastfeeding. Unfortunately, breastfeeding education often does not teach parents how common low milk supply really is or how to supplement to protect their babies from needless suffering. It’s a modern-day tragedy.

Pamula Floyd writes from her gut, the same gut that told her she knew better than any pediatrician or expert what her newborn baby needed. Mother Knows Best reminds new mothers to always trust their gut instincts and warns of the dangers of not trusting new mothers. Her writing is raw and deep-hearted and unflinching, much like the side of motherhood we're too afraid to discuss.

Parents of children with special health care needs must find a way to move from focusing on what went wrong to how to give their child the most fulfilling life possible. In Mother Knows Best, Pam Floyd shares her compelling journey from joyous mother of a healthy newborn to, days later, facing the catastrophic near death of her previously healthy baby, and the radical adjustment to a new life she and her husband, Frank, never anticipated. In her captivating story, Pam recounts how she learned to choose hope and possibility over despair and remorse and how resolving to love unconditionally, advocate fiercely, and accept and celebrate the child we have can mold us into the person we were meant to be. I enthusiastically recommend this compelling book, not only for every parent of a child with special health care needs, but for every parent. I also commend Pam’s memoir as a must-read for all lactation care providers who always must make a baby’s welfare their paramount priority. 

More than one in five families has at least one child with special health care needs, including chronic health conditions and disabilities. Such challenges may be evident at birth or become apparent as the child develops. Sometimes previously health children become disabled by severe illness or injury, and rarely, they are irrevocably harmed as the result of medical errors and failures in the health care system. Whatever the cause or the timing, parents of children with special health care needs must find a way to move from focusing on what went wrong to how to give a child with complex health and developmental challenges the most fulfilling life possible. In Mother Knows Best, Pam Floyd shares her compelling journey from joyous mother of a healthy newborn to, days later, facing the catastrophic near death of her previously healthy baby, and the radical adjustment to a new life she and her husband, Frank, never anticipated. In her captivating story, Pam recounts how she learned to choose hope and possibility over despair and remorse. In becoming a fierce advocate for Chaz--from managing his complex medical care needs to ensuring an effective, individualized educational plan and tenaciously optimizing his quality of life--Pam convinces readers that loving unconditionally, advocating fiercely, and accepting and celebrating the child we have can mold us into the person we were meant to be. I enthusiastically recommend this book, not only for every parent of a child with special health care needs, but for every parent who needs to be reminded to cherish the unique qualities and personhood of the precious child you have, no matter how they differ from the child you had imagined. I also commend this book as a must-read for lactation consultants and other lactation care providers.