Shannon Pratten is a practicing NICU Registered Nurse and International Board-Certified Lactation Consultant with more than 20 years of bedside experience caring for newborns and their mothers. A California native who met her husband while working as a travel nurse in London, she went on to have three water births — one in a birth center and two at home — and breastfed each of her children until age four.

Now based in South Carolina, Shannon runs a private lactation practice while continuing to fly to Berkeley every six weeks to work per diem NICU shifts. Remaining clinically active is intentional — it keeps her work grounded in the real experiences of mothers navigating early postpartum life.