What Is MumBo™? The Mum and Baby Combination Behind Breastfeeding

For years I was honestly a bit embarrassed about the way my brain worked. I could only understand something fully if I learned it so deeply that I could simplify it in my mind. I thought it meant I was a bit slow or... let me just say it... dim, dumb, stupid.

It took me years to realise that the ability to simplify complicated things wasn't a flaw at all. It was probably one of the most useful things I could bring to breastfeeding... who knew?!

Looking back, it has shaped my entire career. In the early days I was drawn to complex feeding problems: babies whose behaviour didn't seem to match the textbook, mums who had tried everything and still felt lost, and situations where the obvious answer simply wasn't working. Those stories hooked me because I wanted to understand what was really happening underneath them.

I also realised something important, and contrary to popular belief at the time... Being a breastfeeding specialist doesn't mean persuading anyone to breastfeed.

It means supporting mums who want to breastfeed to understand what is happening in front of them, with their baby, in their real life. Calmly. Without pressure. Without rules.

At some point I caught myself wondering: what would be the most complex challenge I could ever take on?

Create something simple enough to help every mum and baby personalise feeding, no matter their story.

That became MumBo™.

And it became one of the foundations of the Miskin Method®.

What is MumBo™?

MumBo™ means the Mum and Baby Combination.

It is the unique combination of maternal and newborn factors that shapes how breastfeeding behaves for you and your baby.

I created MumBo™ because breastfeeding isn't happening to a generic mum and a generic baby. It is happening between two individual human beings, each bringing their own anatomy, history and circumstances to the feed.

Within the Miskin Method®, MumBo™ is not a diagnosis and it isn't a breastfeeding technique. It is a lens I use to understand the context in which feeding is happening before deciding what a particular breastfeeding pattern might mean.

MumBo™ considers five core areas: Mum, Birth, Medical History, Baby and Baby's Oral Cavity.

Mum considers the maternal factors that may influence breastfeeding, including breast and nipple anatomy and the mum's individual feeding circumstances.

Birth considers the birth experience and recovery context.

Medical History considers relevant background factors that may influence feeding or recovery.

Baby considers the individual baby, including factors such as age, size, stamina and growth context.

Oral Cavity considers baby's mouth and the way structures including the palate, tongue and cheeks may interact during feeding.

These are essentially the cards we're starting with. Many aren't things that need to be “fixed”. They need to be understood.

Because once we understand the individual MumBo™, we have context for everything we see next.

How MumBo™ came about

When I began developing my breastfeeding framework, I assumed the best way to do it was to solve problems one by one. If I could understand every possible cause of sore nipples, for example, perhaps I'd have the model.

It seemed logical.

Except I kept running into the same problem.

Everyone was different.

The same breastfeeding advice could help one mum and be completely wrong for another. Two babies could show similar behaviour for entirely different reasons. Something that looked like the same breastfeeding problem on the surface could have a completely different story underneath it.

Eventually the obvious truth became impossible to ignore: mum and baby create a unique combination.

Two puzzle pieces that sometimes click together beautifully and sometimes need a little more understanding first.

I started calling it the Mum and Baby Combination, which became the mum-and-baby combo. Then one day, joking about those celebrity blended names, I said “MumBo.”

It sounded sweet and fun.

So it stuck.

Why MumBo™ makes breastfeeding clearer

Once I started looking through the MumBo™ lens, breastfeeding became easier to organise in my mind.

Instead of asking, “What's the solution for this symptom?”, I could first ask, “Who are the mum and baby experiencing it?”

That's an important distinction.

Because a baby feeding constantly can mean different things in different MumBos. Breastfeeding pain can have different drivers. A very short feed can be completely appropriate for one baby and worth investigating in another.

Without context, mums can end up reading ten different explanations for the same breastfeeding behaviour and still have absolutely no idea which one applies to them.

That is one of the reasons generic breastfeeding advice can become so confusing.

MumBo™ doesn't give us a universal answer.

It gives us a better starting point for asking the right questions.

MumBo™ and the Miskin Method®

MumBo™ became one of the foundational frameworks within the Miskin Method®, the breastfeeding method I developed over nearly 30 years of working with mums and babies.

But MumBo™ was only part of the puzzle.

Once I understood who was feeding, I still needed a simple structure for understanding how the feeding itself was working.

That eventually became the 4 Pillars of Breastfeeding Mastery™: Comfortable, Efficient, Sustainable and Effective.

Together, these frameworks help organise a breastfeeding picture before we rush towards solutions.

They also form part of the thinking underpinning LATCHED AI, the personalised breastfeeding education and support platform I created to make my frameworks and experience more accessible to mums when they are trying to understand their own breastfeeding.

The most important thing to understand about MumBo™

If you've arrived here because you searched “What is MumBo?”, this is the bit I want you to take away:

MumBo™ is the unique Mum and Baby Combination behind your breastfeeding experience.

It isn't a technique to perform or another set of breastfeeding rules to follow.

It's a reminder that breastfeeding advice only becomes useful when we understand the mum and baby we're giving it to.

And that's why, when feeding problems persist, overlap or escalate, collecting more generic advice isn't necessarily the answer. That's the point where personalised breastfeeding assessment may be needed to understand the wider picture and decide what deserves attention first.

I’m Geraldine Miskin, breastfeeding specialist, originator of MumBo™ and the 4 Pillars of Breastfeeding Mastery™, and creator of the Miskin Method® and LATCHED AI.

To understand what we look at after the MumBo™, read What Are the 4 Pillars of Breastfeeding Mastery™?

About LATCHED AI: LATCHED AI is a personalised breastfeeding education and support platform created by Geraldine Miskin. Built on the Miskin Method®, MumBo™ and the 4 Pillars of Breastfeeding Mastery™, it combines nearly 30 years of professional breastfeeding experience with personalised AI support to help families better understand their own breastfeeding.