Reflecting 2025 and Preparation for a meaningful 2026
Reflecting 2025 and Preparation for a meaningful 2026
Carene Here we are, nearly through the first month of 2026. It almost feels like the earth is spinning faster with every passing year. I feel fortunate to be able to “hit the ground running” this year, compared to feeling like I need to catch up or remember what exactly it is that I do.
I took a few days off during the festive season, while being able to ease back into work before kicking off this new year. I had a wonderful welcome back in the hospital, running into colleagues all telling me the same thing…“thank goodness you are back”. Feeling needed and respected in my little corner of the world just gave me the boost of inspiration I needed to take on 2026.
Taking the time to read my reflection of 2024, checking my stats and assessing my goals is a helpful exercise to allow me to grow and aspire to be better. So, follow along as I reflect on 2025.
Looking Back on 2025
The year 2017 was the inception of Bump to Babe, with visions of what it might one day be and daunting fears that it might never happen. Chipping away at the process of starting a practice slowly from there, to jumping in full speed in 2022. I can hardly believe it has been over 3 years of running this practice. Every year just seems to get better and better, and here are the stats to prove just that:
- Number of treatments: I delivered a total of 796 treatments during 2025. This is a slight increase from the total of 760 treatments for 2024. While I am utterly grateful for these numbers, I did have to take quite a lot of time off during 2025 to recover from a knee operation. This may have impacted on the number of treatments offered for the year. Thankfully I did have the wonderful Mia van der Merwe helping me while I was away.
- Type of treatments: The majority (almost 70%) of treatments for this year were related to lactation. This year I received slightly more referrals from the paediatritian to assist with infant feeding during admissions for neonatal jaundice as well as premature infants admitted in the Neonatal ICU (which were also lactation related), this totaled to almost 13% of my treatments. I have built a good relationship with the nursing staff in die maternity ward, paediatric and Neonatal ICU, and they notify me when a mother needs help with breastfeeding or pumping.
- Breast pump demo sessions: I logged 24 breast pump demo sessions for the year. I will admit that I found it a bit of a challenge this year to discern whether a client is coming for a consultation (which may include a pump demo) or just to demo a pump. This made it difficult to keep record of it, as the number seems far lower than I would expect. Trust me, I washed a lot of pumps this year 😉.
- Breast pump sales: A total number of 70 breast pumps were sold during 2025. This is a 27% increase from last year. The most popular of the selection remained the Youha The In’s wearable pump at more than 80% of the sales. This may be due to the high number of working mothers in the area, with most being teachers with limited time and space to allow for pumping.
- Continued Professional Development (CPD): If you are a fellow health care provider you would know that HPCSA changed the rules for CPD compliance during 2025. Now we are required to obtain a total of 30 CPD point, 25 clinical and 5 ethical every year. Previously we could accumulate points over a 2 year period. Thankfully I can report that I remained compliant with CPD activities. I obtained a total of 40 clinical points and 18 ethics points. In 2025 I completed 1 full iLactation international lactation conference, the first LACSA conference, and 1 Breastfeeding conference on infant sleep. I started with a second Breastfeeding conference on infant allergies last year, which I plan to complete by March this year. I gathered some valuable insights on some of the topics that my clients often struggle with, and I found that I can better support them with the new found information. These conferences cover a wide array of topics related to lactation from various international speakers. Some of the topics that stood out to me was:
- Beyond ‘Good Mothers’ and ‘Good Babies’ Sociological Insights on Cultural Ideals by Sophie Brock
- Baby Sleep SOS: Identifying the Physical Culprits behind Sleepless nights Tracy Cassels
- Sleeping Babies, Technology and the construction of risk by Laura Harrison
- The Science and the Art of Nurtured Infant and Family Sleep by Greer Kirshenbaum
- Deconstructing Colic: Detective work to Identify the true root cause by Cara Riek
- Human milk therapy: unexpected uses by Nada Atef
- Microbiota and lactation, ethics and truth of their applications by Dr. José María
- Supporting the end of breastfeeding by Emma Picket
I was able to attend about 4 of our in-house SACLC education Zoom sessions. I also attended a few Dietetic CPD activities such as:
- Update on food additives
- The Avo Advantage: The Evidence behind the Hype
- PepsiCo 2025 Lifestyle Disease Symposium
- Campaigns and Promotional activities: As you may know, World Breastfeeding week has been my biggest awareness campaign for many years now. This annual event happens from 1 to 7 August, with plenty of breastfeeding supporters doing their bit to share the message worldwide. This year was another level up with many activities, from an Instagram life with The Motherhood App to a competition and quiz, all exceeding my expectations. I hope to get even better ideas next year with even more engagement. You can read more about these activities here.
We hosted another First 1000 days workshop this year. This was our third event, initially founded and organized by the wonderful team at Imagine Dietitians. This time it was organized by the Lanese Knappe Occupational therapist team in Stellenbosch. We had a bigger venue in a local church with a projector and sound equipment, quite the upgrade. This workshop was filled with valuable information from a multidisciplinary team to provide insight into the crucial, vulnerable and valuable time of a baby’s development. We had more interest this year and increased from 15 attendees in 2024 to 24 in 2025, with a lot more sponsors. We hope to have the opportunity to present this workshop to a broader audience in the new year, so keep your eyes peeled.
I had the privilege to present at the Mediclinic Paarl Pregnancy Day on 21 February for the second time. I was honored to share the stage with a local Gynecologist and Paediatritian and share more about what pregnant families can expect. This is a wonderful marketing opportunity for me, and I gain a lot of clients from this workshop. I have already been invited to present at the event in 2026, so I will be working on my presentation very soon.
2025 Brought another surprise with a feature on the “Wat ‘n Ma moet weet” TV series on Via with Efraine. I was invited to be an expert speaker on the show. I was lucky enough to be featured in two episodes, one about Breastfeeding and the other about introduction to solids. Although I don’t believe I am cut out for showbiz, I did appreciate to be part of this venture. Here is a little snippet of our conversation.
Hopes and Dreams for 2026
I am guilty of making ambitious plans for the year, only to find that flexibility mattered more than perfection. While I might not have felt like I took active steps towards reaching my goals, I realize now that I was able to make decisions with more confidence, and the progress (however little it may be) that felt earned rather than rushed. Amongst the professional and practice growth, I recognize and appreciate the personal growth that came along with it. I hope to always improve my level of care and expertise to provide the best service I possibly can. While knowing that I need to keep up with what I have done in 2025, I also realize that I am only human! So, by saying that, I will allow myself to keep some of the goals I set for 2025, and hope to get a little bit closer to achieving them in 2026:
- Launch the Online Breastfeeding course: I will admit, this feels like a bust. There has been pretty much ZERO progress on this in 2025, with the dream slipping further and further through my fingers. Although we have been working on this for over 3 years, with one video on my youtube channel, priorities have shifted (understandably so) and all efforts have come to a halt. As I write this, I realize that I have to make some decisions, either pay a heck load of money to get this finished, try to make something of it myself or let it go. Let’s see what 2026 allows!
- Increase the online shop: And I did! During 2025 I collaborated with Zozinette to add their baby wraps to my online shop. These are products that I often discuss with my clients to assist with newborn care, and I was happy to have a quality product to refer to. I ventured into trying to stock more items but most lead to dead ends. Hopefully I can further extend the online shop offerings in 2026.
- Improve practice administration: I have been working on streamlined patient information intake forms which is living in the cloud at the moment. If I can streamline admin activities like billing, motivations and intake forms, I can reduce the number of late nights and hopefully free up some time to work on the other goals.
- Write a Recipe book: This is still a very important goal for me. During 2025 I wrote 7 recipes, with so many more in my head! I just need to sit still and type…my two favorite things 😮
Final Thoughts
This may sound absurd, but a phrase that stood out for me in 2025 was: “It’s just not that deep bro”. I don’t know where it came from or who started it, but it resonated with me. It helped me to stop and reflect when I might be overthinking something or taking comments way too seriously. Basically, preventing me from wasting precious positivity and energy on things that’s just not that deep. Allowing me to freely spend and share my positivity and energy where it mattered most.
I hope to carry this power with me through 2026 and I hope it will rub off on some of the people in my circle, and perhaps even to you.
May you take the time to reflect on how far you have come in a year, be grateful for it and perhaps let go of those things that the universe simply does not want to allow.
I look forward to sharing more of what I get up to and learn this year.
January 2026