Former pharmacy technician Sarah Leclerc talks about developing her DIY skin cream with a magic ingredient.
Video / Zach Wylde
In a world-first from Wairoa, Sarah Leclerc has developed a DIY “expresso” breast milk skincare cream you can whip up in your kitchen.
Tiktok went wild last month when tennis superstar Serena Williams posted a video of herself patting breast milk onto painful patches of sunburn under her eyes. “Isthis totally weird?” she asked her 1.6 million followers, adding a week later, “It worked!”
Turns out Williams is late to the party on that one. A major review, published in the National Library of Medicine in 2019, looked at 15 studies into the non-nutritional uses of breast milk — that is, for something other than feeding your baby. It found the natural antibacterial properties make breast milk a useful treatment for a range of skin problems, from eczema and dermatitis to nappy rash.
“Is Breast Milk the New Botox?” was the headline for a recent story published on a US parenting forum about breast milk facials. Now — in what she believes to be a world first — former pharmacy technician Sarah Leclerc has taken the science one step further by creating a DIY skincare cream with breast milk as the key ingredient.
You can’t buy the finished product off the shelf or online; using someone else’s breast milk to slap on your face or your baby’s bum does sound a bit weird and imagine all the red tape it would take to get that across the line. Instead, the Lait Labs Kit includes everything you need to cook up the cream in your kitchen, mixing in a measurement of your own expressed milk.
Leclerc, who lies in Wairoa, had spent years “obsessively researching” skincare formulations and decided to develop her own brand while on maternity leave in 2021. Then her son, Remy, developed severe nappy rash that resisted over-the-counter treatments.
“It’s an interesting world to step into as a first-time mother,” she says. “The midwives always say breast milk is so good for cradle cap, baby acne, conjunctivitis ... and I had so much surplus milk, it was crowding the freezer. You can just slap some on and be pretty sure it’s going to do some good.”
Leclerc with Remy, who's 3 in July. "I never looked back. All that worry and anxiety was gone." Photo / Zach Wylde
Applying breastmilk directly to her son’s nappy rash did shorten the healing time. Then she began experimenting with different skincare formulations, using a stable pharmaceutical compound as the base and mixing it with breast milk. Later, she added colloidal oatmeal, an emollient that can soothe sensitive skin.
After a successful trial on her husband, who had contact dermatitis from a leather watch strap, she applied the cream to her son’s painfully raw nappy rash. By the end of the first day, it was gone.
“Oh, my goodness, that was gold,” she says. “I never looked back. All that anxiety and worry was gone. I thought how great it would be if other mothers could make it themselves and that’s how the kit came about.”
In partnership with the Kahungunu Executive ki Te Wairoa Charitable Trust, she ran a small workshop in Wairoa to trial the DIY kit. One of the mothers who signed up had a baby with eczema whose entire body was covered with welts; so desperate to find something that gave him relief, she’d resorted to slathering him with whipped beef tallow. After she began using her breast milk cream, his skin cleared up in four days.
Leclerc launched La Base Skincare at the end of last year, thankful that her family’s home wasn’t in the path of the devastating floods that swept through the town last summer and then again in November.
While she can’t make any medical claims about the efficacy of the Lait Labs breast milk cream, she says it’s a natural formulation that promotes hydration and healing — and customer testimonials have been positive. A preservative keeps it fresh for two months.
Born and raised in Hong Kong, with both French and Chinese ancestry, Leclerc is impressed with the post-natal support mothers are given in New Zealand. Son Remy turns 3 in July. “In Hong Kong, once you give birth, you’re on your own. It’s really incredible here.”
Joanna Wane is an award-winning senior feature writer in the New Zealand Herald’s Lifestyle Premium team, with a special focus on social issues and the arts.
