INVITATION TO: A day with Nancy Mohrbacher

 

 

Breastfeeding LENS Limited will be hosting a day with Nancy Mohrbacher IBCLC (author of Breastfeeding Answers Made Simple) on Wednesday 23^rd April 2014 in the North of England.

A day for anyone supporting breastfeeding mothers:

Health professionals

Peer supporters
Doulas
Volunteer LLL Leaders /breastfeeding counsellors.

Would like this event to be organised locally to you?

 

We are currently checking a number of locations and venues in the North.  If you know of, or could provide, a possible venue near you please contact us asap.

A Day in Leeds

Marion and I were thrilled to spend a day in Leeds with the Leeds Bosom Buddies and some of the local health professionals.




Leeds Peer Support Coordinator Cath Stone with Professor Helen Ball
 

We hosted a day with Professor Helen Ball and heard her talk about Normal Infant Sleep and Breastfeeding. Keeping up to date with current research and the work of the Infant Sleep Information Source is really useful for all our work. See more of ISIS at www.isisonline.org.uk

Some of the Leeds Bosom Buddies.

Anne

Breastfeeding Peer Support

Sometimes working in the field of breastfeeding peer support isn’t like an ordinary job. Sometimes it feels like a privilege. 



Peer Supporters with their Course Certificates

A couple of weeks I was privileged to visit an inspiring group of mothers who are the first group to complete the new MotherBaby Together peer supporter training. More pictures on www.motherbabytogether.co.uk Talking with these women is reminder of what can be achieved by a group of ordinary women standing together knowing that breastfeeding is important to them and their peers.









Sporting their MotherBaby Together wristbands




This week WABA (World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action http://www.waba.org.my/index.htm ) is using  the 21st World Breastfeeding Week http://worldbreastfeedingweek.org/ to celebrate the work of peer supporters the world over.

It is great to see that mothers can make a difference to the lives of other mothers, and babies, and good to know that the MotherBaby Together peer supporters in Leeds are part of a huge network of women caring about and supporting each other.

The WABA 2013 calendar (download from here: http://worldbreastfeedingweek.org/pdf/wbw2013-calendar-eng2.pdf ) celebrates and shows why Circles of Support for Mothers and Children are vital.

Happy World Breastfeeding Week

Anne

Superfood for Babies: How overcoming barriers to breastfeeding will save children’s lives.

Today, Monday 18 February 2013, Save the Children has launched a report about 4 major barriers to breastfeeding and how they affect the world's children.

The barriers identified are community and cultural pressures; shortage of health workers; lack of maternity protection; and the ‘Big Business Barrier’, the impact the actions of the breastmilk substitutes (BMS) manufacturers have on breastfeeding rates.

The first hour after birth is very important for babies.  If exclusive breastfeeding were initiated in the first hour after birth, Save the Children tells us that ‘we could save 95 tiny lives every hour.’

The launch of this report is combined with a campaign to call the manufacturers of BMS to account.

Save the Children was one of the supporters the World Breastfeeding Conference 2012 which I wrote about in a previous blog. One of the statements to come out of the Conference is ‘Breastfeeding is a public health imperative’. We welcome the Save the Children report and the campaign to call 'Big Business' to account and protect the health and well-being of their customers. Babies who are not breastfed are at risk of infection, malnutrition and  even death. The Save the Children report and campaign focuses on the effects in poorer countries where the risk of death is high.

The anti-breastfeeding lobby is working hard.  There is already an article in the Daily Mail saying that the report is ‘guilt tripping’ mothers in the UK who use formula. No report can make a mother feel guilty. She may already be having a hard time because her baby is more likely to be ill and hospitalised with all the unhappiness that brings because she is giving formula. This may be an attempt by the companies to distract us from the campaign to call them to account. Don’t let them do it.  Breastfeeding must be protected and defended whenever the suggestion that it is not important appears in public.

To access the petition: http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/danone-nestle-petition   

For more information about the campaign and the report: http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/95-babies

Jill

P.S. There is an argument against calling breastmilk a ‘superfood’, with all the suggestion that it is an ‘added extra’ rather than the normal food for babies (but, that's another blog).

What has snow to do with breastfeeding?

The cold, snow and ice that has covered the country for the last few days has caused traffic disruption, accidents, frozen pipes  and I’m sure lots of individual hardship for those dealing with the effects.

For a breastfed baby, so long as they have their mum, the snow and ice will make no difference at all.


Derbyshire 23/01/2013


I can think of a couple of events that involved snow disruption for my family where breastfeeding stood out as very real factor in simplifying our temporarily disrupted lives.

The first was on a journey one afternoon in February, across the Pennines from Liverpool to Sheffield. Our usual route would have been on one of the Pennine passes, but all of those were closed due to snow. We were in a hire car that broke down on the M62 just before that too was closed due to snow, for the first time ever. We had managed to call for breakdown help, then just sat and waited. The breakdown service was very busy that day and we were in the cold car for hours. We were found by a patrolling police team, on the motorway to make sure that everyone had managed to get down to a lower level before being snowed in. The young policeman was very embarrassed when he worked out the reason that the baby was fine without the offered trip back to the police station to heat some water “So that you can feed the baby”.

Derbyshire 23/01/2013

The second time was when ice and snow took down the power lines to our home; plus the power lines to the pumping station that piped our tap water. We were without electricity for three weeks and water for a week. We had just moved house at the time and the nearest supermarket I knew of was seven miles away on impassable roads, I was away from family and friends and I knew none of my neighbours. The local shop very quickly ran out of water and other cold drinks, so we were getting our water from melted and boiled snow. I remember thinking at the time just how traumatic it would have been to have a baby that was not breastfed. My breastfed daughter experienced no change.

Compared to what some mothers deal with on a day to day basis and on a world scale these were temporary, minor issues. Keeping warm is a great reason to cuddle your baby but, what I gained most though, was a real sense of empowerment and self reliance to nourish my babies. It is easy to think of the health outcomes of breastfeeding; many times we forget that it is the practical issues are what skills us and give us confidence as mothers.

 

Anne

World Breastfeeding Conference 2012 in New Delhi, India

Attending the World Breastfeeding Conference 2012 in New Delhi, India was the most exciting and humbling of all the conferences and events I have been connected to in the 25 years I have been supporting breastfeeding mothers and babies.

The Inaugural session opened with the alarming statistic that 92 million of the world’s babies are not getting their mothers’ milk exclusively or at all in the first six months of life.  As the latest Infant Feeding Survey just published tells us, fewer than 2% of British babies are exclusively breastfed for the first six months.  This is a global problem and needs addressing by all the countries in the world.

In poorer countries 1½ million babies die because of diseases that can be prevented by exclusive breastfeeding.  In the UK our babies don’t die directly because we spend a lot of money on medical care to treat these diseases--£44 million/year calculated in the most recent research published by UNICEF UK.  Is it ok to waste our resources this way?  Can we really afford it?

Do we have any responsibility for the rest of the world?  Successive governments think so.  We spend vast amounts of money on international aid.  The British public thinks so.  We donate huge sums whenever there is a disaster in the world.

If we really care about the world’s children we will normalise breastfeeding and I will never be ashamed again as I was when Albert Lure from Uganda spoke to me after seeing my name badge, ‘United Kingdom.  You are the cause of undermining breastfeeding in Uganda…Our young girls go to the UK and see white women using bottles and pacifiers and say, “that is what I will do as this is what women do in the UK.”’

 

Jill