Breastfeeding dad goes viral with his creative ways
One of the reasons moms don’t like to leave their baby? Knowing that sometimes taking a bottle from someone just does not measure up to the real thing and it becomes a battle of the bottle. This breastfeeding dad made a video that went viral in no time when shared by Breastfeeding Mama Talk on Facebook because of his clever method for getting his daughter to eat.
Chris Allen’s fiancee headed back to work after exclusively breastfeeding and cut a hole in his shirt and placed the bottle strategically inside for daughter, Destiny, to eat. While every baby may not have the wool pulled over their eyes so easily, it worked for Allen.
Stranger shows kindness to breastfeeding mother
As if taking on motherhood for the first time does not have enough trials and tribulations, many breastfeeding mothers take on the ridicule of their choice to feed baby in public. Can you imagine the relief of Briar Lusia McQueen when her first time breastfeeding her eight-month-old alone in public was met with support and open arms by a perfect stranger? She shared her experience on Facebook of the kind woman who came to her table and cut her breakfast plate for her adding the comment, “what a good mama you are, we can’t have your food getting cold, can we?” If only every first time mom could have this be their first public breastfeeding experience!
Delayed pumping poses risk to mother
The argument for public breastfeeding is heard often–feed the hungry baby when he is hungry! What about pumping, though? Should a mom have to put off pumping based on her environment or situation? Never. While nursing is solving an immediate need for a hungry baby, it also brings necessary relief to a mom whose breasts are full. Pumping does the same thing and by putting off pumping a mom risks engorgement that could lead to medical problems and reduce milk supply.
Swollen breasts not only cause pain for the mom, but the situation brings on stress as well. Mastitis, a bacterial infection, is a common result of engorged breasts, as are clogged milk ducts. One study found that approximately 1 in 10 nursing moms experience mastitis in the first month feeding.
“The pain is hard to describe. [My breasts] were sensitive to touch, like sunburn is, and a fairly permanent kind of burning ache set up on my chest, waxing and waning as they filled and emptied,” said Madeleine Ware of Wellington, New Zealand in this article. “I wouldn’t want my pilot distracted by a burning feeling in her breasts, or hesitant to lean over to perform certain actions because of the risk of pain.” [Read full article here.]
Maria Fabrizio for NPR
Summer vacay is getting better: Air travel improvement for breastfeeding moms
Welcoming and relaxing lactation stations are popping up in more and more airports across the country, allowing for easier travel for nursing mothers in the near future. There has been great progress in airport accommodations for breastfeeding mothers since 2014, when minimum requirements called for a private place for nursing moms other than a bathroom. While 62 out or 100 airports claimed to be breastfeeding friendly at the time, 25 of those were considering unisex/family restrooms as their breastfeeding areas.
Since then, Illinois and California have passed laws requiring airports to provide lactation rooms. On top of that, the reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration passed by the U.S. Senate included a provision requiring major airports to provide lactation rooms for breastfeeding mothers within two years, although the bill has yet to become a law. Luckily, more and more airports are embracing the need anyway and adding specially designed nursing pods for moms, Mamava being one such brand. Mamava is a 32-square-foot pod with a fold-down table, benches, and a USB outlet. The units are movable and large enough to fit a mom, her luggage, her additional children, her partner, and/or her stroller. [Read more here.]
La Leche League talks weaning gently
Is weaning on your mind? Whether you choose to do it in the early months of your baby’s life or later into toddlerhood, how to do it can be a struggle for moms. Do you set an exact time and date? Is there one set right time? Does the baby or the mom decide when to wean? Teresa Pitman wrote this piece on her experience and the support and insight she gained from La Leche League.
“But when I began attending La Leche League meetings, I heard about a different approach. One of the LLLI concepts of our philosophy says, “Ideally, the breastfeeding relationship will continue until the baby outgrows the need.” There were two things that surprised me in this: first, that breastfeeding might be a “need” for a baby and, secondly, that the baby might outgrow it. I think I’d previously had the idea that unless the mother did something to actively wean the baby, he’d still be breastfeeding when he went to university.”
Breastfeeding rates increase from 13 percent to 40 percent in one city
We are all eager to see breastfeeding rates climb in our own cities, states, the country and the world. Slow progress is better than no progress, but wouldn’t it be incredible if more places could see the 27 percent jump that one of the seven Emirates of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sharjah, saw by launching an extensive breastfeeding campaign called the Sharjah Baby-Friendly Campaign (SBFC) in 2012.
This article shares the four complementary initiatives used by the SBFC as well as the 11 strategies that were undertaken to support those initiatives.
