Issue 1 – December 2007

  Welcome to the first edition of the breastfeeding support newsletter Keeping you abreast… which we have launched as a result of feedback from the Breastfeeding Peer Support Conference which was held in May.  Many of you wanted a way to communicate with each other and a regular newsletter was seen as a very popular way of achieving this. 

So here it is, a chance for you to share what is happening in your local area, how breastfeeding initiatives are moving forward and how the work that you are doing is making a real impact on the community.  

We look forward to receiving your news for future editions, so please contact the Breastfeeding Specialist Team on 01977 465440 with your contributions.

 Have you seen our website?

Take a look at our website www.breastfeeding-support.co.uk for information on the benefits of breastfeeding, details about local support groups, links to other useful websites and a chat forum where you can talk about breastfeeding-related issues, successes or problems you have experienced, and lots more!

 As a peer supporter, where can I get support? 

Do you ever feel that you need support with a mum’s problem or query?  Some of you will do and your first point of contact should be your professional link for the group.  However, if you don’t know the name of the person you should contact or if they are not 100% sure about something, you can always contact Rachel Hauser, our Breastfeeding Coordinator….

 All about Rachel…

Rachel Hauser (back row, left) with just one of the successful Breastfeeding Peer Support Groups in the Wakefield district 

I have a background in Midwifery and Health Visiting, and throughout my career I have been striving to provide better support for women who choose to breastfeed their babies.  I was really proud to become a qualified Lactation Consultant (IBLC) in 2006.

 I was appointed as a Breastfeeding Coordinator 3½ years ago and this has given me the opportunity to work closely with my colleagues at Wakefield District Primary Care Trust (PCT) to improve training and support for health professionals around breastfeeding.  As part of this, the PCT is committed to earning the prestigious UNICEF Baby Friendly Accreditation Award.  This recognises excellence in staff training, antenatal and post-natal care of all women, and support and care for women who choose to breastfeed.   We are hoping to gain accreditation in 2008/09.  So far, we have made great progress; increased our breastfeeding initiation rates and, more impressively, have a three times the national average rate of mothers who feed babies beyond the age of six months.

 I am convinced this reflects the immense value of having breastfeeding peer supporters; we now have 14 peer support groups across the Wakefield district who provide valuable mother-to-mother support in the community and a small team which provides support on our maternity units.  All the peer supporters have taken up the offer of free training and this has helped to develop mums with experience of breastfeeding into knowledgeable and confident breastfeeding experts.  In turn, this helps to make the Wakefield district a breastfeeding-friendly place to live.

Rachel is based at Pontefract Health Centre and can be contacted on tel: 01977 465440  or via email: rachel.hauser@wdpct.nhs.uk

 I have been a health visitor for many years and in 1998 I joined a team of breastfeeding coordinators – part of a NHS initiative to improve breastfeeding rates. Since then I have become a Health Visitor Specialist in breastfeeding and my role is to support and train everyone who may come in contact with mums or mums-to-be.  What a wonderful job!

 I am able to talk to people all day about why their experiences of feeding their babies have been so important to them. Feeding our children has very deep emotional ties that never leave us. I breastfed my three children and overcame some difficulties because I could not contemplate giving up.  And, this was at a time when the recommendations were to start feeding for a few minutes each side and feed four hourly!

I gradually learnt more about breastfeeding through La Leche League and UNICEF Baby Friendly courses until I finally realised that there was still a lot that I didn’t know about the subject.  So, I studied to become a Lactation Consultant and qualified as a LCGB in 2005. 

As Rachel said, our main role now is to achieve UNICEF Baby Friendly Accreditation for the PCT which acknowledges that all mothers under our care receive the best and most skilled support that they deserve, whatever their choice of infant feeding. We are also committed to ensuring that they have accurate and unbiased information to help them make that choice.

 However, the most important factor in influencing this decision is not in the hospital or clinic situation, but in the communities in which we live. This is why it is so important to return breastfeeding skills into the community to be owned by women and families themselves. Peer supporters play a pivotal role in this and the more of us there are, the merrier it is! 

Marilyn is based at Pontefract Health Centre and can be contacted on tel: 01977 465440 or via email: marilyn.gledhill@wdpct.nhs.uk

 The rest of the team…

Shelly Gascoigne is a Lactation Consultant.

I am the Infant Feeding Co-ordinator for the hospitals in Pontefract and Wakefield. In the past I have been involved in breastfeeding, training, support groups, research, personal support and community development.  My current role has been created to help the PCT to become a UNICEF Baby Friendly organisation. 

 My job is to plan how we go about achieving UNICEF’s ten steps to successful breastfeeding and work strategically with colleagues.  I teach all grades of staff from midwifery assistants to paediatricians. I work on the policies and practices which affect breastfeeding and provide specialist information to all grades of staff on the subject of breastfeeding.   The most important part of my role is to ensure that all women who choose to breastfeed are given the level of help and support that they need.

 Shelley can be contacted on 01977 606923 or 07887 992956

Caroline Booth has worked as a midwife for 20 years and for the last 17 years has been involved in breastfeeding. 

 I did three years training as a breastfeeding counsellor with the National Childbirth Trust (NCT) and trained as a breastfeeding peer counsellor programme administrator with La Leche League.  I have trained many groups of peer supporters, facilitated training for midwives and health visitors within the PCT and I teach on the breastfeeding module at Huddersfield University.

 Claire Varey is a community staff nurse for breastfeeding.

My role is to maintain and improve the link between the peer supporter groups and the healthcare professionals.  I help facilitate the learning opportunities for peer supporters and provide support for the groups in any way I can. The aim of this is to improve breastfeeding initiation rates and help mothers breastfeed for longer.  Although I have only been in this post for a short time I have many links to professionals working in the breastfeeding arena and should be able to provide you with the information you need or point you in the right direction to the person who can help.

Claire is based at Pontefract Health Centre and can be contacted on tel: 01977 465440 or via email: claire.varey@wdpct.nhs.uk

Volunteers needed to visit new mums in hospital

If you would like to do something more with your skills as a breastfeeding peer supporter, why not visit new mums in hospital? By giving your time to sit with them, watch and offer support you can provide a vital and rewarding service to enable mums to continue with breastfeeding. 

If you are interested please contact Sue Taylor, Voluntary Coordinator at Pontefract General Infirmary, on tel: 01977 606408.  Sue will talk you through the process and send you all the relevant information.

 Committed to being baby-friendly and proud

 Midwives and health visitor teams from the PCT and Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust have been recognised by UNICEF for their commitment to promoting the benefits of breast milk and breastfeeding. The teams each collected a certificate of commitment from UNICEF’s Baby Friendly Initiative at Pontefract General Infirmary.

 In just two months, the number of new mothers in the Wakefield district choosing to breastfeed has risen by 2%. The Trusts now have a feeding policy to help staff offer new mums clear and consistent information on the feeding options available.

 Peer breastfeeding supporters have also had training and taken their experience and knowledge back to new mums on the maternity ward, expectant mums in antenatal classes and support groups across the district.

 Sharon Fox, Head of Health Improvement at the PCT, said: “I’d like to thank all our staff for their efforts. Surveys show us that most mothers want to breastfeed, but don’t always get the support they need. Mothers in Pontefract and Wakefield have the satisfaction of knowing that their midwives and health visitors are aiming to provide the highest standard of care to them.”

Infant Feeding Roadshow

During the weeks of 12 -16 November and 19 - 23 November, members of the breastfeeding team and other healthcare professionals were out and about on a roadshow.  Health visitors, midwives, nursery nurses, health trainers, and staff nurses - some of whom were men - visited schools throughout the district, on a double decker bus, kindly lent by the Yorkshire and Humberside smoking cessation team.

The aim was to raise awareness among four and five year olds that all mums can feed their own babies. This message was delivered in a fun and friendly manner, with activities such as colouring and weighing dolls and teddies.   The breastfeeding team also talked about baby growth and how mummy’s milk has special ways of helping babies to stay healthy and protects them against infections.  They also matching mums with their babies (cats with kittens, sheep with lambs, cows with calves etc), allowing them to make the connection that other mums can also feed their own babies in the same way. 

Twenty schools were visited and there was such a good response that unfortunately several schools who had requested visits were not successful on this occasion. The Infant Feeding Roadshow has been visiting schools for several years and there will be another series next year.

The Power of Mother-to-Mother Support

The culture of bottle feeding in some communities is very strong. Mothers’ own mothers and grandmothers are likely to have bottle-fed, or to have breastfed for a short time only.  Many have never seen breastfeeding, or had the chance to talk about it 

Mother-to-mother support shows that breastfeeding happens, that it can work, and that any woman can overcome her difficulties to make it an enjoyable experience. Training women with personal experience of breastfeeding from a particular community to offer friendship and support to other mothers in their local area means that support can be extended to women who do not routinely request or expect support from the healthcare system 

A mother who has friends who are breastfeeding is more likely to initiate  breastfeeding and the same applies to mothers who were breastfed themselves. In this way, giving women the chance to make friends with other breastfeeding mothers can help contribute to a major shift in cultural values that can be passed on across the community and down the generations.

Crucial to making this work are the mothers who are prepared to put in the time and effort to support others. They fall in to two main groups. ‘Volunteer counsellors’ or ‘breastfeeding counsellors’ have usually trained for two years or more on a recognised course with one of the voluntary organisations.

‘Peer supporters’ have usually had less intensive training - typically having attended a dozen or so sessions with midwives or health visitors, or with a trainer from one of the volunteer organisations.

Both peer supporters and breastfeeding counsellors can work in support groups alongside healthcare professionals. The qualitative results of the projects assessed by the Infant Feeding Initiative show mothers found supporters helped them continue at a time when they were strongly considering stopping breastfeeding.

Mother-to-mother networks are now expanding and connecting with other neighbourhood and community programmes, and may be linked with local Sure Start programmes, children’s centres and other early years settings.

Making the most of mother’s experience

Evidence suggests that mother-to-mother support is most effective when a proactive approach is taken, rather than just being ‘available’.

Targeting a particular area can enable mothers in that locality to meet supporters from local neighbourhoods and similar backgrounds, who are able to understand and, to some extent, share their experiences. Once a group or project is established, further peer supporters can then be recruited from within the group. This makes for sustainable practice with the possibility of expansion.

My Breastfeeding Journey

Due to complications during labour with my eldest daughter I ended up having an emergency caesarean section under general anaesthetic and we were separated for 24 hours.  When I finally got to spend time with her, she was being fed with a nasogastric tube and wasn’t particularly interested in latching on.

I felt that there was no support from the staff; no one offered to spend time with me watching my attempt at feeding. The staff, wishing to let me rest, took my baby every night and I was given a pump and told to express 6-8 times in the day and I also pumped milk at night.  I can remember taking my 20ml of milk to the fridge through the night.  I hadn’t seen an electric pump before, especially not a double one, and I felt like a cow being milked! And I can guarantee that every time I started to express, I would get interrupted by doctors coming to see me. Obviously, there was hardly any milk, but I didn’t have a clue what to expect as my knowledge of breastfeeding was limited to the fact that it was best and I wanted to try it.

Suffice to say, I didn’t succeed.  I felt under pressure because she hadn’t latched on well, wasn’t interested and in this vulnerable state I caved in and fed her formula milk. 

This whole experience left me feeling that I had been cheated and that I had failed my daughter, but I also felt angry that the professionals who had communicated to me that breast was best did not deliver the support and back-up of this message once my child was born. 

When I found out I was pregnant again I felt determined that I was going to breastfeed this time and I did feed my second daughter for 11 weeks, although I had my fair share of cracked, painful, scabby bleeding nipples. Oh, if only I knew then what I know now, I could have saved my nipples a lot of strife!! 

I was never very abundant in the milk supply area and before I had to go back to work I gave up. I resented this but felt I had no option. It was also around this time that I had to face up to the fact that I was suffering from post-natal depression (PND). This was certainly not something I wanted to admit to myself, let alone to my friends and family.  

If I had known about the peer support groups would it have changed things? I’m not sure, but I would like to think that it would have helped. I suppose I can answer the question to a certain degree. 

When I gave birth to my last child, my aim was to breastfeed him for longer than 3 months. I was acutely aware of PND and the warning signs of it reoccurring.

My eldest child was starting school and in the playground one of the mums came up to me and asked if I was breastfeeding as she had seen the NCT wristband that I was wearing. I said I was and she asked if I knew about the local support group. As a matter of fact I had seen it on the Sure Start monthly newsletter and the midwife had mentioned it to me that week. I went along and met new people who were like-minded, picked up a few new tricks when it came to breastfeeding, and just found it a really nice way to spend a few hours chatting and having a cuppa.  

I feel that going to the group increased my desire to continue breastfeeding and added to my convictions that breastfeeding my son was the best thing I could be doing for his wellbeing. When I found out that I could become a peer supporter I jumped at the chance.   The more that I learned about the protection and benefits that breast milk provided, the more I was determined to breastfeed my son past a year so that he needn’t have formula.  As a result I breastfed my son for 14 months, carrying on feeding despite returning to work at 6 months, no PND and now have a fantastic opportunity to support and help breastfeeding mums in the area through my new job as a staff nurse for breastfeeding. 

If there is a moral to the story, I suppose it is that if I had known a little more about breastfeeding before my first child, I might have persevered with breastfeeding and pushed to get more support. The fact that I went to a support group with my third and felt supported and found out more about the benefits, I believe helped me to continue breastfeeding. 

Breastfeeding support groups are invaluable, included in NICE guidelines, UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative and research suggests that having support groups in the local area keeps mums breastfeeding.  

If you have a story that you wish to share with others please contact Claire Varey at the Breast Feeding Team. 

Breastfeeding support groups in the district