Breastfeeding, Briefcases and Bookbags

Way back in prehistory (about 2000), before this blog anyway, LLLC had a conference in Winnipeg for moms and La Leche League Leaders. I was asked, with a couple of other moms, to lead a short session about working and breastfeeding or going to school and breastfeeding. At the time I had just been back to work for a few months and my daughter was still nursing. She was just over a year old.

The three of us got together and worked out a mind map about all the things we had to think about when going back to work or school.  We handed out copies of the mind map and we just used it to guide the conversation. It was a great session. I remembered it the other day when there was a discussion last week in our April La Leche League meeting about how mothers manage breastfeeding when they go back to work. Here was our map:

 

By the way, two great books on this topic are:

Hirkani’s Daughters: Women Who Scale Modern Mountains to Combine Breastfeeding and Working, by Jennifer Hicks. This is a great collection of short pieces about women in all kinds of working situations who have figured out strategies that worked for them. The title is taken from an Indian folk tale about Hirkani, a woman who is said to scaled a 1000-ft cliff to breastfeed her baby. This book is not available in the Winnipeg Public Library, but we have it in our group library. Highly recommended.

Nursing Mother, Working Mother: the essential guide to breastfeeding your baby, before and after your return to work, by Gayle Pryor and Kathleen Huggins. There is one copy in the Winnipeg Public Library, plus we have it in our group library. A great book to help you work through the issues.

If you’re breastfeeding and going back to work or school, the best thing is to try to find someone else to talk to who has done this, or is making it work now. Contact one of us any time — or come to a meeting and find your tribe.

A Woman of Distinction and a new Birthing Centre

A Woman of Distinction, indeed
Dr Pat Martens, La Leche League Leader from Steinbach and Director of the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, was one of the YWCA’s Women of Distinction, honoured in Winnipeg last month. Dr. Martens was awarded the 2010 YWCA Women of Distinction Award for Health & Wellness.

An internationally known researcher, Dr Martens was one of the first in Canada to show the health care and status differences between First Nations and all other Manitobans. Her team’s work has covered all aspects of population health including health of seniors, children, and gender or economic predictors of health.

Her Need to Know Team also won a Knowledge Transitions Award in 2005. The Canadian Institute for Health Research recognized the team for its approach to taking evidence-based health information, and working with health planners to translate it into meaningful action. 

Pat has also been busy providing editing support for the newest edition of The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, which will be published next month.

New Community Birthing Centre coming to Winnipeg!

The Women’s Health Clinic and the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority are inviting everyone to a Community Meeting to learn more about the upcoming Winnipeg Birthing Centre, its programs and services. This project has been years in the making and it’s thrilling that it really is going to happen.

Come along on Thurs., June 10 at 7:00, to St Mary’s Rd United Church, 613 St Mary’s at St. Anne’s. All welcome, family friendly, refreshments.

Photo above: “The Birth of our Son” by darkmarty, posted on Flickr.com with a Creative Commons attribution license, 2009.

Breastfeeding saves…

… a lot of money and probably lives, according to a new study published in the US journal Pediatrics on April 4, 2010.

US WPA Poster 1937

The study is called “The Burden of Suboptimal Breastfeeding”. Who is the burden on? The health care system to be sure, but also children and their families.

Here’s an article from the New York Times today on this topic.

The study concludes, startlingly, that US breastfeeding rates are “suboptimal”. But it also concludes that the US could prevent over 900 deaths and save $13 Billion+ per year if 90% of babies were breastfed to only six months. They figured this out by calculating the dangers and costs of all the childhood diseases that the study said would be prevented by longer breastfeeding duration.

Their study took into account the following diseases: “necrotizing enterocolitis, otitis media [that’s  “ear infections” to you and me], gastroenteritis, hospitalization for lower respiratory tract infections, atopic dermatitis, sudden infant death syndrome, childhood asthma, childhood leukemia, type 1 diabetes mellitus, and childhood obesity”.

Maybe this is the next US health care challenge… figuring out how to better support women to breastfeed longer… and maybe it can start with better maternity leave. Outside the study, one of the authors commented to media that women are not effectively supported to breastfeed for even six months. 

Of course, the financial costs of treating childhood disease are the same in Canada, even if they are paid in a different way, so this is important information for us, too.

Conclusions below are from the abstract of the study, The Burden of Suboptimal Breastfeeding in the United States: A Pediatric Cost Analysis, by Melissa Bartick, MD, MSc, Arnold Reinhold, MBA, PEDIATRICS (doi:10.1542/peds.2009-1616), published online April 5, 2010.

“Conclusions Current US breastfeeding rates are suboptimal and result in significant excess costs and preventable infant deaths. Investment in strategies to promote longer breastfeeding duration and exclusivity may be cost-effective.”

What about Canada? On a related note, here is coverage of a 2007 study,  published by the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research.  Yes, it was done by economists. The idea is to determine whether labour market decisions related to public policy have an effect on public health.

It investigated what happened to breastfeeding rates since maternity leave for Canadian women was extended from 6 months to 1 year, back in 2001.  It reported that “the proportion of eligible mothers who breastfed exclusively for at least six months, as recommended by Health Canada and the World Health Organization, increased from 20 per cent to 28 per cent after the leave was extended.”

Overall, “breastfeeding was prolonged by an average of one month, said study authors Michael Baker, an economics professor at the University of Toronto, and economics Prof. Kevin Milligan of the University of British Columbia.” 

 

 

 

 

Hello world! here’s our first post: seminar with Pamela Whyte April 9th

La Leche League Canada presents Pamela Whyte:
What Gets in the Way: Making Sense of Children’s Learning
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 6:30 pm
Canadian Mennonite University (CMU)
600 Shaftesbury St., Winnipeg
$10 per person, $15 per couple
To register, click here
Note, there is an option to reserve a ticket online and pay at the door by cash or cheque. If you want to do that, click on “Show other payment options”.

Pamela Whyte works exclusively from the paradigm developed by Dr. Gordon Neufeld, a foremost developmentalist,  theorist, and co-author of Hold On To Your Kids: Why parents need to matter more than peers.  Please see his website for information about distance education courses and resources such as books, DVDs, and downloadable presentations.
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Pamela’s introduction: “On the whole, today’s parents are more invested in their children’s learning than has ever been the case, and yet our children seem to be having more trouble learning and behaving than previous generations did, despite all our intentions, and attention toward assisting and supporting them.  Many bright children are “not living up to their potential”, and more and more of our children are being diagnosed with learning disabilities and other syndromes at earlier and earlier ages.

“What is going on?  What is getting in the way of our children’s learning?  Pamela Whyte presents Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s insightful analysis of the overlooked factors in the education of our children, and explains why today more than ever, parents need to understand the dynamics of attachment in order to do their jobs.”

Table rentals for interested businesses:
Some table space remains available for rental inside the session room for family-oriented businesses. The cost per table is $25 and includes one (1) ticket to Pamela’s presentation. Those helping beyond one person would need to buy a ticket, as the tables are inside the session room.

If you or someone you know would like to take advantage of this opportunity, please email Liz Hatherell, (mumafilles at gmail dot com),  or contact her by phone at 997 2492.

Set up time would be about 6 pm, presentation starts at 6:30pm, and we are in the room until 10pm. Businesses would need to comply with LLLC and the CMU guidelines.