Is My Hospital Baby-Friendly?
The Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) is an international program of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The Initiative celebrates hospitals and birth centers that have put policies and practices in place to enable parents to make informed choices about how they feed and care for their babies. Hospitals and birth centers that have implemented the following Ten Steps have created an optimal level of care for infant feeding, parent’s confidence building, and mother-infant bonding.
The Ten Steps To Successful Breastfeeding
- Maintain a written breastfeeding policy that is routinely communicated to all health care staff.
- Train all health care staff in skills necessary to implement this policy.
- Inform all pregnant women about the benefits and management of breastfeeding.
- Help mothers initiate breastfeeding within one hour of birth.
- Show mothers how to breastfeed and how to maintain lactation, even if they are separated from their infants.
- Give infants no food or drink other than breastmilk, unless medically indicated.
- Practice “rooming in”— allow mothers and infants to remain together 24 hours a day.
- Encourage unrestricted breastfeeding.
- Give no pacifiers or artificial nipples to breastfeeding infants.
- Foster the establishment of breastfeeding support groups and refer mothers to them on discharge from the hospital or clinic.
You can ask your local hospital what steps they have taken to become baby-friendly. You might also ask what you could do to help!
By attending breastfeeding classes before your baby is born, you will receive help and encouragement to get off to the best start nursing your baby. You will have the greatest success breastfeeding if you keep baby close, skin to skin. Nurse your baby in the first hour of life and, then continue to frequently and exclusively breastfeed. It is not recommended for mothers and babies to be separated. Keeping your baby close by rooming-in (keeping your baby with you in your room) will make it easier for you to learn your baby’s feeding cues such as putting a hand to his or her mouth or rooting. No one is going to know your baby like you and dad!
Infants that are breastfed receive the most complete nutrition possible with antibodies to help protect them. Scientific studies show breastfed children have fewer illnesses than those who never receive breastmilk, including reduced risk of SIDS and less childhood cancer and diabetes. Mothers have decreased risk of breast and ovarian cancer, anemia, and osteoporosis.
Hospitals need to hear from consumers that what you want is excellent healthcare education, not free products. Baby-friendly hospitals always have formula for moms who choose to breastfeed or if it is medically indicated that baby needs a supplement. When moms that are doing great breastfeeding are given formula sample bags to go home with, research shows they will be much less likely to continue breastfeeding successfully. Moms who want to breastfeed should be encouraged and assisted to breastfeed so they can get off to the best start!
A large percentage of moms initiate breastfeeding. Hospitals that are baby-friendly have practices in place that help and encourage mothers, so they leave the hospital and go home confidently, and continue breastfeeding with great success!