World Breastfeeding Week - 10 Steps to Successful Breastfeeding

Welcome to World Breastfeeding Week 2010!  Lots of people are talking about it but are you like me and wondering what is it actually all about?  I don't like not having the answers so I did some research and here's what I found out.

This year, the objective for World Breastfeeding Week is to highlight the theme “Breastfeeding: Just 10 Steps. The Baby-Friendly Way”  which is the foundation for the WHO and UNICEF's Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) to encourage hospitals, health care facilities, and particularly maternity wards, to adopt practices that fully protect, promote and support exclusive breastfeeding from birth.  

So what are the ten steps?

Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding

Every facility providing maternity services and care for newborn infants should:

1. Have a written breastfeeding policy that is routinely communicated to all health care staff.
2. Train all health care staff in skills necessary to implement this policy.
3. Inform all pregnant mothers about the benefits and management of breastfeeding.
4. Help mothers initiate breastfeeding within a half-hour of birth.
5. Show mothers how to breastfeed, and how to maintain lactation even if they should be separated from their infants.
6. Give newborn infants no food or drink other than breastmilk unless medically indicated.
7. Practice rooming-in - allow mothers and infants to remain together - 24 hours a day.
8. Encourage breastfeeding on demand.
9. Give no artificial teats or pacifiers (also called dummies or soothers) to breastfeeding infants.
10. Foster the establishment of breastfeeding support groups and refer mothers to them on discharge from the hospital or clinic.

You can see videos for each step on the WBW site here

According to La Leche League New Zealand, over 90% of New Zealand's maternity units are Baby Friendly and as a result almost 90% of babies are exclusively breastfed when discharged.  This rate drops dramatically to 51% of all babies at six weeks, 39 percent at three months and 14% at six months. *

It seems that while recent Government promotion of the benefits of breastfeeding is working, if mothers don't get adequate support once at home with their babies, the chances of continued breastfeeding success does diminish.

Lisa Manning, spokesperson for LLLNZ says "Widespread promotion of breastfeeding without timely and sufficient support leads to breastfeeding ending prematurely and to upset and disillusioned mothers, who may take their anger out on breastfeeding advocates."

Does it ever!  A recent CampbellLive story had mothers doing exactly that for exactly those reasons.

What do you think of the 10 steps?  Do you think your maternity hospital or birthing unit followed the steps successfully?

More importantly is enough being done about Step 10?  Do we need more support once mums are at home or do you think the support is there if you look for it?

____________________________________________

*LLLNZ press release 28 July

Market Day - Belly Beyond Stylz

Market Day was an absolute cracker and opening hour was madness.  At one point we managed to crash the Zeald.com server, no small feat!

We are definitely working on improving access on our opening bargains in future to ensure people aren't left feeling disappointed if they miss out.  My summary of the sale - "we may have some, one or none" - was pretty spot on!

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Mumi & Bubi Solids Starter Kit

The mumi&bubi 'Solids Starter Kit' helps busy parents to prepare simple, nutritious and economical food in your own home.

Includes :

* A simple step by step guide with 27 recipes.
* 2 premium portioned freezer trays with lids.

Recipe Booklet/Guide

The guide/recipe booklet has 27 recipes designed to educate you on the optimum way to prepare foods for your baby so they retain all their nutrition and goodness.

The guide also informs you of the signs of when your baby is ready for solids, shopping lists and nutritional information. The shopping lists include quantities, which eliminates food wastage when making your baby's food.

BPA-free freezer trays with lids for homemade baby purees

Freezer Trays

The trays have been purposely designed for freezing baby food (Australian accredited), they are made from non-toxic, non-leaching plastic - PP5 - and are dishwasher safe. For your peace of mind, the trays are BPA-free, PVC-free and do not contain any type of phthalates.

Each tray holds 21 cubes and each cube is about 2 tablespoons. The cubes have been designed so they are rounded at the bottom so you can 'lever' out the desired number of cubes and put the rest back in the freezer.

Each tray comes with a lid to ensure the food is kept hygienic and away from freezer burn. The lids have grooves in the top for easy stacking on top of each in your freezer. Parents often use one tray for fruit and one for vegetables.

The Solids Starter Kit is also a simple system for mothers who are returning to work as you can tell your caregiver to give your child X amount of cube portions per meal.

The cost of the mumi&bubi Solids Starter Kit equates to about 1 week's worth of store bought processed baby food. Parents often use the premium freezing trays for 6 months or more, saving over $1000!!!


Multi-purpose idea from Christina at Mumi&Bubi

If you don't have littlies at the solids stage and want to test the Solids Starter Kit, mash a few bananas add a few Tbsp yogurt and toss in some frozen blueberries or other fruit - I call these 'banana lollies' and toddlers love them!  A few chopped up cubes of banana lollies turns what used to be a bowl of ice cream into now mostly fruit & yogurt (with a tiny bit of ice cream on top). And it's handy to have these in the freezer to pop into a smoothie for yourself.

To remove the cubes when frozen, press on one end and the cube will lever out as the bottoms are rounded. If the cube seems stuck, run warm water over the back and it will lever right out as well. As the trays are made from non-toxic PP5 which is a rigid material, they are non-twisty.

ERGObaby A Year In the Life - Day 1

An ERGObaby Life

‘Babies’ the movie was released in June 2010. This movie follows four babies from four corners of the globe over a twelve month period. It captures their first smile, first taste of food, first steps – a whole plethora of ‘firsts’ in fact.

In the spirit of observing a little one over a period of time, Belly Beyond wanted to explore a ‘Year in the Life of an ERGObaby’…..what does the life of a baby and their parents look like when they enjoy the freedom of the ERGObaby Carrier? What do parents get up to when they aren’t tied to settling their babies in a cot? What adventures do they go on when they don’t have to lug a bulky pram? How much easier can life be with an ERGObaby?

We put the call out for one lucky family to be chosen to join the Belly Beyond team so that we could follow their journey for 12 months, from welcoming the birth of their little.

Introducing...

Congratulations to Gillian and her family, we are really looking forward to learning about your babywearing journey over the coming year!

Day #1 - 25th July 2010

Hi, We live in Christchurch & have 3 great children, aged nearly 6 & 4, & a brand new baby born on the 13th July 2010.

We live only 10 mins away from the beach and the Port Hills. We love spending time outdoors as a family, taking the kids to ride their bikes down near Sumner & Scarborough Beaches while we stroll down the esplanade, spending time up in the Port Hills and down at the local playgrounds & parks.

We are very excited to be able to use the ErgoBaby Carrier, its going to be great when we are out and about & even when we travel out of town, not having to pack the big stroller into the car, we can just go anywhere we want at any time. We go camping each year and it will be so easy when we go for walks and exploring. For me (Mum) I'm looking forward to holding my wee one close to me, and even being able to feed my baby in the carrier will be so great. I'm so impressed with the quality of the ErgoBaby carrier & cant wait to start this journey.

Equipment

Gillian is currently using the ERGObaby Standard Carrier in Black along with the Heart2Heart Infant Insert

BACK TO ERGObaby Carrier section

Book Art Studio

Every now and then we have the pleasure of meeting people in business who just blow our socks off with the way they conduct themselves and the product or service they provide.

Liz from Book Art Studios is one such business person.  Liz is a member of a local business group, Connecting 0604, which is a support group for professional home based businesses within the 0604 post code community (thats Waitakere for those who don't speak post code).   The goal of the group is to promote home business as a lifestyle.

We met Liz at a Waitakere Enterprise After 5 event when she asked if we'd be happy for the group to come out to Belly Beyond HQ, meet with us and see how we run Belly Beyond.  "No problem" we said and in due course Liz organised 15 brave adventurers to roll out to the back and beyond of Waitakere township and see Belly Beyond in action as part of their day tour of local businesses.

It was a real treat to host everyone, Heidi did the tour around "the warehouse" aka, Heidi's lounge, spare bedroom, most the cupboards, and the garage and I got to yabber on about the benefits of social media and the chatter as the group left indicated that they'd definitely gotten something out of the visit.

As mentioned Liz runs Book Art Studios and it's fair to say she is a passionate book maker.  As a thank you for hosting, Liz created Belly Beyond note books for us and the other sites that she visited.  She explains:

"I had so much fun making the little books for everyone. Glad you liked yours. I’ve sent you a photograph of the books I made for all the speakers. The ships wheel was for our first speaker, author/filmmaker Lynton Diggle who has co-authored the book Shipwrecks. The ducks book for his wife Edith Diggle the artist (it’s one of her paintings on the cover of the book). The ones with tools for the owners of the Hardware café and the others are self explanatory!"

The notebooks Liz created for us are so amazing, cool with a capital C in fact, and I just had to share Liz's work and website with you.    Check it out here!

NEW: Suvana Certified Organic Paw Paw Ointment

Paw Paw ointment has been a medicine cabinet staple for many Mums.  It's perfect for nappy rash, dribble rash, cradle cap and its just as good for adult ailments.

In our opinion this product should replace the other currently on the market (not naming any names, Lucas Pawpaw!) as Suvana brand is 100% Petrochemical Free and not petroleum based.    Did you ever wonder what that smell is coming out of that red tube?  Not really something I want to be putting on my familys sensitive areas. 

Edited to add:  Petroleum isn't listed in the ingredients list of Lucas Paw Paw because the TGA (Therapeutic Goods Administration) rules mean that manufacturers need to list active ingredients only which means they don't need to list the petroleum base on the tube. NB: pharmacuetical grade petroleum has been used in many products for many years. Our (personal) preference, like a lot of parents, is for a more natural alternative and lots of people aren't aware of the petroleum base in some types of PawPaw ointment- hence the blog post about it.
 
The contents of the sunny yellow tube of Suvana however is Certified Organic by Ecocert (the world's leading organic certification body with a charter for beauty products) and Cosmebio (Europe's most recognized organic beauty association).

But most importantly, it's the business.  I've used it so often over the last couple of weeks, most recently on Miss 5's face where after a terrible bout of flu, her nostrils and upper lip were inflamed red patches of nasty.  A couple of applications of the Suvana PawPaw and the painful dry patches are totally gone. 

So don't forget to go the YELLOW tube of Suvana Certified Organic Paw Paw Ointment.  Available online at Belly Beyond for on $11.95.

Made in Australia.

Some uses as a local topical application are:

• Abscesses - Boils - Bruises - Burns - Carbuncles - Chafings
• Cuts - Cysts - Dry & Cracked skin on hands & feet
• Gravel rash - Heat rash - Insect stings - Mosquito and other bites
• Open wounds - Pimples - Scalds - Scars - Sunburn
• Swelling associated with injury - Splinters - thorns.
• Nappy Rash - Cradle Cap - Eczema - Psoriasis

NEW: Giimmo Night Light

Oink Oink!

Introducing Tango, the new Giimmo Night light.

A night light is such a versatile option for baby's room because it provides a soft light in the wee hours and becomes a firm friend when toddlers hit that stage of being afraid of the dark (approx 2 years old).  With a night light on they can see their room, find their snuggly and slip off back to sleep and are far less inclined to call out for Mum and Dad.

When toilet training comes around, we encourage our little ones to take their Giimmo's with them during the night to light the way.   Because the Giimmo is manufactured using an LED light, it does not emit any heat so it is very child-friendly and although it's absolutely not recommended, it has passed the drop test in our house umpteen times!

View the range