After last week's post about some very discouraging practices at most hospitals, I was happy to find this video (below) on Harlem Hospital's Baby Friendly status. It's not easy to become Baby Friendly. It requires a lot of commitment and coordination, so this is a big achievement. I felt better after watching it.
Another heartening piece of news came from a lactation consultant with whom I trained in California. She is coordinating a county wide effort in San Joaquin County to improve breastfeeding rates at all hospitals. The Stockton Record reports:
All six of the county's acute-care hospitals with maternity departments have signed on to a new initiative to improve breast-feeding efforts. It's the first such countywide collaboration among any of California's 58 counties.
"During the last year, San Joaquin General Hospital has been part of a countywide effort to improve breast-feeding-related hospital practices, and exclusive breast-feeding rates have tripled in that facility," according to a statewide policy update released this week on California Breastfeeding and Hospital Performance from the University of California, Davis, Human Lactation Center.
So, there's hope.
Want to get email updates from the Motherwear Breastfeeding Blog? Subscribe here. Want an RSS feed? Click here.
