Parents, grandparents and staff from NHS Lanarkshire and partners came together at Lanarkshire’s annual Breastfeeding Conference to celebrate breastfeeding and Scottish Breastfeeding Week.
The conference, which was held on Friday 9 June, helped to understand normal baby behaviour and communication and explored how we can use this information to support the wider work around breastfeeding in Lanarkshire
Scottish Breastfeeding Week champions the work to support, protect and promote breastfeeding, and NHS Lanarkshire is delighted that the longer term breastfeeding rates across the region are improving.
Susan Short, Maternal and Infant Nutrition Lead for NHS Lanarkshire, said: “The theme of Scottish Breastfeeding Week is around understanding normal baby behaviour.
“So our guest speaker is talking about baby communication and responding to babies needs. We have speakers talking about the Solihull approach and will start and end with Bookbug for the little ones. So a lot of our theme is around just understanding that babies want to be held close, they will feed often, they’re up frequently through the night, they want to be held close and all of that is normal.
“We also want to learn a lot from our families and mums within the room about what we can do to do things better.”
Jann Gardner, Chief Executive for NHS Lanarkshire, said: “Breastfeeding is so good for babies and their development, but it’s also good for the mums and the experience that they have during that time.
“It’s also really, really important for our population because it develops stronger, healthier adults as well. And so it’s really exciting to attend the conference as we talk about the subject more openly.
Martin Hill, Chair of NHS Lanarkshire, said: ““Breastfeeding goes way beyond the relationship between mum and the baby. It’s about society. It’s about the best start in life. And there’s a lot that we can do as an employer, as a provider of services, to make it as easy as possible for mums to be able to breastfeed, but also to get the messages out about how important it is to give baby that best start in life.
“We know that there are going to be mums who won’t be able to breastfeed for various reasons, or who won’t want to, but what we can’t have is mums being discouraged from breastfeeding because of societal norms or other changes that we can do something about.
“So we need to do something about it, because there’s no doubt that it’s the healthiest start for baby.”
Anyone in Lanarkshire looking for breastfeeding support can contact the infant feeding team on 01698 366710. Further information is available at https://www.nhslanarkshire.scot.nhs.uk/services/infantfeeding/ or on the Facebook group NHS Lanarkshire Mums & Babies.
