When you are choosing a place to have your baby, consider a baby friendly hospital. If you want an environment that supports bonding and breastfeeding, this is the best possible choice you can make for a hospital birth. You will have immediate and continual contact with your baby and will get the support and help you need to breastfeed successfully.
The Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative was started by UNICEF to help health care providers give patients the best care and to help support mothers in feeding and caring for the babies. To be considered baby friendly, the hospital must meet the best practice standards in supporting breastfeeding.
The care is different from your typical doctor’s visits right from the beginning. There is more emphasis and focus on breastfeeding. You will be given information and encouraged to breastfeed your new baby.
When the baby is born, there is more focus on what is best for the mother and child, rather than what is most convenient for the health care staff. Your baby will be given to you immediately after birth for skin to skin contact. You will not be separated from your baby during your stay in the hospital.
If you decide to breastfeed, you will find the best possible support in a baby friendly hospital. Too often, I hear stories of mothers with no support and no lactation consultant to help in the hospital. That doesn’t happen in a baby friendly hospital. Within a half hour of birth, you will be helped in breastfeeding your baby.
This support is ongoing throughout your stay and even after you come home from the hospital. In the hospital, you will be helped with breastfeeding and given information on pumping. When you are ready to leave the hospital, you will get information about where to turn for help if you need it.
The Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative has been successful at increasing breastfeeding rates. At Boston Hospital, breastfeeding rates rose from 58% to 87% after the hospital implemented the standards of the initiative. According to UNICEF, over one million health care providers have been trained worldwide in these standards. Although there are only about twenty five baby friendly hospitals in the United States, the numbers are increasing. If you don’t have a baby friendly hospital in your area, you may have one in time for the next baby!
Related Articles:
Choosing How to Feed Your Baby
What Kind of Birth Do You Want?
Get Breastfeeding Off to a Good Start