Healthy Living explores why breast milk is the best milk

You may have heard the slogan “breast is best’’… and it has been proven that babies fed with breast milk have the best start in life. This initiative which began close to two decades ago is back on the front burner and tonight Healthy Living’s Marleni Cuellar looks at why breast milk is the best milk for babies.

Marleni Cuellar, Reporting
On June fourth 2008 the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital became the first hospital in Belize to become accredited as a baby friendly hospital. The hospital underwent ten specific steps to ensure successful breastfeeding among the mothers who come to the hospital.

The baby friendly hospital initiative dates back to 1991 as a UNICEF initiative. It is a means to ensure that hospitals would become centers of breastfeeding support. The initiative was not brought to Belize until 1999 although the Breast is Best program had been functioning countrywide since the 1980’s. The Corozal Hospital came the closest in the 90’s to gaining accreditation but momentum was lost until recently.

Anita Zetina, UNICEF Program Coordinator
“Two years ago the initiative was reintroduced as an initiative of the National Committee for Families and Children and the maternal and child health unit of the ministry of health. Today we can say that three of the hospitals in Belize are certified as baby friendly: The Karl Heusner Memorial hospital, the Northern Regional Hospital and the Corozal Community Hospital, today.”

“Basically it means that the hospital should allow the use of breast milk substitute; either free or low-cost feeding bottles or teats in the hospital, along with the ten steps of successful breastfeeding. So once you have acquired those and you have a policy and you have taken the steps then you become certified as baby friendly.”

The process of achieving the baby friendly status was based on the successful implementation of the ten steps to successful breastfeeding. One of the first steps in the process is the establishment of a multidisciplinary committee who assesses the facility and executes the steps. Nurse Marilyn Black explains how the process was initiated at the K.H.M.H.

Nurse Marilyn Black, K.H.M.H.
“We got on the initiative and the first step was to start a breastfeeding policy and we got together we formed our committee, which I am the chairperson of the committee. We formulated a breastfeeding policy. Then after formulating the breastfeeding policy, it had to be approved by management, which they did then thereafter we went to training. We had to train a hundred percent of staff of Karl Heusner starting from porters to administration and that took us about a year to train. The training was the hardest for us because we had to find time, how to accommodate staff because we had to move them from the ward. So that was a tedious process.”

Marleni Cuellar
“How many people?”

Nurse Marilyn Black
“We have approximately five hundred members at the Karl Heusner Memorial hospital. As a baby friendly hospital mothers should expect that we were already dumped the bottle we do not give any formula. The baby has to very ill not to be placed on the breast. All babies are being breastfed. We encourage breast feeding. Doctors have to order formula if we are to give formula to the babies. We are here promoting health babies for us as well as for the family.”

Anita Zetina
“One of the very important and step number ten is fostering the establishment of support groups so that the mother can continue breastfeeding and not only does the support group exist but that when the mother leaving the facility that that mother is referred to the support group.”

That support is necessary as Zetina points out the practice of exclusive breastfeeding has not been a common practice.

Anita Zetina
“In Belize, the exclusive breastfeeding rate is at ten point two percent and so to promote breastfeeding as the best start in life for any child. We know that there are benefits of breastfeeding not only to the child but also to the mother.”

Nurse Marilyn Black
“The advantages of exclusive breastfeeding is that you have advantages for the mother and for the child. For the mother she doesn’t have to mix a bottle; the breast milk is there already and its warm and it has the correct amount of nutrients. You cannot compare it to formula. You find that babies that have been exclusively breastfed have less chances of maybe catching cold. You will find out that they are more healthy and more satisfied and the mother again, if she doesn’t have that money now that formula is so expense. It is free.”

Despite the obvious advantages of breastfeeding, there are still the challenge of confronting common myths that expectant mothers enter the hospital with. Nurse Yvette Mossiah, Unit Manager of the Maternity and Labour and Delivery wards at the K.H.M.H. tells us of the number one myth they encounter.

Nurse Yvette Mossiah, Unit Mgr. Maternity/Labour/Delivery, KHMH
“One of the main complain we have is hearing “I don’t have enough milk”. There we have to spend more time educating, letting them know that the first milk the colostrum you don’t get a large amount. It’s small quantity the baby get and the more you put the baby to the breast the more the baby suck and the more milk production you have so by the following the day or by the end of the day, the baby will be getting more than when the baby initially started.”

As a baby friendly hospital, mothers do have the right to choose not to breastfeed but must sign an agreement with the hospital to indicate that decision. Premature babies and babies whose mother’s are too sick to breastfeed would be given formula but that would be based on the recommendation of a doctor. Everyone else sticks to the breast.

Nurse Yvette Mossiah
“We have got back report that more babies are now fully breastfed because what we have found out after going home the baby don’t want the nipples they don’t want the formulas so we have more mothers now fully breastfeeding their babies.”

Anita Zetina
“The results of being baby friendly have really worked for many countries some in the region, in Cuba and some in Africa where you have seen that the breastfeeding has resulted in better health for the children and so it has been tested that it does work and that it does give children the best start in life.”