To mark this year’s World Breastfeeding Week (1-7 August), we would like to raise awareness of the support, advice and information available to parents around Infant Feeding and Nurturing, provided by our Infant Feeding team.
World Breastfeeding Week was marked on Tuesday 1st August 2023 with a number of celebration events including information displays in the Main Entrance of St Peter’s Hospital and the Abbey Wing about infant feeding. The infant feeding team also visited some areas of the hospital to talk to parents and staff about the support available to them and promoted their Feeding and Nurturing information resource. The resource has been created as part of the Trust’s work to standardise the feeding advice and support given across the hospital to ensure that parents are able to make informed decisions about feeding their babies. It has a wealth of information covering antenatal education, guides on collecting and giving colostrum, community feeding support and much more.
This work, as well as a number of the maternity team’s infant feeding Quality Improvement programmes across the Trust, has led to ASPH being recognised as a Baby Friendly Level 3 accredited hospital as part of the UNICEF UK Baby Friendly Initiative (BFI). The Initiative recognises the efforts of maternity staff in supporting parents with feeding and developing close bonds with their new baby.
The team are now supporting maternity to progress to the BFI Gold accreditation and is also supporting the NICU team, as they work towards Level 1 accreditation.
Liz Jennis, Infant Feeding Lead at Ashford and St Peter’s, said: “Our passion at ASPH is giving every baby the best start to grow up happy and healthy and this starts with families being able to make informed decisions about feeding and nurturing from conception onwards. My colleague Leanne [Infant Feeding Specialist] and I cannot thank the Maternity, Neonatal and Paediatric staff enough for embracing the changes we have made to help our parents access accurate and consistent information, help and support.”
Click here to access the Feeding and Nurturing resource.
