Providing Support to Those Who Breastfeed

Please join us in recognizing and celebrating World Breastfeeding Week from August 1-7, 2023. Each year the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action chooses a breastfeeding-related theme to promote awareness and encourage action in advancing breastfeeding literacy, accessibility, initiation, and support. This year’s theme is Enabling Breastfeeding: Making a Difference for Working Parents.

Enabling breastfeeding can occur at many levels including at home, work, in the community and in the political arena. Below are suggestions on how we can all enable breastfeeding. It really does take a village!

• Plan ahead and learn what your options are for paid leave, for both parents. Research shows partners that take time off to help support the breastfeeding parent and build relationships early have higher rates of exclusive breastfeeding.
• Offer to bring a meal to a new family, or pick up take-out or a grocery order. As the parents are working hard to feed their baby, keeping the rest of the family fed can take a lot of stress off the parents’ shoulders.
• Offer to help with laundry, walking the dog, entertaining other children, or helping with other household tasks.
• Offer praise and encouragement. Breastfeeding is often hard work that mainly goes unnoticed.
• In the workplace, ensure there is a private, comfortable non-bathroom setting for a parent to pump, with easy access to a sink and a fridge.
• Respect the pumping schedule for people who need to pump during the work day. Offer to cover for people who need pumping breaks.
• Be an advocate in your workplace to improve conditions for lactating workers. Workplace challenges remain the most common reason for women to stop breastfeeding earlier than they intended.
• Become active in local and global breastfeeding organizations.

Breastmilk is a changing substance that provides optimal infant nutrition, development, and life-long beneficial effects.

Benefits to infants include reduction in upper respiratory illnesses, ear infections, asthma, obesity, type I diabetes, gastrointestinal upset, and SIDS.

The breastfeeding parent gains short and long-term health benefits as well,  including improved metabolism, lower blood pressure, and reduction in diseases such as breast and ovarian cancers, heart disease, and postpartum depression.

The lactation team at Cayuga Birthplace has been advocating for and supporting families for decades. We continue to grow the department, including the recent hiring of the first full-time, dedicated lactation consultant. The following are some of the ways that our team supports the community.

• We offer infant feeding support for all inpatients throughout the hospital and outpatients who return for follow up support.
• We work hard to improve conditions for lactating workers at Cayuga Health System.
• We foster collaborative relationships with local practices to ensure that families have access to up-to-date information and can be referred seamlessly to services as needed.
• We offer monthly, free, prenatal lactation classes taught by our lactation consultants so parents can learn how to work with a baby’s instincts and reflexes, recognize when things are going well (and when they’re not!), tips for managing sleep, and how to build a support system.
• We are in the process of finalizing a contract with the New York Milk Bank to have pasteurized human donor milk for our infants, including NICU infants. Donor milk has been shown to prevent serious complications for premature and sick infants, and is widely considered the next best option when the parent’s own milk is not available.
• We are improving access to quality breast pumps by partnering with Cayuga Medical Supply. With certain insurance carriers, parents can go home from the Birthplace with a free electric breast pump!

Find out more about the Cayuga Birthplace or call (607) 274-4408

Around the globe, breastfeeding impacts billions of lives. Learn more.