In The News
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Got milk?
Many Cenla employers establish breastfeeding-friendly workplaces
The Central Louisiana Breastfeeding Coalition recognized 12 businesses Jan. 7 that have supported and promoted breastfeeding among their employees.
The Central Louisiana Breastfeeding Coalition uses a program called Moms at Work to work with employers in Rapides Parish to help set up written policies for women who wish to return to work but remain breastfeeding their children, said Coalition Executive Director Ary Deaton.
“It means not having to make the choice or returning to work, which for some women might not even be an option ” and providing their babies with optimum nutrition,” Deaton said.
Natalie Monroe found herself facing this choice after the birth of her second child.
“As a working mom, (breastfeeding) was something near and dear to my heart,” said Monroe, Roy O. Martin Lumber Management’s corporate environmental manager and Martin Foundation chairwoman.
She had been able to breastfeed or express breast milk at a previous job at which she could lock her office. She was working out of a cubicle, however, at the time she gave birth to her second child.
Meanwhile, the occupational nurse at Roy O. Martin had received some information about women who breastfeed in the workplace. Monroe and she worked together to approach the Central Louisiana Breastfeeding Coalition in June 2008 about implementing the Moms at Work program, Monroe said.
In addition to written policies, the program also helps employers designate break time and a clean, comfortable area where mothers can either breastfeed their children or at least express breast milk, Deaton said.
A newborn should be breastfed for at least six to nine months so he or she can receive the proper nutritional foundation, according to information on the Central Louisiana Breastfeeding Coalition’s Web site.
One-third of mothers return to work after their babies reach three months while the other two thirds within six months, meaning the newborns might not be receiving optimal nutrition in the early stages, according to the Web site.
It’s stats like these the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s Maternal and Child Health Bureau and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have studied and compiled to help initiate programs like Moms at Work, Deaton said.
“Almost every business we have approached has been very pleased to implement this program,” Deaton said.
Children and mothers are not the only ones who benefit from continued breastfeeding.
On average, companies have saved $3 in costs for every $1 invested in breastfeeding support, according to information from the U.S. Breastfeeding Committee.
Employers also saved an average of $400 per year in health care costs in the first year of the child’s life. This is because breastfed babies typically get ill less often, which reduces the need for the mother to stay home or take her child to see a physician.
Additionally, families can save nearly $1,500 on formula in the first year, according to the Central Louisiana Breastfeeding Coalition’s Web site.
“It really is a win-win situation for everybody,” Deaton said.
Here are the Central Louisiana businesses enrolled in the Mom at Work program:
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California Mother Gives Birth to Octuplets
A woman from California surprised her doctors on Monday, when she gave birth to 8 infants, six boys and two girls. This is only the second recorded case of octuplets in the United States! According to their physicians, the children are stable for the time being, and are admitted into the neonatal intensive care unit of the hospital where they were born.
***The experts reported that the new mother planned to breastfeed all her babies, even if that could be a very exhausting task. However, she is bound to be under constant medical supervision, and, hopefully, everything will go smoothly.
MANY OF US MAY WONDER…HOW WILL SHE DO IT???????
January 28, 2009, 9:52 am
How Do You Breastfeed Octuplets?
By Lisa BelkinBreastfeeding
(Illustration by Barry Falls)
In all the conversation since yesterday’s announcement that octuplets had been born in southern California yesterday — the talk of ethics, and lingering disabilities, and selective reduction, and cost of care — the part I kept coming back to is that the mother told her doctors she plans to breastfeed.
Figuring that a full-term newborn eats about eight and twelve times a day, taking about two to three ounces per feeding (every baby is different, and these averages are for full-term singletons not preemie octuplets, but let’s work on the assumption that the octuplets will grow quickly.) With 128 ounces to a gallon they would consume that means that together they would need about two gallons a day. Is it physically possible to produce that much breast milk?
Gina Ciagne, a certified lactation counselor, and the director of breastfeeding and consumer relations for Lansinoh Laboratories, which makes such products as breast pumps and nipple cream, believes that it is. But she doesn’t think it will be easy. Nursing is supply and demand, she says, the more demanded of your body, the more it supplies. In other words, a body doesn’t know if it is feeding eight babies or one very, very hungry baby, it just rises to the occasion — or tries to.
To do this, the mother will need to eat, drink, and rest. The rule of thumb is that a nursing mother should eat an extra 500 calories for each child, but an added 4,000 calories a day is neither possible nor necessary, Ciagne says. The goal should be a healthy and plentiful diet.
Equally impossible, it would seem, is feeding all the babies exclusively from the breast. Let’s say each feeding takes 15 minutes on average (a low estimate, I realize, but let’s work with it.) Then assume an average of ten feedings per child per day. That’s four hours per baby, multiplied by all the babies, would require a 32-hour day. You see the problem.
Ciagne says her company plans to send the mother (who has asked to remain anonymous, and does not appear to have signed on with any reality show producers yet) a double electric breast pump and a year’s supply of freezer storage bags and bottles. Since (at least in my experience) you can express more milk in any given 15 minutes than a baby can drink from the breast in the same period of time, that just might work.
But it also might not. No one knows if one mother can feed eight babies without supplementation (and it’s an entirely different question as to whether or not any mother should even try.) These are only the second set of octuplets ever born in the United States, and if they all make it home they will be the first group of octuplets to survive, so this Mom will be the first to test the limits.
WE WISH HER AND HER BABIES THE BEST OF LUCK!!!