Latching on to breast-feeding in Clark County

Amanda Davis always planned to breast-feed. She wanted to feed her babies in what she saw as the most natural way. But when she learned she was pregnant with twins, Davis wondered how she could make breast-feeding work.

She took a breast-feeding class while she was pregnant. But when her sons Zander and Viggo arrived, she realized the classroom teachings couldn’t possibly prepare her for nursing two newborns.

“I’m a first-time mom,” she said. “I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

Luckily, someone told her about PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center’s Breastfeeding Support Group.

Nearly every week since the boys’ birth Feb. 22, Davis has attended the free support group. Davis credits the lactation specialists and moms attending that group for keeping her going when breast-feeding got tough. They helped her navigate the ups and downs of nursing not just one baby, but two.

“If I didn’t have that weekly support and a place to get questions answered, I don’t know if I would have kept with it,” Davis said.

She’s likely not alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control. CDC researchers suspect mothers who don’t get that support may abandon breast-feeding.

While CDC data shows breast-feeding rates are continuing to rise in the U.S., there is a drop off from breast-feeding initiation rates and the breastfeeding rates for babies 6 months and 12 months old.

In 2002, 71 percent of babies had been breast-fed. That rate had climbed to 81 percent in 2013, the most recent year of available data, according to the CDC.

But by 6 months of age, just 38 percent of babies were breast-fed in 2002 and 52 percent in 2013. By 1 year of age, the rates dropped even more: 19 percent in 2002 and 31 percent in 2013, according to the CDC.

“High breast-feeding initiation rates show that most mothers in the U.S. want to breast-feed and are trying to do so,” according to the CDC’s 2016 Breastfeeding Report Card. “However, low breast-feeding rates among infants who are 6 and 12 months of age indicate that many mothers do not continue breast-feeding as recommended. These rates suggest that mothers, in part, may not be getting the support they need, such as from health care providers, family members, and employers.”

Efforts across the state and Clark County aim to increase support and improve breast-feeding rates. Here are some of those efforts:

• Baby Friendly Hospitals: One of Clark County’s hospitals has been deemed “baby friendly” and the other is in the process of earning the designation.

The Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative is a global campaign launched by the World Health Organization and United Nations Children’s Fund, or UNICEF, in the early 1990s.

Baby-friendly hospitals promote breast-feeding and encourage mother-baby bonding by helping newborns breast-feed within the first hour, keeping newborns with mothers rather than in a nursery, avoiding pacifier use and not sending mothers home with free formula.

Obtaining the designation is a several-year process.

Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center obtained the baby friendly designation in August 2015. PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center is currently seeking the designation and expects to complete the process in 2018.

To obtain the recognition at Legacy, staff underwent comprehensive training and made changes to birth center policies, such as offering pasteurized breast milk before formula, said Meredith Pena, Legacy Family Birth Center assistant nurse manager. The hospital also set a goal of having 90 percent of its newborn patients receiving breast milk exclusively and almost always hits that mark, she said.

In addition to earning the national recognition, Legacy Salmon Creek in 2015 was also deemed a gold-level hospital under the state’s Breast-feeding Friendly Washington program. That program, like the international program, encourages organizations to promote and support breast-feeding through changes in policies and procedures.

“It was a big honor for our hospital,” Pena said.

• The Big Latch On: The Clark County Breastfeeding Coalition will once again host the Big Latch On this week in celebration of World Breastfeeding Week on Aug. 1-7. The Big Latch On — started in New Zealand in 2005 — is a global event.

The event is straightforward: Breast-feeding moms gather and, at the same time, latch their children and begin breast-feeding. Volunteers will count the number of latched children at 10:30 a.m. Saturday in Esther Short Park, West Columbian and Eighth streets in downtown Vacouver.

“The real objective of it is to normalize breast-feeding, to have moms feel comfortable nursing in public,” said Tricia Pace, a coalition member and lactation promotion supervisor for Sea Mar Community Health Centers. “Hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of babies are latched on at one time.”

Last year, 30 babies were latched at the event, Pace said. This year, the coalition hopes to see that number grow to 50.

• Workplace lactation toolkit: The Healthy Columbia Willamette Collaborative — a collaborative of health agencies and hospitals in Clark County and Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties in Oregon — recently created a Lactation in the Workplace Toolkit to help employers create and implement more family-friendly policies and support breast-feeding employees.

Breast-feeding has proven benefits for babies and mothers. Breast-feeding has been shown to protect babies against respiratory illness, ear infections and allergies. In addition, the rate of sudden infant death syndrome is lower among breast-fed babies, as are the rates of adolescent and adult obesity and type 2 diabetes, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

For mothers, breast-feeding reduces the risk of breast and ovarian cancers, type 2 diabetes and postpartum depression, according to WHO.

Knowing the benefits of breast-feeding, it makes sense to encourage women to continue breast-feeding — even when they return to work, said Roxanne Wolfe, chief operations officer at Clark County Public Health. Having supportive policies in place for breast-feeding mothers is not only good for morale, but it also means moms are more likely to come back to work and be more productive.

“The breast-feeding rates across the nation are improving, but a lot of times, the reasons women are saying they can’t continue breast-feeding is because of those policies,” Wolfe said. “That ongoing support … can make our community more family friendly.”