News

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N A T I O N A L B R E A S T F E E D I N G I N F O R M A T I O N A N D S U P P O R T

In this issue Baby Café and me - pg 3

SPECIAL FEATURE - pg 5

Volunteering in refugee camps

Multi-tasking mums - pg 6

page 2

In this edition...Baby Café helped me! page 3

Everybody’s talking about it page 4

Volunteering in a refugee camp page 5

In the news page 6

Q&A: dealing with tricky situations page 7

Websites and helplines page 8

Coming soon!

The brand new Baby Café website is on its

way. Here’s a sneak preview…

Hello! Dear all...I hope that this edition of Baby Café News finds you all well and I hope you have had a good summer.

I am always amazed how quickly time goes, especially at this time of the year as the seasons start to change.

The Baby Café team have had a busy summer updating the toolkit - you will all be emailed a copy in the next few months - and working on the new website, which we hope will be going live by the end of the year. It is looking really good already and we will be so pleased to get it up and running.

It was good to see lots of Baby Cafés taking part in the Big Latch On and having events for National Breastfeeding Celebration Week. Don’t forget to let us know or to post on our Facebook wall when you are having events or have photos to share.

For those of you going along to the UNICEF Baby Friendly conference, do come along and meet some of the team there and have your photo taken by the stand.

Best wishes and thank-you for all your hard work supporting mothers

Trina - Baby Café Co-ordinator

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Andreea Gutu found friendly support at her local Baby Café, Woodside in Croydon.

‘I first visited Woodside Baby Café when my son Charles was a month old, and I’ve been going ever since. I had started breastfeeding but was unsure about my milk supply. Having introduced a bottle of formula in the evenings, I was looking for some advice.

‘I was also feeling lonely and isolated. I have no local family and my sister had recently returned to Italy after staying with me for a while. My partner was back at work as Charles had arrived late and missed most of his paternity leave.

‘I heard about the Baby Café from my midwife. I expected it to be an institution and that nobody would talk

Gemma Arnett was encouraged by her Health Visitor to visit Peterborough Baby Café and now volunteers her support every week.

‘My health visitor encouraged me to pop down to the Baby Café when Milo was four weeks old. I hadn’t really been struggling with

breastfeeding, but I was only just getting used to it. Meeting other mums and hearing how their breastfeeding was gong was so helpful. If I did have any questions - such as when Milo started feeding more frequently - it was easy to have a chat and get my concerns answered quickly.

‘Milo’s a year old now and I’ve been going to the Baby Café regularly. Now that he’s a little bit older, I’m starting to get the “You’re still breastfeeding” comments,

but coming to Baby Café has given me more confidence to answer. Sometimes you can feel that no one else is breastfeeding after six months and going to groups helps to normalise that. I have found that continuing to breastfeed is helping to control my eczema, too.

‘I’ve now started to go to the Baby Café every Tuesday to volunteer. I was sitting in Mothercare one day, feeding Milo, and a young mum was asking me questions. She said she’d had no help and was now formula feeding. She commented that I was good at offering information and support, and she might try breastfeeding next time round, which inspired me to start training as a peer supporter.

‘In this area, our health visitors encourage lots of mums to come to Baby Café, but many don’t - maybe they don’t know what to expect. I would really encourage them to come along and hopefully it can help them like it helped me.’

Baby Café helped me!Baby Café offers friendship, a listening ear plus encouragement and support. This can be important for mums struggling with confidence and worries. In this issue we hear from Gemma Arnett and Andreea Gutu who share their stories.

Real life stories

to me, but it was exactly the opposite. I was welcomed, offered a cup of coffee and a chat, they asked how I was feeling and reassured me. Charles really liked it too: there is a sensory room and he loved being with other babies. Baby Café gave me so much confidence: I decided to drop the formula top-ups after a couple of weeks, and when I started giving Charles solid foods and was feeling afraid, I was signposted to great information which made the process fun.

‘After a while, I could see that the Baby Café could get very busy, so I started to make coffees and teas and socialising with the mums. Since then, I have trained as a peer supporter and now attend every week to support other mums.’

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Everybody’s talking about

it...Mothers praise peer

support in Calderdale Calderdale Baby Café (Yorkshire) has recently reported on the success of their peer supporters at the Baby Café.

Mothers’ comments included:

“The peer supporters were friendly and it was reassuring to meet other mums who had overcome breastfeeding challenges.”

“It’s a brilliant service. I will be training as a peer supporter in order to return the help I received from everyone there.”

“I saw a peer support worker and she was brill. Baby Café definitely helped me continue to breastfeed as long as I did.”

Thank you to all our amazing volunteer peer supporters.

Leeds launches a brand

new Baby Café

Leeds Baby Café launched in mid-September

with a pop-up Baby Café in Leeds City Centre

as part of the first ever UK Baby Week.

The Baby Café Facilitator, Fran Bailey, an NCT

Breastfeeding Counsellor, said, “Cakes and

conversation flowed with a rich and diverse

community of people keen to make having a baby

in Leeds a positive experience. We were able to

share news of Baby Cafés and all NCT’s work

with Rt Hon Hilary Benn.”

The Baby Café will run on Friday mornings at

Gipton Methodist Church on Oak Tree Place.

Welcome to the Baby Café family!

Kathy Roumbas and Fran Bailey

It’s all in the detail Both Trinity Children’s Centre and Village Green Children’s Centre Baby Cafés in Great Yarmouth pride themselves on getting all the details just right.

To make parents feel truly welcome, tea is served in tiny tea pots and coffee in mini cafetieres. With homemade cakes and fruit on offer, parents return again and again.

Ann, the facilitator at Trinity, knows all the parents by name, which gives the group a lovely social feel - the perfect environment for supporting women to breastfeed.

Thank you to both Baby Cafés for all your efforts in supporting local parents.

...events and happenings in Baby Cafés around the country

Village Green Baby Café

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Being a new mum can be difficult no matter where you live or who you are. However, news images from Europe are a stark reminder that many mothers are struggling in the most extreme and challenging circumstances. This summer, Sarah Stephen-Smith, a peer supporter at Peterborough Baby Café, volunteered at a refugee camp in Greece.

‘At home, I am mum to four little ones and work as a doula, as well as a volunteer for Birth Companions and a Breastfeeding Peer Supporter. I am also a year into my training as a Breastfeeding Counsellor with the Association of Breastfeeding Mothers.

‘Earlier this year, I saw an ad on social media from Nurturing Project International (NPI), asking for breastfeeding supporters to travel to Greece and offer support to mothers in the refugee camps. At that point, my youngest was not quite two and I was breastfeeding regularly myself, so I didn’t feel that I could help. It stuck in the back of my mind, however, and I eventually arranged to volunteer for a week in August.

‘After some preparatory reading and online training, I flew off to my apartment, which was shared with other volunteers. Although we came from a wide range of backgrounds, experiences and nationalities, we provided vital support to one another.

‘I volunteered in two camps in northern Greece, based in a clinical tent, and the work was very repetitive. Day in, day out, I would give out food packs to breastfeeding mums, weigh babies, check babies, talk to mums. They are so under-staffed that everyone pitches in: normally, I would never weigh a baby, but was happy to do so after some basic training.

‘I would sit down with the mums who came in and talk about how they were feeling. Some of them chose to come to the tent every day just to breastfeed. Many had been there six or seven months and knew the routine better than me.

Volunteering in a refugee camp

Special Feature‘It was shocking to see first-hand what some families have endured and what their short- and medium-term future may look like. It provoked strong emotions, on top of the strain of leaving my own family behind, but NPI provided a weekly group session for us with a trained psychologist, as well as a daily debrief.

‘I learned so much during my week in the camps from the stories women told me. My cultural awareness around breastfeeding - such as the times of the month a mum believes her milk is good or

bad - has expanded hugely.

‘The experience brought home to me just how life-changing good breastfeeding support can be. There was limited sanitation in the camp, so the couple of mothers who were formula-feeding were supplied with single-use cups and ready-made formula to minimise the contamination risk. I heard stories about babies that had been in very bad shape but were now happy, healthy toddlers.

‘But it was hard coming home. Standing at the airport with holidaymakers,

I could understand why the refugee families feel that they are being forgotten. I was desperate to get home, then almost didn’t recognize my own children. It felt very strange. I had been on my own, working hard, then had to come straight back to normal family life. I have kept in touch with the other volunteers, which is a wonderful support network as we all understand what it’s really like.

‘I have a renewed enthusiasm for finishing my course and I am hoping to go out to Calais over the winter to continue offering support. I would encourage anyone who is considering it themselves to try and talk to someone who has been there. Photos are discouraged, so it’s hard to understand what it’s really going to be like before you go. It is hard work, it is challenging, but it’s so rewarding.’

For more information visit:

nurtureprojectinternational.org

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Support really mattersA pilot study has tried to tease out the reasons why some mothers continue their breastfeeding journey in the face of challenges, while others don’t.

As we know at Baby Café, the reasons are many, but the key themes included expectations and motivations around breastfeeding, support returning to work, the experience of breastfeeding and public attitudes.

Prendergast E & James J (2016) Engaging mothers: breastfeeding experiences recounted (EMBER). A pilot study. Breastfeeding Review 24:2, pp 11-19.

Take a deep breath

More research evidence has been published

which links breastfeeding to reductions in

asthma symptoms.

A recent study was the first to show that breastfeeding

can modify the effect of the asthma gene in infancy.

During the period they are being breastfed, babies

with the “asthma gene” who are being breastfed are

at a 27% lower risk than those not breastfed of

developing respiratory symptoms.

Gorlanova et al (2016) ‘Effects of breastfeeding on respiratory

symptoms in infancy’ Journal of Pediatrics, 174, pp.111-117

Extreme multi-taskersSocial media feeds are frequently full of photos of amazing mothers, but these two caught our eye.

In arguing that children don’t hold women back in the art world, one artist took to Facebook to show just how a working mum may need to juggle. Meanwhile, a Stateside runner takes multi-tasking on the road, pumping as she hits the eight-mile mark in a half marathon!

Facebook

In the news...

A benchmark for public breastfeeding!

Hum na Sutli, a tiny town in northern Croatia, has become the first place in the world to install a breastfeeding bench.

The bench, placed in a park near the local primary school, boasts a comfortable seat with breastfeeding welcome symbols, a roof for protection from sun or showers and an integral changing table. You can learn more about the project on Facebook by searching for HUGPD.

...snips and clips about babies, breastfeeding and more

Image credit: HUGPD

Images credit: Facebook

very welcoming to newcomers, but don’t be afraid to step in if the group isn’t appearing as open as it could. Just little things like always remembering to introduce new mums can make a big difference.

Q - What do I do if a mother arrives who is formula feeding?A - Baby Café is an intervention which is designed to support breastfeeding mothers and it’s important that this is clearly publicised for your Baby Café to avoid any confusion. We always extend a warm welcome to any parent who comes to Baby Café, offering them a drink and talking to them about their experiences.

Many mothers may be offering formula alongside breastfeeding, be offering expressed breastmilk, or have breastfed for some time before stopping. They may all find great value in talking to someone about their experiences. Even a mother who has never breastfed might want to talk to a breastfeeding supporter about her feelings around breastfeeding. For mothers who are no longer breastfeeding and who don’t feel the need for support, it is usually quickly apparent what the focus of Baby Café is, and some may decide to stop visiting. Very occasionally, a mother may be vocal about preferring formula or extol the benefits of formula feeding. Evidence shows us that this may damage the confidence of breastfeeding mothers and the facilitator may need to chat to this mum to explain and request that she no longer does this at the Baby Café. We hope this would always be done supportively and gently.

An update day is a great opportunity to talk about other tricky situations. If you haven’t had one recently, do get in touch.

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Baby Cafés are a great place to offer

parents support and information in a

relaxed atmosphere. However, not all

situations are straightforward. Here are

some tips on dealing with tricky situations.

Q - What if a peer supporter just talks about her

own experience?A - Most peer supporters in Baby Cafés are

well-trained and have had the chance to debrief

their own experiences and learn to listen to mothers.

Occasionally, some peer supporters might struggle

with this and need some additional time to talk

through their own feelings with the Baby Café

facilitator before or after the Baby Café. It’s always

worth peer supporters receiving regular opportunities

to reflect on their interactions with mothers; if this

is not formalised for your peer supporters, you might

want to consider how to create this opportunity.

Q - How can I manage when the Baby Café gets

too busy?A - Some Baby Cafés can become extremely busy,

often towards the end of a session, especially

when word gets round! All Baby Cafés employ

different systems to manage this, but here are

some ideas. Create some printed slips of paper

which explain that Baby Café is particularly

busy today and to ask for patience and perhaps

offer alternatives if time runs out; keep them at

hand and put around the room if the session

starts to become busy. Make it clear on your

publicity that mothers should arrive before a

certain time to ensure they can see someone -

perhaps half way through the session. If you are

based at a Children’s Centre, could a member of

staff step in to help with registrations if it gets

very busy? Recruit a general volunteer, perhaps

through your local volunteer bureau, to help

welcome mums and offer refreshments.

Q - How could I help a new mum join the group?

A - It’s an important quality standard for Baby

Café to provide a friendly welcome, but it can be

hard to ensure new mums join the group. One

Baby Café insists on name labels for all mothers

so that new mums don’t feel left out when everyone

else knows one another’s names. Others task a

volunteer, peer supporter or staff member to

welcome new people, sit with them to chat and

introduce them to the group. Most mothers are

Q&A...

Baby Café News is the magazine for visitors, trainers

and facilitators linked with the Baby Café.

The Baby Café is a network of breastfeeding drop-in

support groups. They aim to offer help and support

to mothers at any stage in their breastfeeding journey,

regardless of the age of the baby or child. Pregnant

women are welcome too. You don’t need to have a

problem to attend - lots of mums come because they

enjoy being in a group with other breastfeeding women

chatting about their experiences. There are Baby Cafés

across the UK and other parts of the world. For more

information see thebabycafe.org

The newsletter is published 3 times a year by NCT.

We welcome contributions to Baby Café News

Editor: Kerry Radden

Graphic design: NCT Design Team

Baby Café News is published by NCT, Brunel House, 11 The

Promenade, Clifton Down, Bristol BS8 4AG

NCT Baby Café is a trading name of The National Childbirth

Trust Limited company registered in England and Wales:

2370573 Registered address: 30 Euston Square, Stephenson Way,

London, England NW1 2FB.

Registered charity in England and Wales: 801395 and Scotland:

SC041592

Breastfeeding on the webOur ‘where to f ind out more’ favourites:kellymom.comGreat for finding answers to common questions about breastfeeding nct.org.uk Go to the ‘parenting’ tab and select ‘feeding’ for a wide range of helpful articlesthebabycafe.org Our site for all things Baby Café!breastfeedinginc.caThe website of Canadian breastfeeding expert Dr Jack Newman. Useful videos and linksisisonline.org.ukInfant Sleep Information Source - with up-to-date, evidence-based information on all aspects of baby and toddler sleep

Ring ring… Breastfeeding helpline numbersNCT Helpline 0300 330 0700National Breastfeeding Helpline 0300 100 0212Breastfeeding Network Supporterline 0300 100 0210Drugs In Breastmilk Helpline 0844 412 4665La Leche League Helpline 0845 120 2918

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