I was at the Maraval RC Church on Saturday for a christening. Afterwards, the christening party retired up to Paramin for the day.
I've always wondered why people from Paramin smile so much. Spending time up there with them, now I know. The freshness, the breeze, the cooking, the drinking and above all, the camaraderie explain why.
There were ten babies at the ceremony and by the middle of the event there was a fair amount of crying and shushing and moving about by mothers and godmothers.
So it was lovely to hear the parish priest, Fr Fortune say, "if your baby is hungry and if you want, please go ahead and give the baby tot-tots. You can breastfeed anytime you want in church."
There was a loud murmer of appreciation and a big grin from me. Gone are the days when breastfeeding a baby was considered unreal, impossible, old fashioned and even, to my utter astonishment, communistic!
That was the day, shortly after I had been appointed the first UWI lecturer in Child Health in T&T, that I was paid a visit by two senior officials from Nestle who tried to convince me that they were not really anti-breastfeeding but they hoped I was not too friendly with those "communists" who were trying to force mothers to breastfeed.
They were referring to the newly-established mother support group, The Informative Breastfeeding Service, better known today as TIBS.
The idea that this group of gentle, young mothers, most of them with their first baby, a majority with husbands working in large corporations, trying to breastfeed in the face of tremendous opposition from their families, midwives and doctors were communists, was so ludicrous that an embarrassed silence on my part ensued and the interview was mercifully cut short, never more to be repeated, despite various attempts by the formula companies over the years.
TIBS has come a long way since then. For 38 years, it has provided support to breastfeeding mothers across T&T, slowly evolving from a small mother support group into a growing professional structure that currently comprises four Breastfeeding Centres and more than 60 Certified Breastfeeding Counsellors.
All the while, they have continued to ensure that their services are available to those who need them at no cost, and at any time of day or night.
Thousands of mothers and babies in T&T and even beyond have been helped. Just recently a Trinidadian mother with a six-week-old baby born in the USA, returned home, left Piarco and drove directly to a TIBS Centre to consult with a counselor about a breastfeeding concern. It's a proud legacy, and TIBS has become an important part of this country's social landscape.
Going forward, even as improvements in our health care system slowly unfold, the organisation continues to occupy a vital space that no other institution can, educating and preparing mothers for breastfeeding and then providing empathetic care and support in the days following delivery.
At the same time it remains a fierce advocate for health care institutions to become more baby friendly, corporate workplaces to become more mother friendly and infant formula marketing companies and retailers to abide by the WHO's Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes.
Needless to say, it has made enemies in the corporate world as well as among a small group of doctors and nurses who attempt to cling to outdated notions of maternal and infant wellbeing, their cry being the traditional "we know better than the science, we know more than you the mother."
From its humble roots in a garden in Maraval, we now have an organisation that is the national representative in T&T on all matters relating to breastfeeding.
It is in recognition of this, coupled with ambitious plans to continue to expand their footprint into far-flung communities across both islands, that TIBS has taken the decision to rename itself as The Breastfeeding Association of Trinidad & Tobago.
In recognition of this, the newly-named Breastfeeding Association has organised, together with the support of the Ministry of Health, the first national breastfeeding symposium in T&T, to be held at the Hyatt in early May.
A key objective of the symposium will be the establishment of a National Breastfeeding Policy that takes into account supportive maternity leave in line with modern thinking.
Obesity and its side effects, diabetes, heart attacks, strokes and so on and the preventative effect of breastmilk on these is another.
Local experts on making hospitals and businesses more breastfeeding-friendly will be presenting and PAHO will be involved in assisting in setting up the National Breastfeeding Policy.
All of this will be done under the patronage and support of the Minister of Health who has repeatedly made it clear that unless we get childhood obesity under control, the non-communicable diseases associated with it could bankrupt the nation in coming years.
The economic argument trumps even the medical one.
So there is hope. If breastfeeding has become the norm for priests, pastors, pundits and imams, people representing some of the most conservative institutions anywhere, as is increasingly the case, then we can expect that soon more businesses and more politicians will be willing to follow their people and come out in support of the rights of women and children to proper nutrition.