Fay­ola K J Fras­er

World Breast­feed­ing Week is held in the first week of Au­gust every year to in­spire and en­cour­age moth­ers to breast­feed ba­bies. The theme for 2024 is Clos­ing The Gap: Breast­feed­ing Sup­port For All. The cam­paign will cel­e­brate breast­feed­ing moth­ers in all their di­ver­si­ty, through­out their breast­feed­ing jour­neys, while show­cas­ing the ways fam­i­lies, so­ci­eties, com­mu­ni­ties and health­care work­ers can help to sup­port every breast­feed­ing moth­er in a va­ri­ety of ways.

De­scribed by the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion as an “equalis­er”, breast­feed­ing is a cru­cial prac­tice that ben­e­fits both ba­bies and moth­ers and en­sures op­ti­mal child health and sur­vival.

Ac­cord­ing to the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion, “breast milk is the ide­al food for ba­bies, con­tain­ing all the nec­es­sary nu­tri­ents for healthy de­vel­op­ment, in­clud­ing pro­teins, fats, vi­t­a­mins and min­er­als.” It al­so con­tains colostrum, a sticky breast milk pro­duced at the end of preg­nan­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly rec­om­mend­ed for new­borns as it pro­vides es­sen­tial an­ti­bod­ies and nu­tri­ents.

In T&T, at the Mount Hope Women’s Hos­pi­tal, Ja­nis Samp­son-Hunte, a nurse and mid­wife for many decades since 1981, has been one of the spear­head­ing fig­ures be­hind the hos­pi­tal’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion as “ba­by-friend­ly.” Of­fi­cial­ly recog­nised and award­ed Ba­by-Friend­ly Ac­cred­i­ta­tion on Au­gust 5, 2023, by the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion, this mile­stone achieve­ment, ac­cord­ing to Nurse Hunte, sig­ni­fies a great step for ma­ter­nal health in T&T.

“Be­ing ba­by-friend­ly ac­cred­it­ed means that when a moth­er comes to de­liv­er her ba­by, what­ev­er her con­di­tion, the out­come of her birth is safe. We are pre­pared for all nec­es­sary treat­ment and man­age­ment, and we cater for all ba­bies and moth­ers.”

This ini­tia­tive of “ba­by-friend­ly” hos­pi­tals was a strat­e­gy cre­at­ed in 1991, at a time when in­fants were suf­fer­ing from gas­troin­testi­nal ill­ness­es as a re­sult of in­ap­pro­pri­ate breast milk sub­sti­tutes.

The WHO and UNICEF, along with oth­er agen­cies, de­vel­oped a frame­work for coun­tries to im­ple­ment, to con­front in­fant mor­tal­i­ty, with breast­feed­ing as the pri­ma­ry so­lu­tion. The frame­work is a glob­al ini­tia­tive called the “Ten Steps to Suc­cess­ful Breast­feed­ing” (re­vised in 2018), which sum­maris­es the core prin­ci­ples to pro­mote best prac­tices for breast­feed­ing world­wide.

Nurse Hunte be­gan her ca­reer in the med­ical field as a nurs­ing as­sis­tant and was even­tu­al­ly drawn to mid­wifery, com­plet­ing her qual­i­fi­ca­tions in 2000. She de­scribes her “love and pas­sion for mid­wifery, moth­ers and ba­bies, in­flu­enced by my grand­moth­er who was an un­of­fi­cial mid­wife, and de­liv­ered many ba­bies in her vil­lage, up un­til her 70s.”

Now a sep­tu­a­ge­nar­i­an her­self, Hunte is as pas­sion­ate about de­liv­er­ing ba­bies as ever and rel­ish­es in the joy of see­ing her ma­ter­nal unit be­come ac­cred­it­ed as ba­by-friend­ly. Teach­ing preg­nant women and new moth­ers about breast­feed­ing is one of the core tenets of her role, as “breast­feed­ing should nev­er be an af­ter­thought. It should be a ba­by’s on­ly source of nu­tri­tion up to six months, and re­main a pri­ma­ry source up to two years and be­yond.”

De­scrib­ing breast milk as ex­pressed from the “mag­i­cal work­ing breast,” she mar­vels at the way breast milk changes based on the en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions to suit the ba­by’s needs best. Her role has al­so giv­en her the abil­i­ty to dis­tin­guish ba­bies who are breast­fed ver­sus those who are not. “Breast­fed ba­bies are health­i­er, their skin is glow­ing, usu­al­ly have a high­er IQ, and walk and talk faster.”

She al­so notes that they are less sus­cep­ti­ble to ill­ness­es, and can dis­trib­ute their weight bet­ter. How­ev­er, al­though she en­cour­ages all ex­pec­tant moth­ers who can breast­feed, she notes that there are cer­tain women who, due to med­ical con­di­tions or oth­er­wise, will not be able to breast­feed. In these sit­u­a­tions, the hos­pi­tal is al­so well po­si­tioned to give those moth­ers ad­vice on how to safe­ly ex­press and dis­card breast milk where it could cause harm to the ba­by, and how to ap­pro­pri­ate­ly en­sure their ba­by’s nu­tri­tion does not suf­fer.

“Mount Hope Women’s Hos­pi­tal is sec­ond to none,” she said. “It means the world to us that moth­ers can feel com­fort­able and de­liv­er ba­bies safe­ly with­out the costs of pri­vate health­care.”

At the core of Nurse Hunte’s life vo­ca­tion and the work of the Mount Hope Women’s Hos­pi­tal, is a fo­cus on ed­u­ca­tion. Want­i­ng the best for both moth­ers and ba­bies, she en­cour­ages preg­nant women and their part­ners/fam­i­lies to at­tend an­te­na­tal Lamaze class­es where they learn how to latch, iden­ti­fy a good ver­sus bad latch, how to hold ba­bies for op­ti­mal breast­feed­ing or rem­e­dy all po­ten­tial is­sues with breast­feed­ing. In this vein, breast­feed­ing will be­come nor­malised and con­tribute to dis­ease pre­ven­tion, ma­ter­nal well­be­ing and ul­ti­mate­ly the growth and de­vel­op­ment of healthy chil­dren.