To mark World Breastfeeding Week, Lactation Consultant and Founder of Milk Booster and MilkBank Nigeria, Dr. Chinny Obinwanne, has stressed importance of breastfeeding to baby and mother.
She said it reduces the risk of illnesses and diseases in newborn; from respiratory to gastrointestinal, including reducing risk of allergy, eczema, asthma, and atopic dermatitis.
In line with the theme, ‘Enabling breastfeeding: making a difference for working parents, Obinwanne noted beastfeeding helps a mother lose weight as it takes calories to manufacture breast milk.
Speaking on challenges of running a milk bank in Nigeria, she noted lack of funding plays a huge role. “Without external funding, The Milk Booster has been funding the cost implication of running the Milk Bank from paying the staff; blood screening of each donor mum; pre-pasteurisation and post-pasteurisation milk screening and running the facility It’s been a lot.
I remember the number of times we had a post-pasteurisation milk sample test come back and not clear, we kept going back and forth with the team in South Africa that helped us so much to get past that hurdle.
She added that awareness is another challenge. “We have gotten 20 recipient requests for human milk, after we engage them and do the paperwork, the majority of them don’t proceed to the final steps of receiving the milk. The Milk Bank is hoping to fill the gap of awareness and knowledge by partnering with bodies and organisations that represent different arms of healthcare practice that are in line with what we are doing to increase awareness of the need for milk banks in our community.
Dr. Obinwanne also advocates continuous desensitisation of the public with online and offline education, while encouraging new mums going back to work to start preparing early from the first two weeks after delivery on how to breastfeed and store the milk for the baby.
“I tell new mums to start pumping early by adding an extra pump session every day to their baby’s feeding demand and start storing the milk they express during that extra pump session. They should store it in their freezer which can last for six months minimum. With this extra pump session, many mums already have a milk stash by the time they are heading back to work in three months.
“Then I get them to have a difficult conversation with their HR to discuss break times and pumping breaks. At this point, the response varies amongst mums and the organisation they work for and I tailor the plan according to what is feasible per mum.
“Some mums have had to break their lunch break into three parts to enable them to pump three times at work. Others have appreciated our low-sound wearable breast pump, which they can have inserted into their bra and pump while working and nobody notices they are pumping. Then we consistently help them maximise their efforts with our lactation treats so that they produce more volume of breast milk. We also introduced a thermal sensor breast milk storage bag and cooler bag to enable them to store their pumped milk safely for their babies,” she added.
credit :The Nation.
