Jefferson County Public Health's Women, Infants and Children Program is teaming up with other local partners to encourage breastfeeding. Cuenta Conmigo Coop, Mother's Milk Bank and the Jefferson County Library have collaborated to host special sessions of the regularly scheduled Mother's Milk Bank Baby Café.
Baby Café is held every Monday at the Belmar Library for breastfeeding, nursing and expectant families, and for World Breastfeeding Week, the agencies wanted to provide even more resources to mothers and families in the Jeffco area.
Perla Madrid, a registered dietitian and lactation consultant for the Jeffco WIC program, said the special sessions still serve as a support group for the women.
During each Baby Café session, babies are weighed before and after their mothers breastfeed, which gives mothers visible evidence that their babies are getting nourishment, says Perla Madrid, a nutritionist and lactation consultant at JCPH. Photo: JCPH
“We're here to support women who are breastfeeding, not just if they're having issues with latching,” Madrid says, “but it's also a resource where you can talk to other moms, hang out with them, be with other people and get support.”
Paulina Elises, lactation consultant and director of development and strategic partnerships at Cuenta Conmigo Corp., explained that World Breastfeeding Week is especially important for women of color.
“We want to make sure people have the information they need, that they know their right to breastfeed their babies is protected,” Eric Ess said. “We want people to be educated and able to make different choices about the nutrition their babies are getting.”
Elises added that this is for women, especially those from marginalized communities, who already face enough barriers.
“When it comes to breastfeeding and lactation, there should be people in the community, in the hospital and in the system who know how to help,” Elises said.
Bilingual services are essential to help Latino mothers who face language barriers, said Jacqueline Morales, a breastfeeding peer counselor for Jefferson County's WIC program, who said her job puts her in close contact with breastfeeding mothers.
“I'm a breastfeeding counselor,” Morales said, “What I do is educate them throughout their pregnancy. We just become friends. I talk about what's going on at home and their environment. It gets really personal. And we keep in touch as much as they want. They call me, they text me, we meet at the clinic.”
Rachel Goodman, director of clinical relations at Mother's Milk Bank, said there was another important aspect of breastfeeding to consider.
“From a milk bank perspective, they're such an important part of breastfeeding and they're a bridge to breastfeeding,” Goodman says. “If you have a premature baby in the hospital and you don't have breast milk for a week, what do you feed that baby? They should be breastfeeding, and donor milk helps support breastfeeding, and we do that in other ways too.”
Goodman said this support is why the Milk Bank has partnered with Jeffco Baby Café to run its own baby café.
Baby Café sessions, powered by Mother's Milk Bank and the Jeffco WIC Program, are designed to support families of breastfeeding babies. Siblings, fathers and other family members often come to the sessions to find education and community. Credit: Photo by JCPH
“We also host baby cafes on Fridays at the milk bank to support families with breastfeeding issues, giving families another way to socialize and get breastfeeding support,” Goodman said.
Madrid said education and awareness about breastfeeding was needed to overcome the still-widespread belief that it was easy.
“Breastfeeding awareness is also really helpful because we think breastfeeding is so natural that we assume it's instinctual or easy – that we already know how to do it,” Madrid says. “But that's not the case. There's a learning curve for mothers and babies, and that's the connection between these programs.”
For more information about Jefferson County's WIC program and other breastfeeding resources, visit the Breastfeeding page on the Jefferson County Public Health website.
