Hellobee Boards

@Kemma: Great idea!

Free Mommy Breast-feeding clinics/groups that educate about: overactive letdown, growth spurts & cluster-feeding, and milk supply changes. I hear so many women who quit BFing because they didn't understand these things.

Longer maternity leave! So many of us only get 6-8 weeks off. If moms had more time to establish breastfeeding I think more would be successful going back to work and pumping and keeping up their supply.

@Kemma: that's great!!! Some hospitals here don't have a lc that visits or does free visits. I don't know what I would have done without her help.

Definitely agree with longer/better maternity leave-so shameful the U.S. doesn't guarantee ANY.

Lot's of great ideas here!

From my personal experience, I would implement a change for working moms. Classes on pumping, workplace education (for co workers and supervisors), flexible work schedules, clear policies about pumping at work, breastfeeding support groups outside of office hours, more mothers rooms in workplaces, nursing friendly professional clothes, counseling for breastfeeding moms returning to work, etc.

I'm not really sure. We have year long maternity leave, free access to a lactation consultant for the first six weeks, and free classes before birth. The consultant for my area contacted me within 24 hours of arriving home from the hospital to set up a time to meet either at her office or my residence. While I was in the hospital, it was put on a large sign that I intended to exclusively breastfeed so to avoid pacifiers or supplementing with formula, and all staff were very supportive.

However, I just looked at our census and we've still only achieved a rate of 23% of mothers exclusively breastfeeding until 6 months and 60% making it to 6 weeks. I'd really like to see the statistics for ANY breast feeding though, since I think giving no credit to those that BF but supplement is kind of a false number.

The only thing I can think of is maybe have pumps purchase/rental covered by medical insurance to the whole population? I believe in special circumstances you can get them for free by prescription, but it's not standard here. I bought a cheapie manual because I wanted to be able to pump and leave a bottle once in a while and it was not very efficient and made my hand cramp up, so I ended up buying a nicer electric even though I really don't use it that often, and it was a bit of an expense. But kind of a "nice to have" thing, rather than a necessity I suppose.