Dear colleagues,

We had a wonderful congress day yesterday.
After lectures from Kerstin Moberg, from a Dutch pediatrician (who works in the first European hospital that only has delivery suites and no combined four person rooms anylonger) and from Martin Ward Platt (on hypoglycemia, even more excellent than on GOLD, with a lot of humour this time) the three nominees were called to the stage.
After a very brief introduction, the whole conference hall heard who had managed to collect the biggest number of votes: my colleague Chella Verhoeven from the Mother Milk Network. She brings donor moms and receiving moms in contact with eachother and they can then more or less informally share their milk. The donor mom takes a bloodtest before becoming a donor and a few other parameters are tested and she is instructed about how to carefully pump and store her milk. The receiving family travels to this donor and picks up the milk, that can then be given to the baby or stored frozen until needed.
This initiative has caused a hospital to reestablish a hospital milk bank, so all of this is a very clear signal to the broader public of the importance of mother milk.
She was a nominee for the second time, so it is great that she won the prize this time.
I will continue with whatever I have been doing until now. Who knows, if a second chance shows up one day... ;-)
And if not... doing the work we all know is so important, is very valuable, also without winning prizes for it.
The day finished with a lecture from Suzanne Colson, someone who was new to many in the room.
I think the congress really showed the importance of many aspects of breastfeeding.
I even was on the radio! There is a daily item from a presenter, every day from 10.30 until 11.00.
Yesterday, because of WBW (always in the 40th week in the Netherlands, with reference to a pregnancy), his topic was breastfeeding.
He really provoked us (told us beforehand), but we managed to keep the broadcasting pleasant and relaxed with jokes and funny remarks.
Most of you will not be able to understand the Dutch, but for those who do... here is the link: <http://www.radio1.nl/terugluisteren/tijd>.
The biggest Dutch bf website posted the news straight away: http://www.borstvoeding.com/nieuwsberichten/bvprijs2010-1.html, with me on the right side in red/brown.

Thank you again, for your support and votes!

Bye,

Marianne Vanderveen IBCLC, Netherlands

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