Yes, Isabella, Step 3 is about breastfeeding education for pregnant women. The aim is to make sure the hospital is providing this so that when mothers come into hospital to give birth, they have some preparation. With shorter hospital stays, that is increasingly important.

As Rachel said, most of the Steps are for practices in the hospital after the baby's birth - except Steps 3 and 10. Rachel rightly stresses the importance of properly implementing Step 10, on support for breastfeeding mothers after leaving the maternity facility.

The new book edited by Melissa Vickers and myself (The 10th Step & Beyond: Mother Support for Breastfeeding), [ublished by Hale, provides material about how this has been done in many settings round the world. The chapter authors have provided many insights on how this can be done.  I believe I can mention this book in this forum as I receive no financial benefit from it, because Melissa and I assigned our royalties to WABA to assist with their wonderful work.

Virginia

Dr Virginia Thorley, OAM, PhD, IBCLC, FILCA
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Rachel Myr wrote:

Isabella Medoza asks for input about step 3 of Baby-Friendly practice,
because her boss interprets it to mean a requirement to hold classes
for women postpartum before they go home.

As far as I know, Isabella's understanding is correct, that step 3
concerns pregnant women. ...
Most of the steps for hospital certification do apply to the time
immediately after birth, in the institution. The last step, if I
remember correctly, has to do with follow up and support available
after the mother and baby go home. One part we really haven't hammered
on hospitals about here is the requirement to help set up support
groups for mothers where such groups do not already exist. The
existence of our national BF mothers organization was considered
sufficient (about 100 mothers available by phone for the whole
frigging country, with 60 000 births per year!) to satisfy the
requirement. All the hospital had to do was tell mothers how to get in
touch with it.  With what we are finding out about the difference
between proactive support and support that is only provided on
request, that step is looking very dated. It was the best thing going
when it came out some 20 years ago but it's too bad the whole process
hasn't been budgeted for necessary revisions.  Probably no one
imagined it would take decades to get Baby-Friendly implemented across
the globe :-(


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