I spoke last night at a rally against children being sent to the Nauru Detention Centre about my experience in counselling the mum currently there with her baby. I know that there were several ABA people present. Below is my speech. It is really is the case that this mum is just like any of the mums that we speak to in providing breastfeeding counselling as LCs or peer counsellors. Mum are the same everywhere and their concerns for their baby are the same too.
For those in Australia, please write to your federal MPs about the unacceptability of having children in immigration detention and speak to your family and friends about it. The harms are immense. But the government is happy to damage these children because it is the will of the Australian people. Until the will of the people changes the children will continue to be abused and neglected. 
Karleen Gribble
Australia
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Tonight I want to help to put a face to baby Asha and her mother and give some idea what being sent to Nauru has meant to them. I have been given permission by Asha’s mum to talk about her situation.
I’m not a refugee advocate, I have never before been involved in asylum seeker or refugee issues in Australia. I’m a university academic with a PhD and my area of expertise is infant feeding, particularly infant feeding in emergencies.
However, for the past 2.5 weeks I’ve been speaking on the phone on a regular basis with Asha’s mum. I was asked to talk to her because she was having real difficulty in feeding her baby. The transfer from Australia to Nauru had been traumatic, and she had stopped breastfeeding as a result. She and her baby were in a dreadful situation because in a place like the Nauru detention centre problems with feeding a baby could be fatal. Infant mortality on Nauru is 10x greater than in Australia and for formula fed babies in that environment the risk is large- especially when mothers don’t have the things they need to formula feed safely. Asha’s mum was quite desperate.
I talk to mums regularly about their challenges with feeding their babies. There are few things that are more difficult for mothers than to have a crying baby and to be worried if their baby is getting enough milk. Mums often feel devastated and powerless. It can be earth shattering for them. And so it was with Asha’s mum, she really sounded just like any of the mums I speak to here in Australia only she had the added burden of living in such difficult circumstances in the detention centre.
For those of you who are parents I want you to think about what it was like when your first child was born.
For so many mothers this experience is an overwhelming responsibility. It takes all of their mental and physical resources to just get through each day. Being emotionally responsive to a little baby is vital to their long-term wellbeing but this can also be a very difficult thing to do.
What do mothers need to be able to care for their baby?
Mothers need to feel safe- where mothers are traumatised, scared or stressed it can prevent them from being able to see their baby’s needs and to respond to them
Asha’s mum has been terribly traumatised by her experiences and she’s terrified of the detention centre- she won’t leave her tent. It’s really hard for her to care for her baby.
Mothers need to feel able to trust the people around them- they need friends, family and trusted health professionals to provide empathy, advice, support and assistance
Asha’s mum is socially isolated, she is separated from her family and friends. Her husband is not well and is really struggling. She doesn’t trust any of the health professionals she has seen on Nauru- she feels they have not listened to her concerns, have not provided her with the help or resources she needs to care for her baby.
Just imagine how it would feel to believe that none of the people around, you that have power over your life and that of your baby have your best interests at heart. In fact you feel that many of them want to harm you. You cannot believe anything that they say. This is how Asha’s mum feels.
And just imagine, you are traumatised, problem solving is difficult, thinking is difficult, everything is hard. And you have no one to help you.
And you are having trouble feeding your baby.
Baby Asha is truly in a precarious situation.
As I said at the beginning of my speech I have not been involved in refugee advocacy before. I knew that things were not good in the Nauru Detention Centre but I didn’t realise that they were as bad as I now know they are. It didn’t occur to me that the government would send babies to Nauru without having plans in place to ensure that their most basic needs would be met, including their need to be fed. But seemingly this is what has happened.
Every time I speak with Baby Asha’s mother I encourage her to smile at her baby and to look at her and think about how much she loves her and to enjoy that good bit of life, even for just a short while. I try to reassure her that right now, she is her baby’s world and Asha doesn’t care where she is so long as she is with her mum. But each time we speak she begs me to help her baby and to get her out of the Nauru Detention Centre.
It really is no place for a baby
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