“It is an uphill battle but as mothers are beginning to get support from their families and workplaces, the numbers of exclusive breastfeeding mothers are slowly going up,” said Cathy Carothers of Every Mother Inc., a non-profit organization that provides counseling and lactation training and resources for health professionals and families.
Carothers said several factors affect the transition from breastfeeding to formula feeding.
“Among the factors of the shift to formula feeding is that lots of women want to go back to work after giving birth,” Carothers said.
She added that the extensive promotion of various formulas advertising that infants would become super-babies and grow up perfect is another factor.
“There is no substitute for breastmilk and the mother, the baby and the family will benefit from it, and that is what we are trying to instill in the mothers,” she said.
Carothers arrived here on Sunday to conduct training for 14 staffers of the Women, Infants and Children’s clinic on Navy Hill to start the groundwork for a peer counseling program for breastfeeding moms.
Carothers hopes that after the training, the staff will encourage all mothers to breastfeed their children.
“Our goal is to start a mom-to-mom campaign. We train the staff and their part is to spread the breastfeeding campaign to the mothers,” Carothers said.
WIC clinic manager Dianne C. Esplin said encouraging mothers to breastfeed their children will greatly reduce the high incident of diabetes and obesity on island.
Carothers and Kendall Cox, co-director of Every Mother Inc., were sent by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to conduct the training on Saipan.
Cox left on Wednesday evening while Carothers was set to leave for Guam last night.
For more information, call WIC at 664-4067.
