Mother of a 9-year-old little girl, Natalia Castillo admits that when she was going to give birth she thought she knew a lot, “and the truth is that she didn’t know anything. She was ignorant.” However, she was very clear that she would breastfeed her child, so her proposal to give him formula milk as a supplement that they made to her at the hospital did not convince her at all. Thus she ended up in the Breastfeeding Unit of the Doctor Peset Hospital in Valencia. In the center they cut the baby’s frenulum – which made it difficult to attach to her breast – and “that same day” she participated in the workshops offered by the Unit.
Almost a decade later, the same amount of time the Unit has been helping mothers and families, Natalia has become a lactation consultant and helps other women enjoy the journey, sometimes complicated, other times especially satisfying, of breastfeeding a child. “If I had had all the information I have now, everything would be different,” explains Natalia, who even ended up training as a nursing assistant because she “wanted to help my daughter.” She regrets that many times the health system “does not inform you, it misinforms you, and I did not want to give supplemental milk. Because of that concern I wanted to learn.”
The Breastfeeding Unit that helped Natalia, and almost 15,000 other families in recent years, celebrated its tenth anniversary a few days ago in an event held at the same hospital in which the general director of Hospital Care, María Jesús Arilla, and the mayor of València, María José Catalá, who recognized herself as a nursing mother. Her youngest son was born last June, after the May elections.
The activity of the Breastfeeding Unit includes specialized clinical care (in person, by telephone and online), in addition to being a breastfeeding training and teaching resource for professionals, support group advisors and citizens. In these 10 years it has offered more than 30 courses, conferences or meetings that have reached more than 2,000 professionals.
But beyond the numbers, their great milestones lie in having managed to strengthen breastfeeding in so many families, which is why they defend their results as “encouraging.” They assure that the rate of exclusive breastfeeding among the patients of the Unit rose from 52% upon arrival; 66% one month after discharge and 55% four months later; Likewise, partial breastfeeding decreased from 48% to 34%. 95% of pain or weight loss problems improved.
According to María Teresa Hernández, pediatrician responsible for the unit, “many early abandonments of breastfeeding occur due to unresolved problems and lack of specialized support. Around 80% of women choose to breastfeed their babies when they are born, but only 40% continue breastfeeding at 6 months,” she explains.
The Amamanta association, which launched the first breastfeeding workshop in a health center in Vilamarxant in 2000, is concerned about addressing this lack of support and a network to support themselves. Its president, Esther Coronado, defends that the Valencian system is a “singular, very strong system that does not occur in other territories.” She gives as an example the Comares Association, the IHAN (Initiative for the Humanization of Birth and Breastfeeding Assistance), in which members of Amamanta participate with responsibilities, in addition to the associations Petra and El Parto es Nuestro, among others. .
He explains that Amamanta is a project with three legs: “direct support for mothers, training for advisors and support for breastfeeding.” They teach in-person workshops and, since the pandemic, also online. “In the Valencian Community we are lucky that during the entire pandemic they were not left alone, we were the only group that continued to provide support during confinement and pandemic, creating national and international groups. In fact, I had a mother in a workshop who was living in Atlanta that was from Moncada. It is a very solid network,” explains Coronado.
These days the association collects images, through email, of nursing mothers breastfeeding their babies in a party environment under the label
“The mothers who come to us now at the workshops are much more educated than we were nine or ten years ago, but more, much more can be done,” explains Natalia, who will soon begin volunteering at the General Hospital of Valencia to help consolidate breastfeeding for mothers who have just given birth in those first moments when everything is doubts and uncertainty, a program that the association has been carrying out since 2007 and that little by little has been spreading throughout the Valencian health network.
