BCH Celebrates World Breastfeeding Week 2023

World Breastfeeding Week is celebrated every year during the first week of August in over 120 countries. This year, the theme is “Enabling breastfeeding: making a difference for working parents.”

In honor of World Breastfeeding Week 2023, and as a Baby-Friendly designated hospital, our Family Birth Center wishes to highlight that breastfeeding is a natural and essential process, which provides numerous health benefits including:

• Protecting against illness and death.
• Being essential for child development and supporting healthy brain development.
• Promoting immune system development and decreasing chronic diseases including childhood asthma, obesity, diabetes and heart disease later in life for the lifetime of both mom and baby.

Despite these numerous benefits, many barriers still exist:

• Workplace challenges remain the most common reason for women to never breastfeed or to stop breastfeeding earlier than recommended.
• Parents need adequate time and support to breastfeed. Parents with less than 3 months of maternity leave reported shorter breastfeeding duration than those with 3 or more months of leave.
• A workplace needs adequate breastfeeding facilities to become a breastfeeding-friendly workplace. Only 42 countries mandate workplace breastfeeding facilities.

These are the reasons this year's World Breastfeeding Week focuses on breastfeeding and employment/work. You can find more information at https://worldbreastfeedingweek.org/