Today we spoke to a bunch of 15 year olds about breasfeeding

[TheRealMBJ]

As a part of BFAW, 3 of us from our local support group, did an hour's 'lesson' for the year 10s and 12s doing Health and Social care at the local school. We spoke about the benefits of breastfeeding, what breast milk is, how it is normal to feed a baby the milk of it's own species, and very basic anatomy and physiology.

It was great .

Particularly the year 10s who where very involved and asked tons of questions (mainly about implants and whether it hurts ), one of them had even hear about the use of breastmilk in cancer patients!

It was excellent. Will definitely be repeating next it next year.

Now that is exactly what we should be doing during BFAW...much more effective probably than handing out leaflets in the rain which is what I was doing. Some people were literally running away from us.

Did somebody from your local group just contact the school and ask them if you could do it?

amazing! i will be bringing this up at our next bf forum :)

We just sent an email to the head teacher. He forwarded it on to the relevant HOD, who luckily happens to be a bf mum herself, and she was delighted that we wanted to do it. She invited us back next year too

It was a mixed class, unfortunately only one boy takes H&SC hopefully we can get them to let us present it to the biology class next time too. Might have more boys in that one.

Wow!!

That's brilliant and exactly the type of thing that will help to "normalise" bfing. Do you mind if I link this thread on fb?

Not at all! Feel free to link

We have a very low bf rate (only about 65% initiation) and high teen pregnancy rate here too, so really hope we can 'get them while they are young' with this

Excellent idea (I've just followed Lissie's link from FB). I feed DS in front of DD's friends (5YOs ) and they don't bat an eyelid, which always makes me smile - they accept the normality of it. :)

Brilliant, really pleased to hear this. Much more sensible than lactavist flash mobs. Can I ask, did you make mention of the potential issues that bfing after c-sec can bring? Or was it more of a positive overall view? Just that I think that info is often missed, especially in cases like mine where I had an ELCS so hadn't done much research.

We didn't really go much into that side of things worrisomeHeart

The lesson covered three parts; what's in breastmilk why it is there, how breastfeeding 'protects' babies, and the biological process of how a mum produces milk.

It was a fantastic opportunity and well worth doing.

We've played with the idea of doing something like this for a while now, but never been organised enough or brave enough to approach the school.

So glad we did it, BAW has usually been a bit of a dissappointment in my previous experience. Just goes to show what you can do when you start planning early and have a few good ideas! :)

We didn't really focus on the physical 'act' of breastfeeding so much as we didn't have enough time AND we didn't want to make it about an individual breastfeeding as we thought it might put the 15 year old's off. We wanted to 'normalise' bf as much as possible and impart the knowledge that it is physically possible for the overwhelming majority of women to produce enough milk for their babies.

We did touch on the fact that it is a skill to be learnt and that some mums may have more problems to overcome than others (and gave them our contact details etc) but it certainly wasn't the focus.

We also do an antenatal workshop, and in that we go into more detail about possible pitfalls and booby-traps.

We didn't consider a 'flash-mob' as we would probably only get about 5 dyads there. Not much of a mob

Fair enough. Sounds great, really well done.

Nice to mumsnet meet you TheRealMBJ

I know who you are now

Great idea will suggest that at local group

Just as an aside a group of us did a talk on bf to medical students and we were welcome to bring our babies and children.

It was wrote surprising how little knowledge they had about it. Some of them had obviously read the medical textbook but there were so many questions!

Really, not 'wrote'

Norman I'm an ex-medical student and all I was taught at med school was (esentially) 'Breast is Best', that colostrum is low-volume, high energy antibody packed stuff, and that gastroenteritis is a shitter if a baby is formula fed.

That is it!

(Of course we touched on the hormonal control of milk production, the development of breast tissue during pubery etc but these were all separated from the act of breastfeeding. It really, really isn't a focus or separate area of study at medical school. Unless a doctor is particularly interested in it there is no incentive to know more about it, it is assumed that the MWs and HVs will deal with that sort of stuff)

that's fantastic NormanT

It's so important that ALL health professionals are equipt with up to date breastfeeding knowledge.

Unfortunately we are about 50 miles away from any teaching hospitals here, otherwise we would be in there like a shot!

What a fantastic idea! We're just starting up a peer support group in our area, and it's a really good idea to think of doing things like this for next year!

Our breastfeeding support group was only started a year ago, it's amazing how far you can get in a year (with alot of stress and hard work!!)

Good luck

That is brilliant mbj!