Baby-Friendly in the Doctor/Midwife's Office

What is Baby-Friendly?

This global initiative from the WHO/UNICEF encourages health care providers to give care based on the best available evidence to support families to make informed infant feeding choices. Based on The Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding, this initiative directs system-wide changes to eliminate barriers for families.

Today, most families want to breastfeed. This initiative helps those families and supports families who have made informed decisions to bottle feed to safely do so. As a result, Baby-Friendly doctors/midwife offices benefit all families.

The Ten Steps to Baby-Friendly Offices

• Support, promote, and protect breastfeeding by informing women, so they can make informed decisions about infant feeding.
• Establish a baby-friendly office policy in collaboration with your colleagues and office staff and inform all new staff of this policy.
• Refrain from distributing free formula to women in your office.
• Ensure that your patient education material and magazines do not advertise breast-milk substitutes, bottles, or nipples.
• Display baby-friendly posters that promote breastfeeding.
• Provide a relatively private area in your office where babies can be breastfed.
• Do not refer pregnant women to formula company–run prenatal or postnatal classes.
• Eliminate the practice of accepting free samples of breast milk substitutes or related materials by your office staff.
• Advocate to ensure that the hospital where you provide services is a “baby-friendly hospital.”
• Support continued breastfeeding among mothers who return to workplaces outside their homes by advocating for baby-friendly workplaces. Ensure that your office is a baby-friendly workplace for your own staff.

Resources

Nutrition Part 1: Breastfeeding the Healthy Infant – Guidelines document produced by the BC Perinatal Health Program 
Baby's Best Chance (PDF 4MB)

Created on: Oct. 29, 2008