This text examines the research and evidence connecting birth practices to breastfeeding outcomes. It takes an in-depth look at the post-birth experiences of the mother and baby, using the baby’s health as the vehicle and the intact mother-baby dyad as the model to address birth practices that affect breastfeeding. The Second Edition has been completely revised to include new information on infant outcomes, including epidural anesthesia and Cesarean surgery, clinical strategies for helping the mother and baby recover from birth injuries, medications and complications, and information on Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiatives with a Mother-Friendly Module.

Mentoring is more than just training! In Mentoring Our Future, author Denise Altman, RN, IBCLC, LCCE describes the nuts and bolts of mentoring. She begins with the basic structure for mentoring and adds real life stories about good and bad mentoring experiences. She has included many personal stories from leaders in the field of lactation. Altman includes practice challenges from real life scenarios to stimulate your thinking about creative ways to solve problems in your practice setting. Mentoring Our Future does not tell you what to teach, but rather gives you the elements of mentoring and tells you how to create a mentoring program or process. This book covers: * The history of mentoring and considerations for mentoring * How to create a mentoring program * The levels of mentoring, from observation to internship * How to identify who to mentor * How to create an individualized mentoring experience * What to do if the mentoring relationship breaks down * How to move on after the mentoring relationship ends Mentoring Our Future is the perfect resource for anyone who wants to help others on the pathway to becoming a professional lactation specialist at any level. Clinical nurse managers, WIC coordinators, small business owners, La Leche League Leaders, doctors, dietitians, midwives, doulas, volunteers, or any breastfeeding advocate can use the guidelines in this book to create a successful mentoring program in their organization.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) both recommend exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life. The AAP recommends continued breastfeeding with supplementation of solid foods for at least one year, while the WHO recommends continued breastfeeding with supplementation of solid foods for at least two years. Breastfeeding rates in the United States do not reflect these recommendations, or the breastfeeding goals of Healthy People 2020. Breastfeeding rates are especially low in low-income areas and among WIC recipients. This article details a proposal to implement a new protocol that will implement the WHO and UNICEF Ten Steps to Breastfeeding Success, and seek to earn a Joshua Tree, California hospital Baby-Friendly designation. This hospital serves a low-income population. Baby-Friendly designated hospitals have been shown to practice interventions that result in increased breastfeeding rates. Patient education is an important component to success with exclusive breastfeeding, and must be improved. Continued breastfeeding support is an important area, as well, and patients should have access to community resources and a local lactation consultant. In order for this to be successful, all LDRP staff must be uniformly educated on the benefits of breastfeeding, how to properly support exclusive breastfeeding, and what to teach new mothers. Included in this paper are a new staff breastfeeding protocol, incorporation of organizational change theory, an implementation plan, staff education plans and materials, evaluation tools, and plans to disseminate findings to the community, the stakeholders, and the general nursing population.