Health Unit Celebrates World Breastfeeding Week With Photo Contest, Breastfeeding Challenge And Ribbon Campaign 

Submitted by Lucia Taggart, RN, BNSc, Public Health Nurse

October 1st to 7th, 2004 was World Breastfeeding Week in Canada, which celebrates the importance of breastfeeding for all women, children, families and communities. This year’s theme, Exclusive Breastfeeding: the Gold Standard-Safe, Sound, Sustainable, recognizes that exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months with continued breastfeeding to two years and beyond provides the best nutrition that babies need to grow and develop.

To promote breastfeeding as the normal part of a baby’s life, the Leeds, Grenville and Lanark District Health Unit sponsored radio ads featuring Moxy Fruvous encouraging moms to “give your baby the best, give your baby the breast”, and newspaper ads raising awareness of the benefits of breastfeeding. A gold ribbon campaign highlighted the role we all play in growing healthy babies.

The main events were the breastfeeding challenge and the photo contest. With the challenge, families were encouraged to meet either at the Early Years Centre in Brockville or the Smiths Falls Health Unit office on Saturday, October 2, to join moms and babies across Canada and the United States as they latched-on at 11am local time.

The photo contest asked moms to send in photos of themselves breastfeeding while doing everyday activities, to highlight the fact that breastfeeding is the normal way to feed a baby and can be done anytime and anywhere. The winners will have their pictures made into a poster by the Health Unit to be used throughout the tri-county area to promote breastfeeding.

This year 5 moms and 6 babies participated in the latch-on, joining 2228 other babies at 135 sites across North America.

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