Naomi Hull

Professional Newsletter Monthly News

Hi everyone,

Welcome to the monthly news in lactation in Australia. Happy World Breastfeeding Week 2023!

This year’s WBW theme ‘Enabling breastfeeding – making a difference for working parents’, highlights the importance of breastfeeding-friendly environments for women who are navigating their transition back to work. This theme also considers the role of paid leave and other workplace resources in empowering breastfeeding women who want to continue their journey once they return to work.

With that in mind, we are excited to announce the launch of our new ABA Breastfeeding-Friendly Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) program. This innovative initiative adds value to the wonderful work of our early childhood educators by further developing their breastfeeding support skills and knowledge for mothers, infants and young children in their care.

Visit aba.asn.au/wbw2023 to read more about this year’s theme and the Breastfeeding-Friendly Early Childhood Education and Care program.

Feel free to let us know what you have been up to for World Breastfeeding Week and where possible we will give you a shout out on socials.

ABA’s mum2mum app has had a major update and nice refresh to enable it to work in synergy with our new website that went live in August last year. This update has delivered a number of bug fixes and presents personal members with even greater app functions, increasing the value in ABA membership for parents.

Apple – click here

Google – click here

The app now includes:

  • Baby milestone notifications listed in the one place. ABA members will receive personalised, stage-based information straight to their phone at a time most relevant to their baby’s development.
  • Breastfeeding information grouped by age and plenty of new member-only content to search through too.
  • A new feature – “Meet ups” where you there are details of the local ABA group and also meet with other ABA members in the local area for their own park or café catch ups. We all know it takes a village and ABA’s updated mum2mum app brings this village straight to parents!
  • As always baby’s feed, nappy and sleep logs are all collated together in the one place.

Please be sure to let parents know about the app.

The Australian Living Evidence Consortium (ALEC), the Australian College of Midwives (ACM) and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG) were recently awarded an Australian Government tender to develop new Living Evidence for Australian Pregnancy and Postnatal care (LEAPP) Guidelines. With work about to get underway on the new guidelines later this month, the LEAPP team are keen to hear your views on priority areas for pregnancy and postnatal care. The Prioritisation survey for healthcare providers aims to capture the opinions, ideas and diverse experiences of Australian healthcare practitioners and others who provide this care. It asks respondents to think about care during and after pregnancy – but not during labour and delivery. Key focus areas include:

  • topics that pose the most clinical uncertainty
  • topics that are likely to have the most impact on patient outcomes
  • topics where evidence is emerging or the context is changing, requiring new or different guidance.

The Prioritisation Survey is now open and closes at 5pm on Friday 18 August

Thank you for all your ongoing support,

Naomi Hull

Senior Manager Breastfeeding Information and Research