My Little Bag of Sunshine

I just returned from the Florida AWHONN Section conference that was held in Jacksonville, Florida.  As part of the leadership team for Florida AWHONN I was a part of a   leadership meeting prior to the conference starting and we were each given a beautiful bag with our name on it and some very colorful pieces of blank paper!

Our Florida Section leader, Dr. Shannon Morse, asked us each to write something about each of the other leaders around the table.  It could be anything, something you liked about them, some thing they do that has inspired you, something that they did!  We had a few hours to write our thoughts and then deposit them in each other's bags.   It sort of reminded me of valentines day a long time ago when I was in school and we did this with our valentines day cards!   

When you are surrounded with so many amazing women that you do not get to see every day, but know they are all making a difference in their communities promoting the health and well being of women and newborns, you have a lot to say about them.  These are some pretty special women to me.   

Tonight, I made it home from the conference and sat in my bed, opened my beautiful bag and read my colored pieces of paper from my friends and it really touched my heart and made me smile.   It also made me think.  We all need to reach out and touch the people who make a difference in the lives of others.  Tell them that they make a difference. I will strive to do this more often.  

A lovely experience that you had us do, Shannon! I am very inspired once again at AWHONN!

Our Journey to Become a Baby Friendly Hospital

The Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative is a program that was launched by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund in 1991 to encourage and recognize hospitals that offer an optimal level of care for infant feeding and mother infant bonding.  The program recognizes and awards facilities that successfully implement the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding and the International Code of Marketing Breast Milk Substitutes.  This program assists the hospital to provide mothers with the information, confidence and skills needed to successfully initiate and continue breastfeeding their babies or feeding their babies formula safely.   The journey is exciting, challenging and worth it!  Our journey has created opportunities for development of a high performance team and has built leadership skills among our staff.  The team is very proud of our work on the Baby Friendly project.  It has definitely enhanced our patient satisfaction and has improved health outcomes for our mothers and babies.

Becoming a Baby Friendly designated hospital is a comprehensive, detailed and thorough journey toward excellence in providing evidence based maternity care with the goal of achieving optimal infant feeding outcomes and mother infant bonding.  During the process, the facility has to examine, challenge and modify policies and procedures.  It requires training and skill building of all levels of the team.  As part of this program we decided to certify all of our Women’s Services Registered Nurses as Certified Breastfeeding Counselors.  We currently have 100% of our nursing staff certified.

In support of Baby Friendly USA 10 Steps to Successful Breastfeeding, the Florida Breastfeeding Coalition designed the Quest for Quality Maternity Care Award program in 2012 to reward birthing facilities in the state of Florida for improving hospital maternity care and infant feeding practices based on the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding.  The program awards a series of 5 stars for each level of the program ending with Baby Friendly Hospital designation when the fifth star is awarded.  The Women’s Services team at Cape Coral Hospital embraced the program and applied for the first star in July of 2012.  In October 2012, Cape Coral Hospital became the first hospital in the state of Florida to receive the one star award.  As the team continued to implement more of the 10 Steps to Successful breastfeeding they have had the honor of being the first hospital in the state of Florida to receive the second, third and fourth stars.

One of the important steps of the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative is providing skin-to-skin care for healthy mothers and infants immediately after birth and for the first hour after birth.  In 2011, Cape Coral’s rate of skin-to-skin care was 48%.  Currently, the rate skin-to-skin care is 90%.  In 2012 Cape Coral Hospital implemented the Gentle Cesarean program where babies born by cesarean birth were able to go skin-to-skin in the Operating Room.  This program was well received by the birthing community in Lee County.  In May 2013, Cape Coral Hospital became the first hospital in the United States to place triplets skin-to-skin with their mother in the Operating Room during a cesarean birth!

In 2015 Cape Coral Hospital joined the EMPower Breastfeeding program (Breastfeeding Enhancing Maternity Practices, a hospital based quality improvement initiative focusing on maternity practices leading to Baby Friendly designation).  This initiative was funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity and is implemented in partnership with the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute and Population Health Improvement Partners.  This program gave the hospital the funding needed to enter the Baby Friendly USA 4D Pathway to designation.  Currently Cape Coral Hospital is in the 4^th and final phase, the designation phase.  We expect to have a site visit from the Baby Friendly USA team in the fall of 2017.  

This project has had many other benefits to our community in the formation of Breastfeeding Clubs for women in our community, the formation of the Lee County Breastfeeding Coalition, and a closer working relationship with the Lee County Health Department and the hospital.

I can not wait to write the blog post that says we ARE a Baby Friendly Designated Hospital, but until that time, if you are trying to decide if you should go on this journey, do it!  It is important for the health of women and for the health of our babies.  Food is Medicine, right from the start!