Northern Navajo Medical Center gets 'baby-friendly' moniker
By Alastair Lee Bitsoi
Navajo Times
SHIPROCK, July 9, 2011
(Courtesy photo - Gayle Williamson)
Tahlia and Kevin Tran attended the Baby Friendly Initiative event at Northern Navajo Medical Center to show their support and their commitment to raising their healthy daughter.
For babies, good health starts with breast milk instead of formula, health officials said.
"Breast feeding is a proven way to help prevent obesity in children," said Dr. Susan Karol, the chief medical officer for IHS, who officially announced the initiative at NNMC.
The Shiprock facility was selected by the IHS to launch its Baby-Friendly Initiative because it already supports breast feeding mothers and works closely with the Navajo Nation Breast feeding Coalition, whose goal is to encourage breast feeding among Navajo moms.
"Many mothers in the United States want to breast feed, and most try. Yet, within only three months after giving birth, more than two-thirds of breast feeding mothers already have begun using formula," Karol said.
By the time babies are 6 months old, more than half of the remaining breast feeding mothers have stopped, she added.
According to the federal Centers for Disease Control, breast feeding helps prevent allergies, ear infections, obesity and diabetes in babies. It also helps prevent breast and ovarian cancer in mothers.
Another crucial benefit to breast feeding is the free source of nutrients provided from mothers, compared to relying on replacements made from cow or soy milk.
Research has shown that breast fed babies receive some of the most beneficial nutrients available, including a perfect balance of protein, fat, vitamins, minerals, IgA, lactoferrin, lysozyme, leukocytes, and important fatty acids.
In a video message to the Northern Navajo staff, IHS Director Yvette Roubideaux, M.D., offered her congratulations.
"We're so proud of IHS' contribution to the first lady's initiative," Roubideaux said, adding that her agency's goal is to certify 14 federal IHS obstetric facilities as baby-friendly by 2012 and to encourage 12 tribal obstetric facilities to adopt the initiative.
"This initiative is a quality improvement process to improve breast feeding rates through maternity care and infant feeding practices," Roubideaux said. "By promoting breast feeding, the IHS will reduce current and future medical problems and decrease health costs."
Johnson Dennison, a traditional healer and member of the Diné Medicine Men's Association, spoke about the benefits of breast feeding through a traditional Navajo lens.
"In our Navajo culture, there was no question about breast feeding until the bottle was introduced," Dennison said. "It's part of nature. It's a fruit of nature and it's spiritual. Breast feeding is a natural expression of love and happiness."
Dennison said according to his understanding, milk was given to humans by Talking God in response to long discussions between First Man and First Woman on how to raise Changing Woman.
First Woman did not have milk when the couple first came in contact with Changing Woman, so Talking God directed First Woman to greet the early dawn with her arms stretched out to the sky and inhale.
"There is a mother and child connection not only from the womb but through breast feeding," Dennison said.
Jeanette Yazzie, a nurse consultant for the Navajo Area IHS, said at the end of May there were a total of 110 baby-friendly hospitals across the U.S., none of them in Arizona or New Mexico. In Utah, only the University of Utah Hospital has won the designation.
"We wanted IHS to be the first baby-friendly hospital in New Mexico and Arizona," said Yazzie, a member of the Navajo Nation Breast feeding Coalition. "That was the goal of the coalition."
According to an Infants and Family Survey conducted by the NNMC, 89 percent of Navajo mothers under 25 are breast feeding, which means more and more Navajo mothers are breast feeding
Amelinette Begay, 33, of Teec Nos Pos, Ariz., said she nursed all three of her children.
"Breast feeding has benefited my kids a lot, especially with the new law in effect," Begay said. "My husband can bring my kids to my work area to feed because we now have a nursing area to feed."
The law to which she refers is the Affordable Care Act signed by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. It requires employers to provide reasonable break time and a private, non-bathroom place for mothers to nurse during the workday for one year after a child's birth.
Health-care officials also thanked the Navajo Nation Council and former President Joe Shirley Jr. for enacting the Navajo Nation Healthy Start Act of 2008, which encourages breast feeding in the work place. Specifically, the act requires employers on the Navajo Nation to provide a clean, enclosed, private area where mothers can breast feed or pump out their milk for storage and later use.
"At the Northern Navajo Medical Center, we honor breast feeding mothers and work closely with the Navajo Nation Breast feeding Coalition to promote and support the wisdom of this traditional practice," said CEO Fannessa Comer. "We are pleased to join in launching the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative and to become baby-friendly certified."